Monday, December 29, 2008

The Slow Conversion of One

Here's another aim conversation I had today.  This person was a firm believer in God before I started blogging this subject a week and a half ago.  Don't forget to read my earlier post about the paradox of the coexistence of an omniscient god and god-given free will.  This is the Age of Reason.  Stay a while.

1:43 PM
You blog is causing me sleepless nights!
aww, don't worry....consider this
if there actually IS a god

lol
she will be happy to know that you exercised the mind that she gave you
And she will have you to thank for that!
I have a lot of respect for your blog
thank you
from my perspective, if god exists, and i get to whatever place of judgement when i die, and god says to me "mikey, you chose not to believe"
i'll say "God, you gave me intellect which i used to come to some pretty clear conclusions about your existence."
"now that i'm seeing you standing here, i'll buy it"
"and furthermore, let me make a suggestion"
"why not just do something....ANYTHING...if you are omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent...why not just make yourself a tad more obvious to the people of earth? you know, EVIDENCE..."
"right now, it seems down there like you're running amok...harming good people, protecting bad people...allowing such misery to exist when you don't have to"
"why not do something to show your grace and mercy and power?"
"cuz you're really starting to lose credibility down there, you know?"

Can i ask you something.........Do you wish that there was a God and that you had faith?
i don't wish i had faith
faith defies reason
i'd rather have reason, but
yes, i wish there was a benevolent god
wouldn't that be nice?

Yeah
suffering would end
there would be concrete and visible consequences

You continue to amaze me
its not me; its just reason
i'm just the messenger

No its you.....the fact that you have had enough sense to actually research it...
as well as have thought out a conversation with God if he showed himself to you
hahaha well some would say i need to stop thinking so much
I disagree
you are a rare breed!
I think its great
thanks :)
Honestly i have enjoyed myself thinking about these things
so i take it you read my free will argument?
yes i have read it briefly
I need to read it and think
lol
haha yes you do
I see where you are coming from on every point
Which is why i respect you....you dont talk rubbish without fact and logic
and even though i disagree with you
i understand why, if that makes sense
Im pleased you changed direction too
2:00 PM
haha oh changed direction to free will?
Yeah
off of the existence of god?
No because to argue that we are still basically arguing the existence of God
otherwise there would be no argument
fully
i suppose there's no sense continuing to argue it after the facts have been presented
scientific facts are irrelevant to the pious
2:05 PM
true
or they're molded to preexisting beliefs
It was going to turn nasty at some point too
yeah i saw it starting to
But im impressed it lasted so long
i mean, there comes a time when reason will not only not work, but will also really piss people off
its like telling someone their dad is an alcoholic
even though they may see every bit of evidence that's cited, no one wants to believe it, so they don't want to hear it
but denial of facts do not make them go away

See in that case i wouldnt be like that
my faith is the only thing im like that over!
but why? does that make sense?
Dammit no it doesnt
But that doesnt change it
if you saw someone from another time and place saying this about another, perhaps obsolete god, would you think it sensible?
How can i answer that?
only with faith or reason
i do not know how i would react
id prob freak the f^*% out!
do you think they'd freak out if they saw what and how our civilization believes?
Probably i dont know
Mikey i haven't spent any of the kind of time you have thinking about these things
well thats just it
i think most believers haven't thought much about it

and i think thats wrong
I think i need to start thinking more
and reading more
believers believe and facts and evidence are totally irrelevant
Its not irrelevant
you know -- "god is good"
god is not good
god can be awfully malign
what did the poor children of africa do to deserve their fate?
that should be reason enough to say "know what? a good god would never allow such things"
you have a healthy child
you're lucky. you should thank your country's wealth and health care system
not god

haha
why did god pick you to have such a beautiful child?
when he arbitrarily causes such suffering elsewhere?
this is not about free will
this is about simple fact

Mikey if i didn't look after my child she wouldn't be healthy
this is true
and thats science

I accept that at any moment my life could all go to s*^#
I take responsibilty for my actions
and i am aware of others actions
thats just simple cause and effect
do you think that bacteria can go to heaven or hell?
or are humans the only ones who fit the paradigm?

Humans only
so, what happens to animals?
do they only die?

i dont know the answer to that
why not? surely God has a plan for them too, right? why hasn't he mentioned it?
lol I dont know, Mikey
scientific evidence states that we are products of evolution
therefore, we ARE animals
so all life, including humans, must, if God exists, be judged by the same rules, no?
i know this sounds ridiculous
but thats my point
this whole idea of God is a tad ridiculous
there have been countless gods over the ages
and you don't believe in any of them
and you don't lose any sleep over it

why not go one more?
itd be a mere drop in a bucket

Which is true
Even i wasn't aware of how many
It seems that i am not aware of much
well, to believe in God/Jesus, one must either twist or deny a lot of knowledge
its not that you aren't smart
its just that religion doesn't want us to learn too much

because if we do?
Faith is lost
right
I think you are right
2:25 PM
i know it can seem a depressing thought to 'lose god'
but really, it's the most liberating experience of all
now there's a whole world in front of you
so much to learn
and pieces will start to fit

What about if i learn it......
but still keep my faith
If i have all the facts and am aware
but still have faith
isn't that what a lot of scientists do?
umm, not really
Are you telling me scientists are not religious?
i can't speak for all scientists
but i’m confident most advanced scientists are either agnostic or atheist

How do you know this?
scientists say god with respect to their awe at the complexity of the universe
for that which is not yet understood
they may say ‘God’
for example
einstein mentions god throwing dice, but he is an out and out unbeliever
i could name more scientists

but lets just name the important ones off the top of our heads
einstein, newton, galileo

Darwin
all nonbelievers
What about believers?
nikola tesla was a firm believer, but it was i think because he was completely insane and was brought up in a weird religious environment
ben franklin? didn't believe
jefferson? didn't believe
watson and crick, discoverers of dna? didn't believe
edison? didn't believe
marie and pierre curie, pioneers of radiation? didn't believe

Dude
seriously
I need to read more
carl sagan? didn't believe
Direct me
2:35 PM
cicero, aristotle, plato, socrates, voltaire? didn't believe
When you were younger
and you had faith
did you really?
or was it your parents influence
epicurus, nietzsche, freud? didn't believe
Freud was a fool
haha no he wasn't
he might've gotten some things incorrect, but he is the father of psychology

Which i have studied
carl marx? didn't believe
napoleon? didn't believe
stalin? didn't believe

Marx i study every year
john adams? didn't believe
protagorus, hobbes, hippocrates? didn't believe
bill gates? doesn't believe
wozniak, maker of the apple pc doesn't believe
jung, kant, kierkegaard? didn't believe
st thomas aquinas didn't believe
What made you lose faith
reason
So you woke up one day and thought...fuck it
basically
but the kicker?
an old girlfriend with whom i am still friends
her father was on the board of mensa
and head of the edgar allen poe society
BRILLIANT man; didn't believe
his wife was agnostic
daughter, my ex girlfriend, is also brilliant....and was raised in a totally nonreligious fashion
yet that family has more moral authority than many religious people i have seen
and to them it's not even worth discussing. the answer is blaringly obvious
see, the only people who have a hard time with this are believers
everyone else is like CMON MAN

example:
yesterday i took my nephew out on a 4-wheeler
i put a helmet on him that was way too big for his head
and it shook around and prolly hurt him
but when i found the helmet that would really fit his little head?
no way!!! i like this one!!! don't take this helmet from meee!!!

lol
he didn't want reason
in his mind, the helmet he had been initially given was the right one, period
so i snatched it off his head and put on the smaller one...

awww
and POW!!
happy boy

2:45 PM
things are obvious when you're on the outside looking in
take relationships:
you can see clearly when its not your relationship
"get out, honey! he's no good for you! you guys fight all the time! can't you see its not gonna work? it hasn't been working since day one!"
ever had someone say that kinda stuff to you?

Haha ooh yes.
so you get my point
Totally
when your on the inside, you cannot apply logic the same way as when youre on the outside looking in
things are less obvious on the inside; there are ways to bend truths
people believe what they want to believe in the face of irrefutable evidence
and that's why the believer shuts her eyes and ears
and says 'you're wrong...i don't even have to get into why you're wrong, you just are'

ahhh
and thats what faith is
faith in god
faith in our choices in life
faith in our relationships
faith in our parents
and reason doesn't work where there's a protective shell of faith
when faith is vulnerable a second, and reason is allowed to permeate
things start to make more sense
and there are moments of aha!!
and it all just begins to click
because the whole of knowledge is symbiotic
everything is a part of everything else
and thats what science is all about
and thats a really amazing and beautiful thing
Frank Lloyd Wright: "I believe in God; I just call it NATURE"

Wow
now, want your mind to really be blown?
go on then
go watch part one of 'Zeitgeist'
What is it?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-594683847743189197
there are three parts, with a long intro
just watch the intro and then part one
should be like 40 mins altogether
then get back to me

will do!
kk

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems like you want God to make things perfect here on earth and that's not what God is here for...although I'm sort of forgetting what he is here for...your blog is giving me a headache. LoL I give up.

Anonymous said...

Haha Mikey I still have faith I just have a few things to work out.
Mainly what I have faith in and why. I still believe in God but I need to gather all the facts rather than 'cherry picking'. The one thing our conversations have done is make me realise i am highly uneducated in my religion. I do not know enough and that is not good enough.

Kat said...

I pretty much stopped studying religion when I was 12. (I also started slacking in science, until college, because well, studying the two of them together at the same time made for alot of confusion). So it is pretty hard to be able to disagree with someone who obviously has studied it more than I have and still does not believe.

I'll step back for a second and admit this much. I do not KNOW for sure that God, any God, exists. There is no way for me to prove it, nor do I feel there is a way to prove without a doubt that He doesn't exist. Yes, logic, reason, science, in most cases they make the most realistic case, and against them, God does not make sense. Alot of things in this world do not make sense to me though, and therefore, I don't believe everything has to fit into the 'realistic' category.
Though I don't KNOW God exists, I feel he does. I don't really know how to explain it.

kd said...

Frank Lloyd Wright is a hero of mine. If there was ever a man who understood beauty...

Anonymous said...

I like what Frank Lloyd Wright said. That's how I feel most of the time.

I'm actually trying to think of the most beautiful shape I can think of right now.... I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I know that the most beautiful shapes I have seen are ones that naturally occur in nature. And I haven't actually seen them in a "natural" context. I see them in art, and people's bodies. They are not random and make sense. I find it funny that most religious people don't look at a lot of scientific/nature stuff and think "There it is." Don't know what 'it' is though. It's it.

You should read Conversations With God. He talks (the author, not God, haha) a lot about how we all already know what is true and what to do, and God said to him you have everything you need already. I totally was like, 'Yes, I know exactly what he's talking about, it's your conscience, it's everything like that.'
I felt very good, and also very lonely after reading it though. I was like, man it's so simple, wtf is everyone doing?? Am I the only one who knows this?

Gabe

Anonymous said...

I like what Frank Lloyd Wright said. That's how I feel most of the time.

I'm actually trying to think of the most beautiful shape I can think of right now.... I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I know that the most beautiful shapes I have seen are ones that naturally occur in nature. And I haven't actually seen them in a "natural" context. I see them in art, and people's bodies. They are not random and make sense. I find it funny that most religious people don't look at a lot of scientific/nature stuff and think "There it is." Don't know what 'it' is though. It's it.

You should read Conversations With God. He talks (the author, not God, haha) a lot about how we all already know what is true and what to do, and God said to him you have everything you need already. I totally was like, 'Yes, I know exactly what he's talking about, it's your conscience, it's everything like that.'
I felt very good, and also very lonely after reading it though. I was like, man it's so simple, wtf is everyone doing?? Am I the only one who knows this?

Gabe

Samantha said...

You make some really great points, but what surprises me most about this conversation and many like it that I have had is this: people are genuinely surprised when someone declares they are agnostic and has valid points to back it up. I find that most people who are agnostic do not come across their philosophy as a matter of convince, of comfort or tradition, but by means of through research and much thought and reason. I am not the kind of person who enters a conversation with the goal of demeaning a persons religion, philosophy, or creed, but when they have no reason for their beliefs, when they rely solely on conjecture and faith it frustrates me. Because by basing their beliefs on faith, they conversely expect that this is the means by which I [we] have come to believe in the absence of God [or more accurately, in the presence of Reason]. [For them] A belief in Reason above all else is seen as simply the application of my faith on some other, falser deity, as if faith is an object in some sort of quantifiable state of matter, which cannot be destroyed, but is something that will, has and shall always exists for every person, and it is the job of that person to apply their ration of faith to whatever creed they [or their circumstance] see fit. As far as I know, two and two do not equal five, no matter how much faith I have in the numbers.

Unknown said...

Mikey, you wish there was a benevolent God. There totally is a benevloent God. What greater gift could He have given than to die in our place. He wanted us to have the perfect world all along. No suffering or pain...but we had to go and mess it up.

lisa said...

I still want to hear what happened to you all your life... what your story is. It's hard to hear just the thoughts you have now without knowing the background at times because i get lost.

I think one thing, though, that would be nice is if you at least had some respect for believers, understanding that they might have used reason and logic to arrive at a faith decision. And from there - they are happy and fulfilled by their faith. Not all believers are miserable slaves to God or organized religion or whatever you want to call it, and some just don't see any reason to abandon God.

Just because I see suffering everyday doesn't mean I blame God for it. I don't believe this earth is up to its full potential, and I know what God's heart is from the Bible and from seeking Him more and more personally. Jesus called us to start fixing things down here - "the Kingdom of God is at hand" - the Kingdom God created where there is no suffering and pain and inequality (even though that's what you are saying that God endorses).

I'm not asking that you agree with me; I'm enjoying reading your thoughts and loving your honesty. I just wish that you would give believers a little more credit, whether you agree with them or not. I really don't mind if you think I'm crazy - but I think even though you are not a believer you can agree that the greatest purpose we have as human beings is to love one another :)

Anonymous said...

That was very well put, Lisa.