Double-standards in religion

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

I've given thought to joining some sort of cult to fill the empty void that is my social life since I moved to Texas. Trying to make friends at bars/clubs/loud parties doesn't seem to work, maybe cuz I'm just not feeling that scene anymore.

What about a unitarian universalist church? We had one across th street from us in NY. Their masses wer basically religious lectures that varied every week, and then there was pound cake!

[Emu]

Originally Posted by El Blanco

If we are looking at this from a logical stand point, you don't have to. The burden is on us who claim the positive ie there is a God.

Then again, I never really dug philosophy, so I could be completly fucking that up.

No, that's true. The burden of proof lies on the asserter. But I think it's still better, if at least more respectable, to take a neutral position than a negative one. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[kahljorn]

"I thought about Buddhism relatively seriously for a while, but I don't wanna be a vegetarian."

You don't have to be a vegetarian. There are, however, a few good reasons for being one, besides health and such. This might sound kind of crazy but I'll try to present it in a normal way later maybe. The belief you shouldn't eat animals has been shared by many people, including pythagoras. Pythagoras declared that no judge should make a judgement after having eatten meat because it impairs the judgement. That's probably the best example of why buddhists don't eat meat-- it impairs judgement.
The idea behind it is that the animal itself had a type of soul or energy, and when you eat it you eat it's energy and everything it's eatten. Including the genetically modified corn feed and whatever else. Also, the energy of the beast interacts with your energy and can cause negative effects. Part of buddhism and yoga is taking a LOT of time to carefully balance and manage your energy so it's at the most balanced point, distributed evenly throughout the entire body. You get the idea! I'm hungover and have to go eat pizza.

So it's not really that you can't eat meat, it's more that you shouldn't because it interferes with your 'inner balance'. Any buddhist, especially a zen buddhist, who tells you to follow the rules isn't much of a buddhist.

[pjalne]

I really don't get how adverse people in the US are to atheists. Sure, these guys are dicks, but that's from being frat boy versions of OAO.

[kahljorn]

I think in terms of social impact and other influences, not just faith, atheism is alot easier and has less of an effect mostly due to their interaction with the pop culture world. The decision to not believe in god isn't really an intellectual decision in their case, if it was they would be agnostic, but rather a decision to acclimate themselves to some social atmosphere. It's really the same either way, though, however the circumstance is generally much different.

Another thing to consider is that being a christian or any other 'faith' also incorporates alot of lifestyle changes. There's at least one or two things you'll change in your life when you become a christian(waking up at six in the morning on sundays), with atheists the ramifications would be nill or too variated to really correlate as there isn't really a unified Atheist lifestyle manual.

Making the decision to believe in something, in my opinion, is pointless unless it is accompanied by some kind of change in you or your perception of surroundings. Neutrality in this instance doesn't really require belief.
One thing I find particularly funny about this breed of Atheists is that in many cases it's accompanied by that frustration with christianity. I think somebody who makes a decision to escape something, especially an idealogy, while still under it's frustration is being ridiculous and is obviously still influenced by it. The ramifications of such a psychosis are obvious.

You are right that we could probably never prove there's no god, but that really depends on how you look at it. Within the perceptions of these people, I'd say you could never prove there's no god, but that's only because they have the wrong understanding of god and gods, I think. Unless you count dying and not going to heaven, but that's not so much a proving thing.

I love the new tool album ;( vicarious really isn't much next to the rest of it.

[pjalne]

Originally Posted by Emu

No, that's true. The burden of proof lies on the asserter. But I think it's still better, if at least more respectable, to take a neutral position than a negative one. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

By "neutral", do you mean agnostic? Cause I think you're absolutely right, but neutral and agnostic are far from the same thing.

[Kulturkampf]

Both sides feel discriminated against, honestly, and that is only because of the continuous venom inserted by the idiots on both sides (idiots like me).

We should just forget about it and chill out.

I do not think it even matters if there is a problem, because life itself is a series of problems that are not even resolved by our deaths.

[Emu]

Originally Posted by pjalne

By "neutral", do you mean agnostic? Cause I think you're absolutely right, but neutral and agnostic are far from the same thing.

Neutral with respect to the statement "I believe that there is/is not a God."

[kahljorn]

Agnostic is about as neutral as you can get in this circumstance. If you have another more neutral option to submit I'd be glad to hear it, because to me agnostic screams neutrality.

neu·tral (ntrl, ny-)
adj.

1. Belonging to neither kind; not one thing or the other; indifferent.

[pjalne]

Agnostics may claim that it isn't possible to have absolute or certain spiritual knowledge or, alternatively, that while certainty may be possible, they personally have no such knowledge. In both cases, agnosticism involves some form of skepticism towards religious statements. This is different from the simple irreligion of those who give no thought to the subject.

Yeah, yeah, it's Wikipedia, but it works. An agnostic theist believes, but does not claim to know there is a god, like an agnostic atheist doesn't claim to know there is no god. Still, none of them are neutral on the subject of the existence of the divine.

But I think we've just got a definition thing going on here, where I was thinking of agnosticism as a gradation of another term describing one's take on theism (small-a), while I guess everybody else has standalone Agnosticism (big-A) in mind. It's a tricky word.

[kahljorn]

I was just thinking in terms of belief and religousity.

Agnostics don't believe there's a god.
Agnostics don't believe there's not a god.

Personally I think it's as neutral as you can get when it comes to religion. People who aren't religous obviously aren't religous, so the circumstance wouldn't really apply to them. If they were taking part in a religous debate how would they contribute? They couldn't, really, but I get your point.
I think alot of agnostics actually are irreligous, and are irreligous because they are agnostic. What's the point in thinking about it if nothing can/has been proved, after all?