Is there a rational reason for religion?

[universaltheory]

On 03/07/2018 at 12:28 AM, MigL said:

Beliefs that have a strong basis/evidence are facts, Phi.
By their very definition, beliefs are not factual..

I tend to agree with OldChemE.
Religion is like playing the lottery.
Hope against insurmountable odds.
You don't buy lottery tickets, you buy hope.

When there is still no civilisation that can prove promising in "guarantying" our future; I think beliefs drive us in taking risks subject to the probability density of "realising" the intended results of our efforts! I think that with out such beliefs in future unguaranted out comes; very few if not all would take some calculated logical risk (if; then; or; else---) 

Edited July 11, 2018 by universaltheory

[Alter2Ego]

On 6/30/2018 at 10:17 PM, ALine said:

I would like to know the reasonable arguments for having a religion. The only one that I can think of is that religion causes a "faith/belief" tether to a certain true world understanding which attaches itself to certain ideals in order to reach this true world which is passed down through the ages. These ideals can be anything from basic rules and regulations which prevent others from performing certain actions on how to love your loved ones. However, if this is true then that would mean that religion would act as a "time capsule" which would have people to believe one thing while also maintaining the ideas and beliefs of certain rules and regulations.

ALine:

Humans were created with the desire to worship.  All humans belong to some form of religion, whether they care to admit it or not.

Alter2Ego

 

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

Edited July 12, 2018 by Alter2Ego

[Strange]

3 hours ago, Alter2Ego said:

Humans were created with the desire to worship.  All humans belong to some form of religion, whether they care to admit it or not.

Do you have any evidence for this claim? Could you tell me what religion I "belong to" as they haven't told me yet.

[universaltheory]

1 hour ago, Strange said:

Do you have any evidence for this claim? Could you tell me what religion I "belong to" as they haven't told me yet.

You believe in intellectualism for the reasons we don't know and may be you can't justify! But at least you invest a lot in it here and you worship ideas that work for you 

4 hours ago, Alter2Ego said:

ALine:

Humans were created with the desire to worship.  All humans belong to some form of religion, whether they care to admit it or not.

Alter2Ego

 

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

Bravo

[Strange]

10 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

You believe in intellectualism for the reasons we don't know and may be you can't justify! But at least you invest a lot in it here and you worship ideas that work for you 

I am interested in science and technology, true. And we don't know why I am interested on those things and others play golf or knit jumpers. I don't see the relevance of that. Unless you are saying that every human activity is a "religion"; in which case you are giving the word a definition so broad as to be meaningless.

I don't "worship" ideas that work. That is an idiotic claim. I don't "worship" my computer, or the availability of fresh water at the turn of a tap, or modern healthcare. But they are bloody useful. And they were created by intellectual activity and not by religion.

 

4 hours ago, Alter2Ego said:

Humans were created with the desire to worship.  All humans belong to some form of religion, whether they care to admit it or not.

I think humans have evolved a certain religiosity, or ability to believe, to varying degrees. In some people this comes out as a belief in god or gods, in other people as a vague spirituality, in others as a belief in human abilities, and in others it is almost non-existent. (This opinion is, I'm afraid, partly based on the results of scientific studies.)

Edited July 12, 2018 by Strange

[universaltheory]

22 minutes ago, Strange said:

I am interested in science and technology, true. And we don't know why I am interested on those things and others play golf or knit jumpers. I don't see the relevance of that. Unless you are saying that every human activity is a "religion"; in which case you are giving the word a definition so broad as to be meaningless.

I don't "worship" ideas that work. That is an idiotic claim. I don't "worship" my computer, or the availability of fresh water at the turn of a tap, or modern healthcare. But they are bloody useful. And they were created by intellectual activity and not by religion.

 

I think humans have evolved a certain religiosity, or ability to believe, to varying degrees. In some people this comes out as a belief in god or gods, in other people as a vague spirituality, in others as a belief in human abilities, and in others it is almost non-existent. (This opinion is, I'm afraid, partly based on the results of scientific studies.)

-religiosity or desire to worship according to belief

-worship or religious practices of one's belief

YesYes; humanity might have evolved a certain religiosity which they practice differently to satisfy the purpose of their different beliefs! Your belief(in God or a god or non existence of one or fantacy or what interests you etc determines what you practice to satisfy the purpose of your belief

Forexample; I believe in skepticism and and inquisitive and curious of the existence of God or not and the universe etc; this shapes my practices

Edited July 12, 2018 by universaltheory

[koti]

23 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

You believe in intellectualism for the reasons we don't know and may be you can't justify! But at least you invest a lot in it here and you worship ideas that work for you 

I can speak for myself, I lean towards science or „intellectualism” like you call it because it works. It has nothing to do with faith and worshiping, simply its science that makes airplanes fly and computers work and it doesn’t work only for me, it works for you too. In case you haven’t noticed, the device you used to post your ignorant post above works because of science not religion. 

[Strange]

12 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

YesYes; humanity might have evolved a certain religiosity which they practice differently to satisfy the purpose of their different beliefs! Your belief(in God or a god or non existence of one or fantacy or what interests you etc determines what you practice to satisfy the purpose of your belief

Forexample; I believe in skepticism and and inquisitive and curious of the existence of God or not and the universe etc; this shapes my practices

I don't see where belief comes into it. I don't "believe" in science; I don't "believe" it has improved the world.

Obviously, though, when discussing gods, it is entirely about beliefs.

Edited July 12, 2018 by Strange

[universaltheory]

6 minutes ago, koti said:

I can speak for myself, I lean towards science or „intellectualism” like you call it because it works. It has nothing to do with faith and worshiping, simply its science that makes airplanes fly and computers work and it doesn’t work only for me, it works for you too. In case you haven’t noticed, the device you used to post your ignorant post above works because of science not religion. 

You learn towards science bra bra bra--- that is a practice of satisfying the purpose of what you believe in! And my dia try to differentiate between believing in what works practically and what does work! This is one of the greatest question if not concern in all belief systems

6 minutes ago, Strange said:

I don't see where belief comes into it. I don't "believe" in science; I don't "believe" it has improved the world.

Obviously, though, when discussing gods, it is entirely about beliefs.

Let me hop that you also don't believe that your posts make any sense!

[Strange]

20 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

You learn towards science bra bra bra--- that is a practice of satisfying the purpose of what you believe in!

Er, no.

21 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

And my dia try to differentiate between believing in what works practically and what does work! This is one of the greatest question if not concern in all belief systems

the whole point is that if something works, we don't need to use belief. For example your computer works, because the underlying technology works, because the underlying science works. 

Of course, you are free to believe that your computer doesn't work, but the facts would seem to contradict that belief.

On the other hand, when it comes to religions and gods, there is no evidence that they "work" in any practical sense (beyond giving some people a feeling of comfort). And so they depend entirely upon belief.

23 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

Let me hop that you also don't believe that your posts make any sense!

Hop away. But if there is something you don't understand, why not ask.

[koti]

29 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

You learn towards science bra bra bra--- that is a practice of satisfying the purpose of what you believe in! And my dia try to differentiate between believing in what works practically and what does work! This is one of the greatest question if not concern in all belief systems

Let me hop that you also don't believe that your posts make any sense!

You’re not making any sense, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about and I suggest that you listen and learn from Strange and others here instead of hitting your head against the wall like above.

[universaltheory]

6 minutes ago, Strange said:

Er, no.

the whole point is that if something works, we don't need to use belief. For example your computer works, because the underlying technology works, because the underlying science works. 

Of course, you are free to believe that your computer doesn't work, but the facts would seem to contradict that belief.

On the other hand, when it comes to religions and gods, there is no evidence that they "work" in any practical sense (beyond giving some people a feeling of comfort). And so they depend entirely upon belief.

Hop away. But if there is something you don't understand, why not ask.

"The whole point is that if something " works " or proved to be working we don't need to use belief------ well said

But if all our practices depended only on that which is working without investing in what has not worked but with decidable reasons to believe that it can work or not work; no one.would have been skeptical any more

7 minutes ago, koti said:

You’re not making any sense, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about and I suggest that you listen and learn from Strange and others here instead of hitting your head against the wall like above.

 

9 minutes ago, koti said:

You’re not making any sense, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about and I suggest that you listen and learn from Strange and others here instead of hitting your head against the wall like above.

That doesn't surprise me: I already knew that every one believes in what "makes sense" to him or her! But thank you for the self defeating comment

[DrP]

14 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

"The whole point is that if something " works " or proved to be working we don't need to use belief------ well said

But if all our practices depended only on that which is working without investing in what has not worked but with decidable reasons to believe that it can work or not work; no one.would have been skeptical any more

....  but we DO investigate things...  we use science to do this.  It usually confirms what we believe or we change our belief to better fit the evidence the science throws up. With religion and faith though there is no such check - even when it doesn't work and science points to it being wrong the religious STILL do not change their belief to fit the facts.

So - as it was said above and you kind of agreed with   -  it doesn't matter what we believe the computer still works either way.   Same with god - it doesn't matter if we believe or not, it is either there or it isn't.... and there has not been any credible evidence for it beyond word of mouth reports of things that can simply be explained with coincidence or delusion.

[koti]

33 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

That doesn't surprise me: I already knew that every one believes in what "makes sense" to him or her! But thank you for the self defeating comment

You just don’t get it do you. It’s not what makes sense to you or me, its what WORKS for EVERYONE, including those who believe in invisible pink unicorns. We can argue which of the many religions and gods are correct but we cant argue (unless you’re a lunatic) that when we get on an airplane it flies because science.

Edited July 12, 2018 by koti

[universaltheory]

9 minutes ago, koti said:

You just don’t get it do you. It’s not what makes sense to you or me, its what WORKS for EVERYONE, including those who believe in invisible pink unicorns.

I don't need to believe in what works! The question is either it works or not

But I need to believe in what makes sense to me ! And the question here is that if it " will" work or not

15 minutes ago, DrP said:

....  but we DO investigate things...  we use science to do this.  It usually confirms what we believe or we change our belief to better fit the evidence the science throws up. With religion and faith though there is no such check - even when it doesn't work and science points to it being wrong the religious STILL do not change their belief to fit the facts.

So - as it was said above and you kind of agreed with   -  it doesn't matter what we believe the computer still works either way.   Same with god - it doesn't matter if we believe or not, it is either there or it isn't.... and there has not been any credible evidence for it beyond word of mouth reports of things that can simply be explained with coincidence or delusion.

It makes some sense to me; thank you

Edited July 12, 2018 by universaltheory

[DrP]

4 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

I don't need to believe in what works!

so we just ignore reality and make our own stuff up? I don't get it.

4 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

It makes some sense to me; thank you

What I wrote or the religious belief? If religion then It makes sense sure...  but it has no grounds in reality beyond that of peoples' delusions.  Sure, if it makes you happy and floats you boat then you can believe what ever you like...  but you can't claim it is reality when there is no evidence for it and plenty of evidence contradicting it.

Are you interested in science and working out how the complexities of nature and the universe works?  Or do you want to just blindly accept what is written in an out of date 2000 year old book which has made many claims that have been proven wrong by modern science?. Science updates it's text books all the time when new evidence come to light through investigation and experimentation.

 

[koti]

19 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

I don't need to believe in what works! The question is either it works or not

But I need to believe in what makes sense to me ! And the question here is that if it " will" work or not

Let me break it down for you;

You cannot „believe” that airplanes fly due to science, it is continuously proven that airplanes in fact do fly (and fall down) because science. It is irrelevant weather or not it makes sense to you that airplanes fly. You can learn the physics of why they do in fact fly but physics do not care about you having that knowledge or not - airplanes will continue to fly (and fall down) despite your opinion. 

Your faith on the other hand is completely subjective, there is zero evidence for any religion to be correct - exactly the opposite as with the airplane example above. You can believe what you want but you need to keep rationality out of it, that is the realm of things that continuously produce results. 

Edit: And don’t worry, nobody is 100% rational, we all make mistakes. The question is weather you are capable of gathering knowledge, changing your mind based on that new knowledge/evidence or will you spend your life stuck in one corner endlessly repeating your mantra not even noticing the airplanes flying above your head.

That might be some idea for the purpose of life but this forum is not the place for it.

Edited July 12, 2018 by koti

[universaltheory]

37 minutes ago, DrP said:

so we just ignore reality and make our own stuff up? I don't get it.

What I wrote or the religious belief? If religion then It makes sense sure...  but it has no grounds in reality beyond that of peoples' delusions.  Sure, if it makes you happy and floats you boat then you can believe what ever you like...  but you can't claim it is reality when there is no evidence for it and plenty of evidence contradicting it.

Are you interested in science and working out how the complexities of nature and the universe works?  Or do you want to just blindly accept what is written in an out of date 2000 year old book which has made many claims that have been proven wrong by modern science?. Science updates it's text books all the time when new evidence come to light through investigation and experimentation.

 

Ignore reality! Who said that? Reality is just existing facts according to how I can justify it. And value addition is part of reality. And it is reality that decides what works with value addition through practicals: and as said practicals boil down to what works in reality or not: and beliefs (theistic or atheistic) have worked practically well in social and psychological motivation and inspirations

Whether being skeptical about reality is from a celebrated standard or non celebrated standard is just a question of how that standard justifies that.reality in. a way that makes sense in a non self contradicted way

34 minutes ago, koti said:

Let me break it down for you;

You cannot „believe” that airplanes fly due to science, it is continuously proven that airplanes in fact do fly (and fall down) because science. It is irrelevant weather or not it makes sense to you that airplanes fly. You can learn the physics of why they do in fact fly but physics do not care about you having that knowledge or not - airplanes will continue to fly (and fall down) despite your opinion. 

Your faith on the other hand is completely subjective, there is zero evidence for any religion to be correct - exactly the opposite as with the airplane example above. You can believe what you want but you need to keep rationality out of it, that is the realm of things that continuously produce results. 

I keep rationality out of my belief and I believe in what if rationalism is what makes sense to me? Every one has a right to believe in what he or she finds makes sense! If some one does not find it in rationalism its okay to the concerned but not me who finds a lot of sense in rationalism

Edited July 12, 2018 by universaltheory

[DrP]

24 minutes ago, koti said:

 

Your faith on the other hand is completely subjective, there is zero evidence for any religion to be correct -

 

 

Welllll  to play advocate for a second...  there IS evidence...  it just isn't very good and doesn't stand up to any scientific scrutiny.  I have seen some 'miraculous' things.  I have witnessed some AMAZING coincidences which at the time I though evidence for god. I still can't explain what the holy ghost is..  it is 'something' which I used to believe to be the spirit of god...  but now I think it just a state of mind and body.

I think that the placebo effect can help people shake off illness quicker and heal better (this is seen in drug trials) - this is to do with belief that you have something that will work (even if you have nothing)....  so 'something' is going on in our bodies which is influenced by the mind. Problem is that we do not know what that is and people jump to so many spurious conclusions to explain it...  they think that their prayers or their sugar cube medicine has cured them...  when they have just gotten better through believing they will get better...  so there is 'something' in believing and positive thinking for sure...  but what is it?  It certainly isn't holistic healing, chackra energy or a mighty god at work...  it is what ever causes the mechanism for the placebo effect - which we can't explain fully as far as I know. It has to be some connection between mind and body that we do not yet under stand.  Sorry for the long speculation. 

At the end of the day you have to be honest with yourself.  The god thing is clearly nonsense (as it is laid out in the books from centuries ago anyway)... and just nonsense that isn't so clear when you get sucked into it. I know first hand how easy it is to get sucked into believing it.  It seems so dumb when you are out of it... but I do understand how people believe it when faced with certain things. 

 

I haven't had a chance to fully watch the below as I am at work and couldn't find the vid I wanted to share. In the one I watched he gives as total atheist a spiritual experience and she breaks down in tears and commits her life to god... then he explains how he tricked her with psychological processes and helps her to take a positive strength from what she learnt. idk if it is in the below vid but I think it is on a similar theme - I'll watch it properly when I get home:

 

 

[koti]

18 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

I keep rationality out of my belief and I believe in what if rationalism is what makes sense to me? Every one has a right to believe in what he or she finds makes sense! If some one does not find it in rationalism its okay to the concerned but not me who finds a lot of sense in rationalism

You can believe what you want, it has nothing to do with continued reliability of producing effective results as Matt Dillahunty once stated. 

[Strange]

2 hours ago, universaltheory said:

But if all our practices depended only on that which is working without investing in what has not worked but with decidable reasons to believe that it can work or not work; no one.would have been skeptical any more

And that is exactly what science does. We come up with lots of ideas and find out which ones work and which ones don't. 

Again, totally irrelevant to the subject of religion or belief.

48 minutes ago, universaltheory said:

I keep rationality out of my belief and I believe in what if rationalism is what makes sense to me?

Do you want to try that again in English?

To try and extract some meaning: "rationalism is what makes sense to me". No. A lot of people do seem to use "logical" to mean "it seems sensible to me". But that is not what logic (or rational thought) is.

2 hours ago, universaltheory said:

That doesn't surprise me: I already knew that every one believes in what "makes sense" to him or her!

Science teaches us that we definitely should not always believe in what makes sense. Sometimes that is completely wrong. (Sometimes, just by chance, it is partly right. But that is not helpful, without some means to determine which bits are right or not. And so we are back to science.)

 

1 hour ago, universaltheory said:

I don't need to believe in what works! The question is either it works or not

Good.

1 hour ago, universaltheory said:

But I need to believe in what makes sense to me !

Then you are a fool. (And it contradicts your first sentence.)

1 hour ago, universaltheory said:

It makes some sense to me; thank you

That is not relevant in any rational discussion.

 

Edited July 12, 2018 by Strange

[universaltheory]

9 minutes ago, Strange said:

And that inexactly what science does. We come up with ideas and find out which ones work and which ones don't. 

Again, totally irrelevant to the subject of religion or belief.

Do you want to try that again in English?

To try and extract some meaning: "rationalism is what makes sense to me". No. A lot of people do seem to use "logical" to mean "it seems sensible to me". But that is not what logic (or rational thought) is.

Science teaches us that we definitely should not always believe in what makes sense. Sometimes that is completely wrong. (Sometimes, just by chance, it is partly right. But that is not helpful, without some means to determine which bits are right or not. And so we are back to science.)

 

Unfortunately I can't comment on why you went out of context far from my presented argument while quoting my posts

32 minutes ago, koti said:

continued

 

34 minutes ago, koti said:

You can believe what you want, it has nothing to do with continued reliability of producing effective results as Matt Dillahunty once stated. 

That makes sense to me: thank you

[koti]

57 minutes ago, DrP said:

 

Welllll  to play advocate for a second...  there IS evidence...  it just isn't very good and doesn't stand up to any scientific scrutiny.  I have seen some 'miraculous' things.  I have witnessed some AMAZING coincidences which at the time I though evidence for god. I still can't explain what the holy ghost is..  it is 'something' which I used to believe to be the spirit of god...  but now I think it just a state of mind and body.

I think that the placebo effect can help people shake off illness quicker and heal better (this is seen in drug trials) - this is to do with belief that you have something that will work (even if you have nothing)....  so 'something' is going on in our bodies which is influenced by the mind. Problem is that we do not know what that is and people jump to so many spurious conclusions to explain it...  they think that their prayers or their sugar cube medicine has cured them...  when they have just gotten better through believing they will get better...  so there is 'something' in believing and positive thinking for sure...  but what is it?  It certainly isn't holistic healing, chackra energy or a mighty god at work...  it is what ever causes the mechanism for the placebo effect - which we can't explain fully as far as I know. It has to be some connection between mind and body that we do not yet under stand.  Sorry for the long speculation. 

At the end of the day you have to be honest with yourself.  The god thing is clearly nonsense (as it is laid out in the books from centuries ago anyway)... and just nonsense that isn't so clear when you get sucked into it. I know first hand how easy it is to get sucked into believing it.  It seems so dumb when you are out of it... but I do understand how people believe it when faced with certain things. 

 

I haven't had a chance to fully watch the below as I am at work and couldn't find the vid I wanted to share. In the one I watched he gives as total atheist a spiritual experience and she breaks down in tears and commits her life to god... then he explains how he tricked her with psychological processes and helps her to take a positive strength from what she learnt. idk if it is in the below vid but I think it is on a similar theme - I'll watch it properly when I get home:

 

 

When I was 17 or 18 a group of para-psychology students came to a lake cottage/camp where I stayed with my folks. They gave free hypnosis sessions, I was very interested in things like that back then so I volunterred and went on to have a 1 hour session consisting of 3 of the students (they were impressive to me at that time) and were very into preparing everything properly, took great care of being empathetic to me while the girl was putting me into the state of hypnosis. She was very nice to me and she was also extremely atractive, kept on gently caressing me so...I went with it and started to make up shit like I can see clearly that I’m a in a village in my previous life, I’m holding a hammer in my hands and I’m a blacksmith, etc, etc. I’m a pretty good story teller and guess what, she kept on caressing me so I went with it. And she knew exactly what to do to make the session „a success”. Needless to say that when a girl was being hypnotised a 6,3 handsome student was „hypnotising” her, it took me a while to understand whats going on...the students stayed there for a few days and eventually I got drunk and got into a huge argument with them and they left. They were too young to be cold and calculated in their doings, some of them probably went on to become full time assholes in their later life, some of them like you changed direction. 

As for the placebo effect, I don’t doubt there are mechanisms in the human body capable of self healing to a degree. When I was lying on an operating table last year and one of the nurses told me to pray, I went ballistic and have drawn strenght from that in order to heal faster after the operation

As for the Holy Ghost and your confusion, don’t worry, its me man. Please don’t be confused anymore, its all going to be good. /sarcasm.

Edit: I was 16.

Edited July 12, 2018 by koti

[Scott of the Antares]

The problem with the example of knowing how a computer or an airplane works is that they are nearly closed systems where we know the extents of pretty much every factor involved. While it is noble to use then as an analogy, I think they fall way short of comparing them to a universe of which we know very little. We cannot possible know every facet of the universe so assert that there is (or that there is not) a God is a matter of personal preference and nothing more. It cannot be known either way, period.

[Strange]

9 minutes ago, Scott of the Antares said:

We cannot possible know every facet of the universe so assert that there is (or that there is not) a God is a matter of personal preference and nothing more. It cannot be known either way, period.

The same could be true for every god that man has invented, as well as invisible pink unicorns, aliens with three heads, or a teapot that orbits the Sun somewhere.

But, after sufficient time, one can use absence of evidence as evidence of absence.