How can you believe in religion?

Its...

  • Really real and if you don't believe you'll regret it

  • All made up and a huge psycho-spiritual trick that preys on peoples fears and ignorance

  • Been corrupted and edited way beyond its original intentions and has became a weapon


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MMS

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The religious people who’ve actually examined their beliefs will tell you it’s their faith and maybe their experiences that lead them to believe…which to me is funny, because out of all the choices most still just go with what they were told to believe growing up.

I know very religious Christians (even pastors) who have basically admitted to me that they aren’t staunch believers in the Bible; they see it more as a vehicle for their faith and a tool to bring more people into the fold.

It’s just programming breh, nothing much deeper than that IMO
that speaks more to protestants than other christians though

calling it a vehicle is the same thing as Balaam riding his donkey thinking he is master. To me, I will carry the donkey
13-mikri-eisodos.jpg
 

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In order to produce movement, the body needs calories as a fuel source, and electrolytes (potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, etc.) to produce biomechanical, physiological action. Calories and electrolytes are literally biologically necessary for your heart to function. You can only get them by consuming food.

Please, in detail, explain how the need to eat, and therefore the action of acquiring that food is EMOTIONAL.

Everyone knows that you need food to survive. But since you're never actually on the precipice of survival, every actual decision of when, where, and what to eat is a choice. Those cognitive choices are guided by a combination of rational components of your brain determining the options, and emotional components of your brain helping choose which one of those options you prefer, just like every other cognitive decision.

I don't know why I should explain this to someone who refuses to learn anything about the subject. If you want to learn, read up on emotion, decision-making, and the prefrontal cortex. If you don't want to learn, don't. If you just want to win an ignorant argument betting that you can do so while ignorant of the subject because other people reading don't know the subject either, then go for that, but I don't know what the point would be.




Then apply this same logic to, say, a scorpion, and explain why its search for food is also EMOTIONAL.

Don't worry, I'll wait.

We were discussing cognitive decisions, ones that you claimed were "rational". That is the realm in which emotions apply to decision-making. If you want to take about decisions made entirely outside of cognitive processes, then you're right - you don't need emotion for those decisions. Breathing under regular circumstances, kicking out your leg when your knee is hit, those aren't rational or emotional. Same goes for beings that lack rational facilities.

I didn't think I needed to explain that distinction, but I should have realized that I'm speaking to someone who is both uneducated in the topic and arguing in bad faith.




As I said, the first link you provided contradicts your entire premise, that decisions cannot be made without emotions. They very obviously can. This is an incredibly weird hill to die on, and I have no idea why you trying.

No it doesn't, and I already showed why that was a terrible misreading of the article.






However, I'll bite: the third link you posted is in fact, NOT peer reviewed to the extent that would have the somatic marker hypothesis graduating to a theory. It literally refers to itself as a hypothesis in the paper itself, which means they might have found some linkages but have not effectively proven their their hypothesis correct.

This hypothesis has been subject to (negative) scrutiny for years:

Screenshot-437.png



So all you have done is pass off an idea that was (improperly) tested as evidence of your claim, and hoped that I wouldn't understand it. It is obvious you have only a rudimentary understanding of how the scientific process works, but you cannot pass off a research paper as EVIDENCE, when it is not yet a theory in science.

LOL at you just mining for the criticisms, then assuming the critics are right because they agree with you. What do you call someone who knows nothing about a topic, but automatically decides which side to believe based on whether or not it will help him in the current argument? Is that....rational?

Your original claim was that your decisions were purely rational. None of the critiques you are quoting would believe that. Even if you don't believe that every cognitive decision is mediated by emotions in the prefrontal cortex, you still haven't proven that any purely rational decision can exist.

I'd love for you to produce the peer-reviewed paper and settled cognitive theory showing that it can.




That paper is 23 years old. If it's not a theory yet, it probably won't ever be one.


That shows an amazing lack of understanding of science. Cognitive science in general isn't settled, and 23 years is nothing in any field, especially that one. Plate Tectonics took over 50 years to be generally accepted and that deals with large-scale, very concrete phenomena that aren't a tenth as difficult to study as the human brain. There aren't any ideas in cognitive science that are universally accepted without detractors outside of the simplest, most obvious results.

Remember, you started with the claim "My decisions are perfectly rational and superior, while yours are emotional and inferior!" Not only can you not prove your decisions were rational, you still can't come up with the slightest evidence that purely rational decisions are even possible.




I can do this all day.

You said you were exhausted at 3am, yet now its 6am and you want to keep going. I'm typing 1/4 as much as you, based on things I've already known and researchers I've already read, while you are doing all this typing and at least a little bit of reading (clearly not enough) to support a position on a topic you've never studied and know little to nothing about.

Not to mention that considering how long and poorly formatted your replies are, in a thread with minimal engagement, few people are going to read them.

Does that sound more rational or emotional to you?
 

MMS

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@Rhakim something I've said about this topic in another thread is how science is weighed down heavily by "descriptive thinking"

basically, every topic is dissected down to fundamental parts and the assumption is that the parts make the whole

but never is it assumed that the whole makes the parts. Ancient cultures on the other hand believed larger in "ascriptive thinking" which looked at the function of a being/occurrence and then assign what the function appears to be...this kind of thinking to me is necessary to grasp spiritual things.

to me, science is hitting a roadblock in many fields because of this limiting factor.

Why do you think academics never question something so foundational in their understanding? :jbhmm:
 

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@Rhakim something I've said about this topic in another thread is how science is weighed down heavily by "descriptive thinking"

basically, every topic is dissected down to fundamental parts and the assumption is that the parts make the whole

but never is it assumed that the whole makes the parts. Ancient cultures on the other hand believed larger in "ascriptive thinking" which looked at the function of a being/occurrence and then assign what the function appears to be...this kind of thinking to me is necessary to grasp spiritual things.

to me, science is hitting a roadblock in many fields because of this limiting factor.

Why do you think academics never question something so foundational in their understanding? :jbhmm:


I mean, lots of academics do question it. Alfred North Whitehead was talking about emergent properties of atoms only being displayed at the complex organism level over a century ago. In physics, in biology, in psychology, there is plenty of talk that overspecializing can lead to error and true natural processes can only be understood at the highest level that encompasses the entire system. The Modern philosophy that @Th3Birdman pushes of exact naturalistic knowledge and perfect rationality was abandoned in the early 20th century by intellectuals who realized it simply didn't explain human behavior or the world we lived in.

The difficulty is that the real world, as opposed to the simplified world, is really tough to study. It's far easier to carry out traditional experimentation when you've isolated them down to the simplest possible terms. If that can get you an experimental result and get your paper published, then that's a win, even if you've simplified everything down to the point where it's effectively meaningless. I mean, look at economics and the "Econs" vs. "Humans" debate. Pretty much EVERYTHING in economics was blatantly wrong up through the late 20th century because economists wanted to be considered scientists, and in the process reduced humans down to a facsimile that didn't even exist.

But can you really blame them? Physicists can't even solve the 3-body problem, which should be one of the simplest systems imaginable. If they can't do that, then what can they do with complex systems? Why not keep believing in perfectly rational "Econs" and the infallibility of scientific reasoning for all life's answers, if you already realize that the trust will be threatening and far too much work?
 

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The DOCTRINE and SCRIPTURE of Atheism is built on the universe being stated by a “BIG BANG” in which there was NOTHING before.

This was then DISCOVERED by the White man (CHOSEN PEOPLE) and HIS SCIENCE (PROPHETS).

ANYTHING the White man says via his SCIENCE y’all take as SCRIPTURE, BECAUSE it’s y’all’s BIBLE :sas2:
 
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MMS

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I mean, lots of academics do question it. Alfred North Whitehead was talking about emergent properties of atoms only being displayed at the complex organism level over a century ago. In physics, in biology, in psychology, there is plenty of talk that overspecializing can lead to error and true natural processes can only be understood at the highest level that encompasses the entire system. The Modern philosophy that @Th3Birdman pushes of exact naturalistic knowledge and perfect rationality was abandoned in the early 20th century by intellectuals who realized it simply didn't explain human behavior or the world we lived in.

The difficulty is that the real world, as opposed to the simplified world, is really tough to study. It's far easier to carry out traditional experimentation when you've isolated them down to the simplest possible terms. If that can get you an experimental result and get your paper published, then that's a win, even if you've simplified everything down to the point where it's effectively meaningless. I mean, look at economics and the "Econs" vs. "Humans" debate. Pretty much EVERYTHING in economics was blatantly wrong up through the late 20th century because economists wanted to be considered scientists, and in the process reduced humans down to a facsimile that didn't even exist.

But can you really blame them? Physicists can't even solve the 3-body problem, which should be one of the simplest systems imaginable. If they can't do that, then what can they do with complex systems? Why not keep believing in perfectly rational "Econs" and the infallibility of scientific reasoning for all life's answers, if you already realize that the trust will be threatening and far too much work?
yeah you're right

you also touched on a hidden spiritual sickness that I also alluded to in another thread but ill post the video here for reference

in the academic world, the limiting factor to new knowledge is grants. With no grants, there are no studies, but many grant providers only provide grants to New studies...meaning that "replication" studies that would prove or disprove already existing knowledge is not favored

the result of this is a lot of knowledge that isn't really tested but ends up in textbooks anyways


from my perspective, the science of measurement in itself is where the power is across all disciplines....I am biased though as I studied Six Sigma and Lean :pachaha: that said if experiments are poor or doctored to appear significant the conclusions that its readers get ultimately spawn entirely new ideas even if the results weren't factual or repeatable

IE - the big bang is the limit of what telescopic lenses can perceive about the universe, not the actual limit of the universe. So instead of saying the conclusion is this is what our measurements perceive, they tell students and youth wholesale that the big bang is the ultimate cause when it could be an inflection/refraction point
 

the cac mamba

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the funniest thing about religion, is that they cant all be true :dead:

if you wanna believe in christianity, fine. if you wanna believe in islam, fine. or judaism, or the ancient egyptian gods, whatever. but the best case scenario is that 98 percent of these religions are fake :mjlol:

and if 98 percent are fake? no, yours is probably not special
 
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CrushedGroove

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Humans are fallible and most think about the individual rather than the collective. So this leads to jealousy and desires for than what you have and need. Regardless of the religion, this has always been.

I can't speak on other religions as I am Christian and have not delved deeply into others. I have been completely faithful and have come to God in reverence, but I've also turned my back when things are going well and focused on the bag more than my soul, then having a feeling of emptiness once I get it.

I can't lead anyone to God that isn't already willing to seek Him. I have to keep being willing so that I can keep the path.
 

Mowgli

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How can you believe in one religion over another?


Just stop and think:

If you were born in a Christian house you pledge your faith that way and think everyone else is wrong as you are certain in your position. But if you, the exact same Soul, incarnated in a family that was atheist, gnostic or anything else then you's stick to the same script without question as well.

The fact there are so many flavors and all profess to have the scoop, inside track and direct connection to the intelligence behind this doesn't make you wonder or think? Could they be all wrong or all correct? Is the illusion of choice simply this?

I know a lot of people of faith never read any other texts or inspect the heritage of their own teachings as they are perfectly content with a surface level understanding as they gather around symbols with people who reinforce their belief systems. Sure there is the old "demonic convict turns his life around in jail and is now a man of the faith" thing as well as the "born again virgin" that attempts to erase her hoedom by pledging allegiance but, by the by, most people stick to the faith they were raised in and often know little to nothing about any other examples. Don't you think thats interesting? Especially when you consider what I said about incarnation and the subsequent programming via resonance of those in your surroundings that is mostly unexamined and unquestioned.

Not to mention the fact that these are all quite old texts so there has been no revised edition or how to modernness as the book of life turns to new chapters but the streams of religion seem stagnant as they stopped flowing back when.

The main point is what I said about the Soul and its incarnation at this moment. The fact you'll take to it like a fish to water and that renders the stream invisible is quite something because it shows there is something within that will adapt to any environment of operation and make it its standard. This then rolls on for generations. I find this extremely fascinating. What do you think?

Do you?
You have a choice to learn or burn. Choose wisely
 
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MMS

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the funniest thing about religion, is that they cant all be true :dead:

if you wanna believe in christianity, fine. if you wanna believe in islam, fine. or judaism, or the ancient egyptian gods, whatever. but the best case scenario is that 98 percent of these religions are fake :mjlol:

and if 98 percent are fake? no, yours is probably not special

but that's where you would be wrong! :troll:

Isaiah 19:3

3 And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof; and I will destroy the counsel thereof: and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards

God says in many places that he delivers people to what they worship. So in all truth, all religions are true...to their believers

So turning back to The God is a matter of health and redemption not about being seen in the height of what is publically "good"

this is why many people do not fully comprehend or contemplate Jesus call to be meek and that they will inherit the Earth.
 

MMS

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You have a choice to learn or burn. Choose wisely
some of these folks are already burning and dont know it

if people are to reconsider God they have to reconsider exactly why they seek him

Remember Jesus healed the sick. he didn't come to them and say I will threaten you into submission

Matthew 11:28-30

28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
 

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the funniest thing about religion, is that they cant all be true :dead:

if you wanna believe in christianity, fine. if you wanna believe in islam, fine. or judaism, or the ancient egyptian gods, whatever. but the best case scenario is that 98 percent of these religions are fake :mjlol:

and if 98 percent are fake? no, yours is probably not special


That's assuming some black/white, all or nothing view of religion. Which doesn't make sense when the three religions you listed are all derived from each other and share a large percentage of their Holy books in common. Even religions that have nothing to do with those still come upon some of the same principles and ideas about how God is....and others are more divergent.

Would you also say that 98% of moral systems are wrong, and only one is right?

Rather than going the "one religion is totally right and all the others are totally wrong" route, it might be more accurate to understand every religion as a limited human attempt to understand and define the supernatural, which at least at some level is clearly beyond human understanding. Some such attempts are clearly faulty and die out. Others get enough right that people can see truth in them and they gain steam. Others perhaps get strength more from a certain power base rather than being "right". And perhaps one or more are much closer to the truth than the others, though still limited just as all human enterprises are.
 

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The DOCTRINE and SCRIPTURE of Atheism is built on the universe being stated by a “BIG BANG” in which there was NOTHING before.

This was then DISCOVERED by the White man (CHOSEN PEOPLE) and HIS SCIENCE (PROPHETS).

ANYTHING the White man says via his SCIENCE y’all take as SCRIPTURE, BECAUSE it’s y’all’s BIBLE :sas2:

:mjlol::mjlol::mjlol:
 

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Everyone knows that you need food to survive. But since you're never actually on the precipice of survival, every actual decision of when, where, and what to eat is a choice

This is what I dislike most about apologists. The pure dishonesty of the arguments in order to argue for the illogical :mjlol:

Excuse me, you are missing the point, and it's clear it's on purpose at this point. Notice that in my example, I'm not talking about the choices of where, when and what to eat, only that you MUST eat. That eating itself is not a decision made by emotion, but one of necessity, thereby proving there are decisions that can be made without emotion.

You're being obtuse because you don't want to admit I'm right, just like how you attempted to drag me down to your level because you didn't want to admit I was right about your emotional decision to believe in a fairy tale.



We were discussing cognitive decisions, ones that you claimed were "rational"

This is why you have failed to successfully refute my point-- no, "WE" weren't. I was very specific in what I was talking about, because this is MY talking point, that decisions can be made by weighing options and making a well-reasoned decision. In other words, one can come to a decision purely through rationality.
The only reason we're going back and forth on this is because you prefer to deny reality and bring up cursory topics to force the discussion elsewhere, in an opaque attempt at making it seem as if you know what you're talking about. Believe me, the only people you are fooling here are the kind of people that don't even understand half of what we're talking about. The fact is, it's entirely possible to make decisions based on reason, and not emotion. I gave you one (eating) and there are countless others. We'd be here all day if I decided to list them.


No it doesn't, and I already showed why that was a terrible misreading of the article.

Haha, yeah. Just like how you misread the definitions you posted, and claimed my definition was incorrect even though they literally corroborated exactly what I said, huh?
One of us is terrible at reading the literature. I agree :sas2:


LOL at you just mining for the criticisms, then assuming the critics are right because they agree with you

But that is how science works. You are currently pulling a Luken, and you don't realize it. You're outing yourself as probably not being who you say that you are-- science is quite literally a contest of disproving a hypothesis.

You believe the paper you posted is settled science, or at least as settled as it can be (because nothing is ever really settled, is it?). That's why you posted it, because you thought it disproved what I said, but the problem is that it is a hypothesis, even after 2 decades. I could understand your position if you gave me a theory, but this is not a theory, and it is currently being deconstructed by scientists in the relevant fields.

THAT IS WHAT PEER REVIEW LOOKS LIKE.

That you laugh is to admit you don't understand this process, or why it is important.

You specifically stated the paper was peer reviewed, but you have a problem with me highlighting the results of that peer review? Uh, do you not realize precisely how dishonest that is????

:wtf:
 

Th3Birdman

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Your original claim was that your decisions were purely rational. None of the critiques you are quoting would believe that

Correction: my original claim was that you did not make a rational decision when choosing to believe in the supernatural, which you have since confirmed was an accurate statement.

YOU attempted to make this about whether MY decision was rational or not, which, stupidly, I have entertained for far too long. We weren't talking about me, we were talking about you, and my assessment was correct, by your own admission. You then tried to make this a pissing contest about who can ever make an unemotional decision.

That is textbook moving the goalposts, and gish galloping. You are a model example of an apologist. I wouldn't be surprised if your photo was somewhere on the Discovery Institute's website.


I'd love for you to produce the peer-reviewed paper and settled cognitive theory showing that it can

Haha. I don't need to. I've already given an example of how it is possible for a being to make a rational, unemotional decision. You attempted to side-skirt it by talking about the choices of WHAT to eat, missing the point completely.

It is obvious you are not interested in basal concepts, and instead, *appearing* right in front of less-educated folks on a hip hop forum. If this were a live debate in, say, a lecture hall at a university, all of the questions at the end of the debate would be headed your direction. That's almost a certainty lol

That shows an amazing lack of understanding of science. Cognitive science in general isn't settled, and 23 years is nothing in any field, especially that one. Plate Tectonics took over 50 years to be generally accepted and that deals with large-scale, very concrete phenomena that aren't a tenth as difficult to study as the human brain. There aren't any ideas in cognitive science that are universally accepted without detractors outside of the simplest, most obvious results

Haha.

It's amazing the lengths you will go to avoid admitting you were wrong. I mean, comparing the efficacy of an Earth science to one where it's infinitely easier to test is bad faith at minimum.

I'm not going to get dragged into yet another cursory argument about another discipline. All I will say is that there is an obvious reason plate tectonics took as long as it did to become a theory.

The somatic marker hypothesis you've presented is not nearly as difficult to test for, and through the efforts of peer review, we see why it's not current scientific consensus. There may be a time when it is, but currently it isn't, so as of June 24th, 2023, you cannot use it as a form of evidence against what I'm saying. I could present a myriad of hypotheses that aren't remotely true, but that's all it would be: a presentation of a hypothesis.

In science communication, theories > everything else.

So unless you have a theory to present me, you have nothing that refutes what I said. It's YOU that lacks understanding of science, and it's obvious to anyone that has spent at least a semester in a lab.


Remember, you started with the claim "My decisions are perfectly rational and superior, while yours are emotional and inferior!"

Well, I guess when you have to lie and exaggerate, I can completely understand why you took a hypothesis about every decision being emotional as gospel.

You said you were exhausted at 3am, yet now its 6am and you want to keep going

To be fair, I immediately fell asleep after posting my last message, and it is more than 8 hours later. Hint, hint.


I'm typing 1/4 as much as you

Yet another easily refuted claim:

Screenshot-438.png


:ufdup:

Not to mention that considering how long and poorly formatted your replies are, in a thread with minimal engagement, few people are going to read them.

Now, now.

The relevant people (read: you) are reading my posts. Do you honestly believe I'm interested in convincing people on a hip hop forum that believe atheism is "white supremacy"? Or the mod that consistently types gibberish in every single thread he's in?

:skip:

I'm clearly only engaging you with a modicum of seriousness. You should know my posting style by this point, I've been here for over a year, and we're in a lot of the same threads arguing for the same side. Stop playing to the crowd; play to me.

And I resent the idea that my posts are poorly formatted. My posts are not only easy to read, they are perfectly formatted. I write in complete sentences, with correct punctuation, (almost) perfect spelling and grammar, and break up ideas into paragraphs. To anyone reading this forum as a third party, my posts are the ones that are BEST formatted, that is without question. I am a writer; I do this on a daily basis.

I'm curious where you were trying to even go with that. There isn't an English major on the planet that would call my posts "poorly formatted". If you mean people on this site won't read them because they're too long, that is one thing.

But as I always say, you have to be an idiot to willingly go to an internet forum where the primary form of communication is reading and writing, and expect not to have to read. That is literal stupidity.


Anything else?

C9qA.gif
 
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