Mojo
Mostly harmless
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Gratitude, Compulsion, Idiocy or Nobility?
- Thread starter Kumar
- Start date
Mojo
Mostly harmless
He isn't: he doesn't exist.
You can make up whatever properties you like for your imaginary friend; it won't make him exist.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
What about Devi?
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
That is common language, common English, which you claim to be able to communicate in. How can it be that you suddenly proclaim ignorance of even the most common terms such as "bread and wine?"
I was going to go on and on about some of the specific doctrines of Christian churches, especially the Catholic, but why bother? Christianity is a "miracle religion" in which many events occur, and all require a miracle which is, by its very definition a phenomenon that is - THAT MUST BE! - outside of nature. That is what a miracle is. You cannot have a miracle that is in accord with nature. The two are incompatible.
The resurrection, the virgin birth, the immaculate conception, transubstantiation, and other events that are held to be literally true by many Christians, require a true miracle - the intentional and conscious intervention by a personal God, making things happen in the world that are inherently, always, and by definition, impossible under the physical laws of existence.
A miracle is, by its very definition, a thing that must be done by a God which transcends nature, and which overrides the process of nature, knowingly, specifically, and expressly. If an event can be explained by any process of nature or by science, it cannot be a miracle. That is what a miracle is.
If you cannot understand this very basic idea of what a miracle is, then you cannot speak in any competent way at all in English about the relationship between miracle-based religions such as Christianity, and nature. If you, like many here, deny the truth of miracles, or deny the supernatural character of God himself, you cannot claim to be a Christian believer whatever your daily practices might be.
READ THIS AGAIN if you need to. If you cannot understand these basic English words and what they mean, then you are not competent to discuss them. I suggest that if you do not understand these basic ideas and the basic English words by which they are expressed, you take some time off to study them before returning to comment. It is, in an "absolute and final" way, impossible to make an intelligent or cogent commentary on ideas and words you do not understand. In fact, to do so would be a miracle itself, and that, of course, requires that nature itself be contradicted!
Your abóve language is quite clear to me but since I àm not familier to delícacies of this religion I am unable to comment, whether those were supernatural míracles or some ununderstood models of nature. Many such miracles are also indicated in many religións here as if miracles are óne basis of religion. Science may justify it. Thanks and sorry.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
What is this? Your "speeel-chequer" is certainly not doing it. You must be intentionally doing it to annoy people.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Yes, one of the big problems with your argument is that you are so unfamiliar with world religion that it makes it very comical for you to speak of "true" or "universal" religion -- a thing that simply does not exist once your concept of religion widens to include anything but your own religion. It's further comical to watch you misunderstand the place of ascetic Hinduism in the context of world religion. It is possible you are so steeped in your religion that you cannot understand how reality could possibly differ from it, whether discussing the natural world or the world's religions.
In terms of the Catholic doctrines referred to, the people who believe in them specifically believe that they do not conform to a natural model and that they are inherently supernatural. They cite them as evidence -- both past and ongoing -- of the existence of their deity. The line of reasoning specifically goes that because such occurrences could not have a natural origin, they must have a supernatural origin and that God is the author of them. Their rhetoric requires the events to be unnatural. We know you have a strong motivation to try to bring all things religious under the umbrella of nature, but in this case the religion itself disputes your interpretation of it.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
By noting that there's no evidence any such god exists. You don't seem to see the difference between things we can demonstrate exist and things you merely imagine exist. The former are part of nature. The latter are not.
And that may very well be your concept of a god. However, you err in supposing that such a god is reflected in nature in any meaningful way, or is in any way derived from or part of nature. That god is something you made up. All the supposed qualities you attribute to him, such as "balance," are made up. That you attribute a natural origin to him does not substantiate that attribution.
Also search. Energy and matter are two existances.
Well existing.....
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Not everything you imagine to be true can be part of the natural world because the natural world simply is what it is, regardless of your fervent desires.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
You asked for female deities and I provided them from your very own religion.
Now you are dodging.
It is bit odd to know, you/péople are taking religion basis as super-natural not sub-natural. However we need to better understand it. Whether scientists agreed on such miracles? Here, we tend to understand all miracles in science.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Science does not believe in miracles. Miracles are not part of the natural world. People who believe in miracles assiduously maintain that the essence of the miraculous is that they defy scientific explanation.
You really don't know much about religion, do you?
ferd burfle
Graduate Poster
He’s moving the goalposts. Now he’s saying he can only explain some religious beliefs as based in nature, not all beliefs.
And having failed, here he changes the subject.
We may need some scientific relevance to it by comparing the indicated properties of religious aspect to science aspect. May it be just a name change. Moreover many things are yet unknown in science which may now look unnatural or miracle but tommorow can become natural and normal. We have to wait till science become A&F which is my real desire.
By true religion I mean, natural duties. We get fruits, it is our natural duty to disperse its seeds not to waste those. We got flowers, our natural duty is to aid pollination, we got cows milk, our natural duty to serve her like mother and get mother like milk, we came in nature our duty is to bring our children in nature...so on. As far as scientific basis of any religion is concerned, it is faith placebo reward expectation dopamine release in brain bringing motivation éffect. Then by calculated effects by religious practices, fasting, meditation, vibrational stimulation, low dose stimulatíon,physical activity, travels etc. So I take it like it, either scientific or logical which is yet unclear in science.
No many chapters are going on in this topic. I can explain, logic of anything, but obiously, I need to understand those. If I say, some religious entity is any fundamental force or elementary particle or atomic or molecular substance by matching their properties, then I may look odd but may not be wrong in real sense. Júst name change.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
No. The religious people who believe in miracles specifically deny that science can explain them. They are uninterested in explanations from scientists that purport to explain them. As much as you are trying to bring miracles under the umbrella of science, you just don't understand the religions of the people who believe in them.
There is no "true" religion, as you have discovered today. Religions differ widely in what they believe and why they believe it. What you're trying to style as "true" religion, having a universal moral imperative, is simply ascetic Hinduism -- yet another sect in a world filled with thousands of such sects.
You have a concept of nature that is not derived from observing nature, but rather from believing what your religion wants you to believe. Your religion wants to distract from its ethical basis being a bunch of made-up nonsense by suggesting that it is modeled after how nature behaves. But nature is observed to behave in ways that contradict your religion. Your religion has simply recast its sectarian moral code as if they were "duties" derived from nature. But there is no evidentiary reason to accept this.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Because you made the mistake of assuming all religious are like yours in all respects. You want to establish the notion of a "true" or "universal" religion so that you can argue it both derives from nature and also isn't tied up in some sectarian strife. This then would become a moral authority on whose basis you could dictate policy. You challenged your critics to name practices from any religion, and you would explain how they relate to nature. But in your ignorance you were unaware of just how profoundly some other religions in the world differ from Hinduism. You were unaware that some religions are predicated explicitly upon the supernatural.
Christianity, especially Catholicism, is based heavily on the notion that events that seem to defy nature occur as a matter of fact. It accepts that, aside from supernatural intervention, the natural world behaves according to inviolable laws. They imagine that a supernatural force exists, and they cite apparent examples of these physical laws being violated as proof of that supernatural force. The purported resurrection of Jesus is the central miracle in the faith. The purported supernatural force that causes miracles such as resurrection is personified into a supernatural deity whose will is then said to supersede the laws of nature. By this means are the faithful held in subjugation by those who purport to interpret the will of that deity.
Jainism, in contrast, begins with a set of what the west would call demigods, who are said to have dispensed a universal ethical wisdom built around exaggerated obligations of non-violence. In other words, it's a bunch of made-up philosophy attributed to ancient beings believed to be, in some sense, divine. So important is non-violence, in this philosophy, that humans must live an ascetic lifestyle in order to minimize the "violence" imposed on their environment. It is worship of nature, not worship derived from nature. In order to make nature worthy of such sacrifice, it must be ennobled -- deified, for lack of a better word. And it is this inferred ennoblement of nature that sends your religion off the rails. Nature is simply not the noble thing you pretend it is.
Yes, you are correct in saying that some religions defy nature and reach for the supernatural while others simply look to nature as the object of worship. But where your religion and Catholicism can be considered similar is in that they both simply make up a desired belief and then selectively look to nature to support it. That each tries to work nature into its system of belief doesn't substantiate than any one of them has simply arisen from nature.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
I already covered this. If all you propose to do is spin a web of speculation and tenuous connections between some claimed religious doctrine and some aspect of nature, then that proves nothing. You want to say that "true" religion (which, as I explained, seems to be no different in your mind from ascetic Hinduism) imposes duties and regulations that derive from nature. That requires a high standard of proof to show the actual derivation, not just some ad hoc line of reasoning noting superficial similarities.
But more importantly you need to realize that the believers in religious miracles are not looking for a scientific explanation. The entire basis of their faith is that such occurrences as they receive as miracles cannot be explained scientifically and occur in blatant defiance of science. When confronted with the notion of transubstantiation, an important doctrine of Catholic Christianity, you tried to suggest ways such as metabolism in which bread could be turned into human flesh. You were utterly unaware of the actual fundamentals of the doctrine: that the priest utters certain words and performs certain actions, and that the bread he's holding literally becomes -- instantly and magically -- the flesh of a long-dead guru in explicit and triumphant defiance of any scientific explanation, and that this happens before consumption. The people who eat this allegedly transformed substance believe they are literally eating the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth. They don't want you to try to say it must "somehow" be natural. They want it to be unnatural. They want it to be a miracle. They know it tastes and feels like bread. They know that if they were to give it to someone to examine, it would be indistinguishable from bread. They want to believe in magic that makes all these appearances happen, yet it still is the literal body of their guru.
Your recent attempts to revise your argument suggest you may realize that not all religions purport to be of nature, and indeed that not all religious practice can be shown to derive from nature or to be justified by it. There is simply far more religious practice than you were previously aware of. And you might be tempted to agree with us that some of the claims made, such as transubstantiation, are patently absurd and almost certain not to be true. We all know how the swami levitation trick is done, for example, yet some people are still willing to believe it because they have a need to believe nature can be defied.
If you accept that at least some religions just make stuff up, then you have to justify why your religion shouldn't be included in that category. In ancient times, people ravaged by violence -- either from other tribes of humans or from wild animals -- would naturally seek to alleviate that situation by establishing an ideal of non-violence. In ancient times, people ravaged by famine would naturally seek an ethic that minimized scarce resources. For many thousands of years religion has been the customary method of instilling whatever ethos seems to be prudent. And, incidentally, for just that long it has also been a tool by which the weak-minded are exploited by the unscrupulous, but that's perhaps a different topic.
But in order to make an ethos stick, you have to give it some authority beyond that of just the guy who first proposed it, even if that means just making stuff up. In western religions this authority comes from supposing the existence of a god not bound by natural law, but rather having the power to reward or punish according to his whim. Your religious has simply deified nature; it supposes that nature is an object worthy of worship and that this then gives rise to certain obligations. Those obligations just happen to coincide with what some people can use to their advantage. Ascetic Hinduism doesn't have a personal god, but all the roles filled by gods in other religious are fulfilled in Jainism by this rosy, platonic caricature of nature that you've created and essentially worship. In western religion, the deity is often the perfection or superlative of some set of desirable qualities. In your religion, that superlative ideal is simply attributed to nature. Your idealistic cartoon of nature is your god in the same way Jehovah is the god of the Abrahamic religions, and no more true.
Then you propose to equivocate between the Nature-God you've created in your religion and the observable natural world. Only the natural world doesn't match your fantasy, and that's where you get stuck. And that puts you in the category of religions that just make stuff up. Your ennoblement of nature is as unscientific and nonfactual as transubstantiation.