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If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
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Comments
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^ Yeah, you probably should.
Seriously, like 90% of your posts here are just "lol, watchin' dumb ppl flap their gums is LOLZ".
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^^ Unless I'm mistaking you for someone else who posts the same sort of thing. Which, given a community like this, is likely.
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As for your last paragraph, "you just don't get what I mean by God" is something that I could make into an IJBM of its own. If I say that by "homeopathy", I actually mean "accepted modern medical practices", does that mean homeopathy isn't bullshit? If by "God", you mean some kind of mystical force that permeates the universe rather than an actual deity, why not just call it "the Force" instead of using a word that already has a definition?
Similarly, the word "religion" has connotations that to me strongly suggest an irrational belief, based on the word of an ancient book or authority figure. You can have spiritual beliefs that aren't religious in nature, though I rarely find those any more convincing.
If you'll humour me a moment by entertaining a rather silly scenario, suppose you are abducted by aliens. They take you on a 12 year trip to their planet and back, which you remember in vivid detail, before returning you home, 12 years later, wearing the same clothes you were abducted in. There are no other witnesses, and the only thing you have to show for your experiences is a small, human-shaped figurine, which turns out to be made from an ordinary plastic which is commonly used on Earth.
Now, under those circumstances, would you believe you had been abducted by aliens? And if that hadn't happened, and somebody else had told you that story had happened to them, would you believe them?
Even at my most antitheistic, there was a certain variety of religious claim which I would never attempt to argue against. This was the type supported purely by anecdotal evidence.
For example, there exists a troper who professes to have met Sobek, the Ancient Egyptian crocodile-headed god, in person. There are also at least two tropers who believe themselves to have the ability to bond their souls with those of fictional characters, at least one of whom claimed to have met said fictional characters in person as a result. And there are a number of tropers who profess the (to the best of my knowledge, considerably more common) belief that they "know" that a god - the Abrahamic God, even - exists because they can feel his presence.
Now, none of these claims fits neatly with my worldview. They are extraordinary claims. I might, therefore, conclude that those making them are liars. This might be tempting, but it's a rather rude thing to assume, and not one that's conducive to a productive discussion. What is preventing me from dismissing every view which doesn't fit my worldview as a malicious falsehood? Technically, nothing whatsoever, but to do so would be to assume bad faith - much like interpreting the phrase "we'd probably be healthier without religion" as "religious people are uneducated heathens who are dumb and retarded" when no such thing has been implied (see, Chagen, this is what actual passive aggression looks like :P). Nevertheless, the possibility that they are lying is one to bear in mind, lest one wants to fall victim to every troll on the site.
So if we can't assume that they are lying, as this would be disingenuous and unproductive, we must be prepared to entertain the possibility that they are sincere. But can we assume that they are correct? No, of course not. To do so would be gullible. For one thing, it would mean you'd accumulate a lot of mutually contradictory religious beliefs after a while. For another, you'd also come unstuck when dealing with people like Tzetze who habitually make nonsense up for their own amusement. All the same, the possibility remains, however remote it may appear, that these claims are true.
The remaining possibility is that the people making these claims are mistaken in some way. Can we assume that this is because they have behaved irrationally? I would argue that, no, it doesn't. They may have; it's a possibility to consider. It's also possible that they have behaved entirely rationally, but their experiences have led them to arrive at some conclusions which, to anyone else, would appear extraordinary.
Given this selection of possibilities, there's really nothing to debate. Either their experiences have led them to draw a correct conclusion, or an incorrect one. Not having shared in these experiences, there's no way for me to judge, so I prefer to just leave them to these beliefs. With regards to the religious one, I might speculate that what they feel is some other emotion - perhaps the kind of awe that is common to followers of many religions - which they have mistaken for the ability to sense God's presence. I can speculate this, but I can't prove it. I can't get inside their heads and see for myself whether they have behaved rationally or not.
>Seriously though, I think we'd probably be healthier without religion but I don't feel that strongly about it
What do you mean by "healthier"? Studies have shown a correlation between the possession of religious beliefs and contentment and lack of stress in times of crisis.
@Nyktos: Well, science is the best way we have for predicting future events, certainly, which is a strong mark in its favour.
On your second point, though, I disagree quite strongly. In my experience, when most people make reference to "God", they don't mean some beardy geezer sitting on a cloud. It is not the fault of the religious if you are choosing to interpret the word in that way, rather than the way it's commonly intended. Of course, some of them might mean the beardy dude; words can have multiple meanings, after all. Regardless, while I get what you're saying, please don't equate the belief in an omnipresent God with belief in the Force, a concept originating in the movie Star Wars. To do so just seems crass to me. I can certainly sympathise with the frustration at linguistic ambiguity, but please have some appreciation for subtlety. There are definite distinctions which can be made, and they matter a great deal to many people.
Same goes for "religion". I highly doubt that anybody who refers to a belief as their "religion" or "faith" means "I have arrived at this belief through irrational means", and again, it's hardly their fault if you choose to interpret the words that way.
@Tnoph: Why did you do that?
As for the Force, I was just kidding around, though I've certainly heard spiritual beliefs that remind me of it. (As long as those beliefs don't include midi-chlorians, they're okay with me.) I suppose it could be seen as offensive, but I was really just trying to use a lighthearted example.
You're misunderstanding what I meant about the word "religion". The part about holy books and authority figures was the important part, not the irrationality part. It just so happens that consider those to be silly places to get beliefs from. To me, religion is different from spirituality in that religion includes rituals, commandments, and the like as opposed to simply being a type of metaphysical belief. Although the word is sometimes used to just mean "theism", I think mine is an accepted definition.
"Faith" is different. To me, "faith" means something believed to be true despite not having any evidence in favour of that (which I consider to be a bad thing in many situations, but that's beside the point).
As for holy books and authority figures (I assume that's "and" as in "and/or"?), that's true of most religions, but I can think of some belief systems which aren't. Mostly weird, modern/postmodern, "left-hand path" shit like Satanism or Discordianism, though.
Faith being interpreted as exclusively blind faith is kind of a pet peeve of mine. It's like the word means two different things depending on whether or not you're actually religious.