Religion

Aondeug

Art is always superior to science. Science exists solely for practical purposes and fuck those.

Unless you are psychology. In which case you are the most important thing in all of existence that isn't Buddhism.

JBridge

I say use science to augment art. We wouldn't have TV and video games without electronics! Remember that!

Aondeug

Yes...

Science can be used to help my precious art.

For this you are allowed to exist science peoples. Just to give me more useless art.

JBridge

Thump

Aondeug

Thump

JBridge

Thump

Aondeug

Thump

IanExMachina

*Cough*

1e. Generally, wonderposting (a.k.a. shitposting) is allowed but discouraged.

Aondeug

You really should care.

Gelzo

I'd say this is getting to the point where it's hampering serious discussion.

GLORIOUSLeader

Actually, we all care, because speaking in my personal opinion, I do not like it very much at all when meaningless and facetious (and frankly embarrasing) derails about almost-cybersex take over the topic of discussion from what could have been an interesting conversation.

/rant

Aondeug

Thump

IanExMachina

Yes please lets keep this a relatively serious discussion rather than shitposting it up for no real reason.

vandro

I said some things back then, gelzo, I'd like your input.

Beholderess

Don't waste your saliva trying to find anything rational in my beliefs,
to me righteousness is the will to do what is right. As simple
and circular as that, and why is it worth pursuing? Because I believe
that ideals are to be upheld, not thrown away.

This one might be a bit late to  party, but QFT.

Gelzo

^^Sorry, what did I neglect to address?

vandro

http://itjustbugsme.com/forums/discussion/comment/147444#Comment_147444

Gelzo

If you don't have reasons behind those values that you want to mention, the conversation would be limited to just saying whether I happen to have come to agree or disagree with them and to what extent. I don't think that's enough to interest me.

vandro

Reasons, let's see...equality, I grew up as a have-not in the middle of haves so I find it completely rediculous for people to live in different socio-economic circles, besides people's birthplaces are not decided on merit but luck, which I find really unfair.

Compassion is simple, I have empathy for most people's sufferings, like everyone else. And I try to act on that empathy, as everyone else, I would presume.

Honesty is a little trickier, I've seen it again and again that people lie to get what they want, I find that to be bad, but what really drove it home for me that lying shouldn't be is when I see people engage in "white lies" so they don't make someone else feel bad or to avoid a conflict. The former, I find short-sighted, unless the other person dies or is a complete knucklehead, they'd figure out the lie and feel worse than if they had been told the awful truth. As for the latter, I've seen people avoid conflict for lengthy periods of time, and that just leads to pent-up feelings of resentment and explosions of drama when the conflict does start.

Gelzo

Yeah, I guess that's reasonable. I don't see much that's significantly incompatible with how I see things.

I dunno, I guess I'm not feeling too talkative right now.

Bee

Ack.  Apologies for the late answer -- work blew up in my face but hard.


>So Bee, would you say keeping your faith is more or less key to your remaining a good person?

Going on the vote of confidence that I'm even solidly there yet (thank you), yeah, pretty much.


>I'm also not sure I understand why people willingly hold onto beliefs they admit are irrational. If I had a belief that I came to conclude was irrational, I would abandon it.

Meh.  Rationality is severely overrated IMO.  Many of the greatest joys I've ever experienced were some form of silly or foolish, and that's not even getting into that wonderful thing called love.  To me, rationality is a tool, nothing more; a quite useful one at times, but by no means appropriate or even adequate for my entire life.


>I mean, we all have to make allowances for mistakes we might make, but continuing to do things that you know don't make sense... doesn't make sense..?

I'd say it makes us human.  The right kind of chaos and foolishness is what keeps life interesting.


>Okay, so it turned into a shitpost thread instead of a drama thread. We're making progress.

And this is why I love IJBM  <3


>There are two concepts I don't like about everyone else's definiton of God. One is its existence and one is his beard.

ಠ_ಠ

Gelzo

I just don't see how you're better off with anything other than rationality when trying to determine what is true.

Beholderess

This one  would say that in general, humans do not think rationally that often, and for most of them, their  beliefs do not start as rational. Have you seen a child sit down, think what they  are perceiving and construct their worldview from that? One way or other,we come into adulthood with the whole range  of pre-conceived notions most of us can't  even remember getting. Getting into a fully rational worldview from that often requires complete - and very painful - tearing down of the  old one. For quite little gain, too, because old conceptions were adaptative and useful enough.

Not saying it's right. Only that it happens.

Heh, this  one knows fully well that  she got her  ideals as a five-year  old, from a song.

captainbrass

Often there's a thin line between rationality and rationalizaton. What you think of as your rational world view can be just a bunch of excuses for stuff you wanted to do anyway for non-rational reasons.

Gelzo

That thought has occurred to me, yes. Especially after seeing obvious instances of it in others. But it's not like I haven't gone through uncomfortable changes in my world view. I wasn't raised as an atheist, and it wasn't easy coming to the conclusions I did. And I'll admit that I do things sometimes without a good enough reason, but I don't think that that's generally because I managed to delude myself into thinking I have one. I'm just not strong-willed enough to follow through with all the things I've determined I should do.

But I don't think you should ever shut yourself off from bits of reality just because it's uncomfortable. It can fuck up your judgement, and I think it's best to spend more effort coming to terms with things than living in denial.

vandro

I agree that accepting the truth is better than living in denial, but even so, what you consider true may not be what others consider true.

Gelzo

Yeah, but trying a logical approach seems to me the best way to start eliminating what isn't likely to be true.

vandro

How can you be sure your logic analysis isn't working with incomplete sets of data?

Gelzo

It is working with an incomplete sets of data. If we knew everything, we wouldn't have to bother piecing clues together for an incomplete picture. Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it isn't useful.

Hatter

I've always wondered why people get all excited over whether or not there is a god. Why does it matter? If people base their beliefs around a god, and those beliefs lead them to doing good things, then why look a gift horse in the mouth?