Riffing on the original. Irn-Bru made a load of weird ads. They had to do something after they stopped making the drink from girders.
I think weâre approaching the same point from opposite sides.
Pragmatically, it is beneficial (measurably so) to have a religion. There are health benefits (mental and physical) and group selection and community are both real things. So if one wishes to have a religion, I believe it would be best to have one that is correct, or at least workable, so as not be harmed by it while enjoying its benefits. To some, this contradicts what a religion is - but thatâs because of their false definitions or axioms, which arenât acceptable to me because they arenât provable or true and they serve no useful purpose. Such disagreements are hardly a new thing, though, in theology.
And thus we loop back around, Hofstadteredly to coin a phrase, to the point where we may have to disagree - I donât think itâs possible for me to know (at this point in my evolution) if the universe has anything I can recognize as an overmind, nor do I really think it matters since (as you pointed out) God has âconscious âlimbsâ like humans as part of its structure.â
I want to have a God that I can connect to, and there is one available, that loves me and is beautiful. Why should I care if anyone else does or doesnât believe in the truth? Spinoza and Kneeland already told everyone, I have no unique prophecy. And as long as youâre not hurting anybody I donât care what you believe. I just want to be able to have my religion, that I share with many millions, and not have people constantly inciting hatred against all religion by repeating misinformation based on miscategorization. Iâm religious. Feel free to castigate specific religions for specific crimes or falsehoods and I am right there with you. But please donât tell me that I have to be bad and have to believe bad things or else I canât be religious. I want to be religious, I enjoy it. Itâs verrah nice.
Yes! It seems to me that there is only one definition of God that is required, only one that is equally acceptable to all faiths, and we should not paste on any other nonsense: God is the greatest thing that there is. And thus, the universe/multiverse is logically required to be divine. The semantics of humanity and the structure of the human brain demand it. If you tack on requirements like fancy hats or foreskins itâs just indoctrination and it stops making sense. You have to let people experience what is, decide what is real, or youâre just hammering them into some procrustean mold. Let Godâs voice speak to your children, donât interfere.
I have to go visit my Mom, so I will bid you goodnight. Fare thee all well!
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Edit: damn! I replied to myself instead of @Medievalist
I put that at the end of my other comment, but I shoulda put it here.
Also, anyone who can drop GEB or I am a Strange Loop into their comments gets extra bonus points, so far as I am concerned. 
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nope. sure didnât. which belief am i defining in a self serving way? how am i served by it?
this is not unique to judeo-christian religions, religions without are the outliers not the norm, please list the major religions that arenât! Iâm not saying to be a majority religion it has to ascribe to X Iâm saying all the worlds current top religions currently do fail this test, and as iâve noted many have minority forms that donât.
Almost all variations of Hinduism believe in certain deities although again there are a few esoteric outliers that view them as aspects of self nature, same with Buddhism. Some of the vedic traditions fall under this some donât, but all the mainstream versions do. The majority of people who believe both of those fall under the first assertion, but granted they have more esoteric practitioners then say Christianity.
Youâd lose that bet. My views stem from continued self examination. I love studying religions, i find them fascinating. i love experiencing their rituals first hand. i view them as a relic of human development and an interesting window into human cultures. like i explained earlier:
that in no way qualifies as bigotry no matter how you spin it. just because i challenge their validity doesnât even mean i think they are without any value. iâm pretty reasonable about this stuff. really.
I agree with this. I am a very introspective person. I donât believe in any imaginary beings. If there isnât proof or practical application, and if i donât find any personal value that cannot be extracted from its unnecessary trappings then i tend to discard it for things of value that can be tested, improved, and refined. Iâm a pragmatic atheist with esoteric buddhist leanings, i appreciate meditation that focuses on the now and experiencing things as they are without layering your own story or biases onto them, so i jive with both zen meditation and science and there is no conflict between the two, both teach to question everything, challenge everything, and donât require you believe in anything for which their isnât verifiable repeatable practical empirical evidence.
Iâm familiar, iâve been to Unitarian services, and am aware of their open policies. they are very accepting of all sorts of people. in your church some people certainly hold beliefs that fail the âtestâ i describe and others that do not. such an open ended church probably has a full spectrum of attendants, correct? thatâs okay, they can think what they want, it doesnât mean that certain though patterns donât have certain predictable issues. as miasm correctly points out:
That is true and very well stated, @miasm has a better way with words then me. The problem with many major world religions is that they do fall under the issues i mention which is exactly why they suppress free thinking, the challenging of their beliefs, the testing of their beliefs, change, questioning, critical thought, deny logical inconsistencies, it is why they have issues with science, etc. If your beliefs donât require you to do those things, and if you challenge and test your beliefs and are open to refining them based on new information and think that is a good thing, then i most certainly wasnât referring to what you believe, right? Iâm discussing a certain set of problems endemic to most major belief systems. The root cause of the issues.
@jerwinâs video post was what i was initially responding to, the kind of thinking i describe when taken to its extreme conclusion results in that kind of scary fundamentalism, but even at its most mild and least extreme forms results in the exact problems Iâm discussing. You canât hold a believe in made up stuff unless you engage in cognitive behaviors that enable such a belief to persist.
Again my main point is that holding onto false beliefs creates a cognitive bias towards any kind of thinking that challenges the false belief. any system that discourages testing, discourages challenging, discourages free thinking, discourages refining and changing belief based on new information, is likely false. any system that values truth or facts encourages those things as further information only improves them. the truth never gets any less true, no matter how often questioned or how much information is added, it position is improved and verified by those things.
It really isnât that far fetched or radical of an idea.
have a great night.
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I canât imagine why anyone would want to have a religion, but Iâm glad you have something that works for you.
Honestly, the whole idea of religion just makes no sense to me. Just makes things more complicated, and the idea of religion as social club just seems plain odd (although when I was in the south it didnât seem like you had many other options - youâd invite someone to your house and in return youâd get invited to their church. YeahâŠno thanks). Something about religion and the religious just feels reallyâŠsquickyâŠto me. Iâm really uncomfortable with it. Anyone who talks about praying for someone whoâs sick or anything like that just comes across as really creepy.
Maybe itâs a British/European thing - people are much more religious (and/or open about it) in the US.
The bit I really donât get is conversion (and particularly when one does so for marriage) - how does one go from believing in one god to another just like that?
I had to go to C of E schools but luckily they were all totally half-arsed about enforcing the daily act of worship requirements so we didnât get it crammed down our throats too much (crappy RE lessons aside - the only class I ever managed to get sent out of 
). I donât remember believing in God ever, and I stopped paying even lip service at a very early age. Home was totally irreligious - dad was raised as a Baptist and strongly rejected that, mum I think is religious, but not practicing. Which is why I find it really odd that they christened us. Societal pressures, I guess.
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Glad to see mention of GEB, which I see as close to God. I recommend that everyone get their GED. The only thing keeping me from atheism is religion, the obvious fact that thereâs something there, even if itâs only in our mind.
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Bill Donahue doesnât have power because the West kicked religion out of real power. The seat of Catholic power for centuries was France. Read about 18th C clericalism in F., and again when N IIIrd tried to reinstitute it. It was secularism that triumphed over Catholic and Protestant attempts at Crusader law. Something tells me that the Episcopalians wonât be much use againt Sharia.
That advert reads to me as the drink is cool and will get you high, but the comedown is sudden and harsh.
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Is it really that much of a hypothesis when we know Rule 34 exists? Humans are infinite in their sexual proclivities. Thereâs roughly seven billion of us. Iâd say the likelihood that someone being turned on my something as ubiquitous as snow is a near-certainty. Especially when there are tons of things that people are turned on by, which donât strictly exist in the real world (eg: anthro furries).
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A good rule of thumb is that if something exists, it will have corresponding -philia and -phobia. (Donât ask me why. People are weird. Maybe the evolutionâs way to hedge on the randomness - give everything a random chance and give higher chances to whatever produces most of most viable offsprings?) So I didnât stop searching when I wasnât successful at first. Because such corresponding pair not existing is less probable than that your search approach sucks. (Google Books was the rescue. Going through the -phobia side would also work, these tend to be better documented, but I did not get that idea in time.)
Snow is beautiful. Even more when we go to microstructure of ice, and to the morphology of snow flakes and their dependency on the conditions of the atmosphere where they grow. I suggest âKenneth Libbrecht, Patricia Rasmussen - Lumihiutale - talven salainen kauneusâ for a visual orgy of snowflake microphotographs. I scored that one in Oulu few years ago.
Also, you can trap snowflakes on microscope slides and cast them in with superglue, for later microscope observation in warmth of a lab.
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I wonder if philophobia and phobophilia are things?
Edit: looks like it.
Phobophobia (we have nothing to fear but fear itself?) Philophilia?
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If I remember correctly, there was a Saudi cleric Sheikh Abdullah Daoud, who wanted female infants to wear Burkas so they wouldnât be sexually assaulted. I donât know if thatâs an issue there or whether heâs just bat-shit crazy, but since there was controversy over this from his own countrymen for making them look so damn fucked up, I can easily see him coming up with this as his back-up plan.
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Short answer, yes.
Long answer:
and the other one without the handy preview,
edit: also,
and the last one is love for loveâs own sake, described in one livejournal article and giving some good keyword results on google books.
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Roller coasters and horror movies might come under this.
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Can a Martian have phobosphilia?
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Of course. Who wouldnât love a place like that.
Deimos, OTOH⊠shudders
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Deimos: if youâre turned on by russet potatoes, then Deimos is the place for you! Book your vacation now and get a free extra 12 hours of oxygen.
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Awwww, but I was always taught to fight fire with fire, when you want a REALLY BIG FIREâŠ
