People who believe in god are broken

[Iggy]

I am open to evidence but anything that can be asserted with no evidence can be dismissed with no evidence

Thank God. I've been dismissing your unevidenced claims without evidence of my own and I felt bad about it, but good to know I'm ok.

 

my children like most grew out of their imaginary friends, if they still said they saw their imaginary friends I'd be concerned and assume they were indeed delusional...

and I hope humanity grows too. In the mean time... it may be a little early to call them broken for their failings yet.

[iNow]

It is frankly absurd to insist that everyone who thinks they saw Jesus are either hallucinating, delusional, or lying.

I understand that is your position, but merely repeating it doesn't offer it any additional validity. Why is it so absurd, in your opinion?

 

We agree there may have been a human named Jesus roughly 2,000 years ago. We agree that many people have followed teachings said to be rooted in his words and actions. No problem there. However, that was 2,000 years ago. He's dead. Gone. Worm food and grub poop... IF he ever actually existed at all.

 

Tell me again why it's so "absurd to insist that everyone who thinks they saw him are either hallucinating, delusional, or lying?"

Edited August 22, 2013 by iNow

[Iggy]

Even if there is evidence of Jesus, there is zero evidence that he was not human or that he was some sort of supernatural deity.

That wasn't at all what I meant.

 

I meant that in some people's minds there is evidence that Jesus is the creator of all earth. Be it... subjective, anecdotal, and imperfect evidence all the same.

 

People have personal experiences and it is very hard to call them broken for believing them, because it is often a very good thing to believe one's own personal experiences.

[iNow]

People have personal experiences and it is very hard to call them broken for believing them

No, it's really not. I and others have done it repeatedly in this very thread.

[Iggy]

Tell me again why it's so "absurd to insist that everyone who thinks they saw him are either hallucinating, delusional, or lying?"

Because Hugh Montefiore clearly isn't delusional, and neither would someone so clearly change their life to their own disadvantage based on a lie, and it isn't an original story. You're basically saying that people can't be mistaken about religion, which is absurd on its face. You're trying to support your own argument in the face of all reason.

No, it's really not. I and others have done it repeatedly in this very thread.

No, I meant truthfully.

[iNow]

Because Hugh Montefiore clearly isn't delusional

Rubbish. You don't know that.

 

...and neither would someone so clearly change their life to their own disadvantage based on a lie

You truly think this? You're grasping at straws and your argument is falling apart if this is the basis of your position.

 

You're basically saying that people can't be mistaken about religion, which is absurd on its face.

No, I'm saying they ARE mistaken when concluding god exists instead of concluding that god(s) MIGHT exist.

 

No, I meant truthfully.

So now you're suggesting that I'm lying when I say I think people who believe in god(s) are broken? Interesting. Through what magic do you have this special insight into my thoughts?

Edited August 22, 2013 by iNow

[Moontanman]

That wasn't at all what I meant.

 

I meant that in some people's minds there is evidence that Jesus is the creator of all earth. Be it... subjective, anecdotal, and imperfect evidence all the same.

 

People have personal experiences and it is very hard to call them broken for believing them, because it is often a very good thing to believe one's own personal experiences.

 

Evidently what we have here is a failure to communicate... (spoken with a heavy southern drawl) We evidently have a different definition of evidence...

 

To me a personal experience is something that has a quantifiable effect on observable reality...

[Iggy]

Evidently what we have here is a failure to communicate... (spoken with a heavy southern drawl) We evidently have a different definition of evidence...

 

To me a personal experience is something that has a quantifiable effect on observable reality...

I'm pretty sure exactly two posts ago I said "subjective, anecdotal, and imperfect evidence all the same".

 

Would you like to teach me what evidence is?

[Moontanman]

Because Hugh Montefiore clearly isn't delusional, and neither would someone so clearly change their life to their own disadvantage based on a lie, and it isn't an original story. You're basically saying that people can't be mistaken about religion, which is absurd on its face. You're trying to support your own argument in the face of all reason.

 

No, I meant truthfully.

 

 

If you raised a large group of people from childhood to believe in Cthulhu a few would believe so well they would see Cthulhu and have a personal experience (as you say) with the tentacles of Cthulhu in their lives...

I'm pretty sure exactly two posts ago I said "subjective, anecdotal, and imperfect evidence all the same".

 

Would you like to teach me what evidence is?

 

 

Yes, belief is thinking you are invincible, evidence is the bus that takes you out when you step in front of it...

[Iggy]

If you raised a large group of people from childhood to believe in Cthulhu a few would believe so well they would see Cthulhu and have a personal experience (as you say) with the tentacles of Cthulhu in their lives...

I think you overestimate my abilities, but ok, I agree

 

 

Yes, belief is thinking you are invincible, evidence is the bus that takes you out when you step in front of it...

:-D

 

You should have gone with "Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence" by Dawkins. It isn't true, but it sure sounds good.

[Moontanman]

I think you overestimate my abilities, but ok, I agree

 

 

:-D

 

You should have gone with "Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence" by Dawkins. It isn't true, but it sure sounds good.

 

 

You should stick with people who think god might be real are not broken...

[iNow]

Asking again:

 

We agree there may have been a human named Jesus roughly 2,000 years ago. We agree that many people have followed teachings said to be rooted in his words and actions. No problem there. However, that was 2,000 years ago. He's dead. Gone. Worm food and grub poop... IF he ever actually existed at all.

 

Tell me again why it's so "absurd to insist that everyone who thinks they saw him are either hallucinating, delusional, or lying?"

You responded:

Because Hugh Montefiore clearly isn't delusional

Is that your final answer? It doesn't seem like an answer at all, if I'm being honest, and I'd like an actual thoughtful reply if you're willing and able.

[Iggy]

You responded:

 

 

Because Hugh Montefiore clearly isn't delusional

Is that your final answer?

 

Almost half of it.

 

by which I mean...

 

 

 

...and neither would someone so clearly change their life to their own disadvantage based on a lie

You truly think this?

 

 

yes

 

and I'd like an actual thoughtful reply if you're willing and able.

I really don't know how much more thought I can give this. You think that almost everyone who lives near you (I assume you still live in Texas) is delusional or lying. I give my neighbors more credit. Either way, it is a matter of opinion. You think most people are mentally ill, and I don't.

 

It is just what it is.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Iggy

[iNow]

Please stop evading by telling me what I think or how I feel about my neighbors. This was my specific question:

 

We agree there may have been a human named Jesus roughly 2,000 years ago. We agree that many people have followed teachings said to be rooted in his words and actions. No problem there. However, that was 2,000 years ago. He's dead. Gone. Worm food and grub poop... IF he ever actually existed at all.

 

Tell me again why it's so "absurd to insist that everyone who thinks they saw him are either hallucinating, delusional, or lying?"

[Iggy]

Please stop evading by telling me what I think or how I feel about my neighbors. This was my specific question:

 

We agree there may have been a human named Jesus roughly 2,000 years ago. We agree that many people have followed teachings said to be rooted in his words and actions. No problem there. However, that was 2,000 years ago. He's dead. Gone. Worm food and grub poop... IF he ever actually existed at all.

 

Tell me again why it's so "absurd to insist that everyone who thinks they saw him are either hallucinating, delusional, or lying?"

I answered that question completely and honestly in post 1556 immediately after you asked it.

 

Don't accuse me of evading. If you need more clarification then ask.

[iNow]

I answered that question completely and honestly in post 1556 immediately after you asked it.

 

I know. You said this:

Because Hugh Montefiore clearly isn't delusional, and neither would someone so clearly change their life to their own disadvantage based on a lie

That is completely tangential to my question. The question was for you to explain why you think such a logical and rational position is absurd. Telling me that some guy named Hugh is not deluded or making a very clearly inaccurate assertion like "people wouldn't change their lives based on a lie" is not an answer, IMO.

 

If you need more clarification then ask.

That's what I've done, three times now. Here it is again. Consider this a formal request for clarification.

 

Please explain why you think it's "absurd to insist that everyone who thinks they saw [Jesus, a person whom it's uncertain if he ever even existed at all and IF he did exist it was 2,000 years ago] are either hallucinating, delusional, or lying?"

 

Tell us: Is it "normal" in your view for individuals to see people who potentially never existed and even if they did exist have certainly been dead for two millenia?

Edited August 22, 2013 by iNow

[Iggy]

Please explain why you think it's "absurd to insist that everyone who thinks they saw [Jesus, a person whom it's uncertain if he ever even existed at all and IF he did exist it was 2,000 years ago] are either hallucinating, delusional, or lying?"

 

The simplest answer is usually right. They can simply be mistaken without hallucinating, being delusional, or lying.

 

We can at least eliminate some of your options. Starting with lying... you said that you weren't contradicting the quote "the experience is real to them". If it is real to them then they aren't lying, so unless you've changed your mind that's nix on lying.

 

That leaves us with everyone who says they have a personal relationship with Jesus is hallucinating or delusional by your account, yes?

Edited August 23, 2013 by Iggy

[tar]

The three of you,

 

I am not thinking that imaginary friends are as bad as you are making them out to be.

 

Perhaps there is an understood portion of gamesmanship, or pretending, or playing, that is inherent in the partnership between a child and their imaginary friend.

 

I one day myself in a recent year, looked up at the sky and said "funny guy, funny". Who exactly I thought I might be talking to would have had to have been somebody capable of a playing a huge, otherwise unexplainable in normal terms, joke. That I take the possibility completely seriously is not true. That I completely rule it out is also not true, evidenced by the fact that I really said the words, pretending that I was actually "in on" it's joke.

 

I am thinking that there may be "another" possibility, other than delusional, or mistaken, or halucinating, or lying.

 

Perhaps there are a great many things that we are "in on" with reality. Things that "we get" about reality. Enough to not be wrong, to be intimate with it. Close enough friends with reality, to allow for banter and play with it.

 

Regards, TAR2

Is anybody that believes there is a border between Canada and the U.S. hallucinating or delusional?

Where the border crosses a river or lake, or where there is no fence, there is no evidence of the thing. It's an imaginary line. It's an agreed upon idea, that somebody made up, and everybody else is honoring the agreement. It is not real to fish and birds and ants and trees and vines, and the sun and rain fall the same on either side of the line.

[Iggy]

 

The three of you,

 

I am not thinking that imaginary friends are as bad as you are making them out to be.

 

Perhaps there is an understood portion of gamesmanship, or pretending, or playing, that is inherent in the partnership between a child and their imaginary friend.

 

I one day myself in a recent year, looked up at the sky and said "funny guy, funny". Who exactly I thought I might be talking to would have had to have been somebody capable of a playing a huge, otherwise unexplainable in normal terms, joke. That I take the possibility completely seriously is not true. That I completely rule it out is also not true, evidenced by the fact that I really said the words, pretending that I was actually "in on" it's joke.

 

I am thinking that there may be "another" possibility, other than delusional, or mistaken, or halucinating, or lying.

 

Perhaps there are a great many things that we are "in on" with reality. Things that "we get" about reality. Enough to not be wrong, to be intimate with it. Close enough friends with reality, to allow for banter and play with it.

 

Regards, TAR2

Is anybody that believes there is a border between Canada and the U.S. hallucinating or delusional?

 

Where the border crosses a river or lake, or where there is no fence, there is no evidence of the thing. It's an imaginary line. It's an agreed upon idea, that somebody made up, and everybody else is honoring the agreement. It is not real to fish and birds and ants and trees and vines, and the sun and rain fall the same on either side of the line.

 

 

I'm curious, besides life grandeur, or a general sense of the divine, have you ever seen anything specific (maybe even when you were young) that seemed supernatural and religious?

[iNow]

That leaves us with everyone who says they have a personal relationship with Jesus is hallucinating or delusional by your account, yes? (underline added)

A personal relationship with someone who maybe never even existed at all? A personal relationship with someone who... even if he did actually exist... died two thousand years ago?

 

Yes, I'm saying that people who say they have these personal relationships are deluded, or at the very least hallucinating, but probably just deluded.

 

 

 

The same would be true of someone who said they have a personal relationship with Napoleon, or with Christopher Columbus, or Tycho Brahe or Nicolas Copernicus or Cleopatra. Could they be inspired by these individuals and find them to be amazing or motivational? Sure, but personal relationship? No, that's deluded. They are dead. If you think you have a personal relationship in the present with someone who is long dead, then you are deluded or lying. Same with Jesus, who doesn't have anywhere near as much evidence for his existence as those other names I just cited.

Edited August 23, 2013 by iNow

[tar]

Iggy,

 

I have already admitted to such on other threads and probably this thread. I spoke to God and made him a promise when I was 13. I remember a time in my life when I actually "felt" Jesus' love in the air around me, when I was maybe 20. I saw the ghost of a man who had hung himself off the lamppost at the end of his driveway years before when I was 18. I and a group of others witnessed some "visitors", some lights, fueling up on a high tension line, for many minutes, before whizzing up and off, at unthinkable speeds, when I was 18, I had an epiphany on a mountaintop in Germany when I was in the Army in 1980 where I "understood" treeness and life on Earth, and how life had grabbed form and structure from a universe tending toward entropy, for what is but a fleeting moment in the expanse of space and time, I twice (the only two times I tried) ended long term droughts by humming an indian rain dance to the clouds while flying out of the drought stricken areas, while in my forties.

 

So yes, I have had some hard to explain away experiences. I still try to explain them away, and understand about coincidence, and correlation not meaning causation. And I understand about biases and illusions and chemicals affecting ones perceptions and memories and such, and I am on a general quest to understand and explain everything I have witnessed to the point where there is no contradiction, and everything makes coherent, consistence sense. But I am just one guy. There are 8 billion of us experiencers currently experiencing this reality. I am willing to bet I am not the only one with a few "questions" to still answer, about how this place is strung together. And my answers may not "do it" for anybody else, much less everybody else, but under the circumstances, I think it reasonable to give everybody the benefit of the doubt. Give everybody a modicum of human judgement, and allow anybody that wants an imaginary friend to have it, without requiring my permission or facing my disapproval.

 

In other words. I don't think people that believe in God are broken. I might think I know why they believe in God, and what they might be talking about, that I can translate into my understanding of the world, and what I know they are saying that is internally inconsistent and such, but basically, I don't think anybody, sane or crazy, knowledgeable or ignorant, selfish or generous, stupid or genius, is really all that different from me. And since I don't consider myself broken, they probably are not broken, either.

 

Regards, TAR2

[iNow]

You spoke to yourself, TAR. Not god(s).

Edited August 23, 2013 by iNow

[tar]

Except for Al Queda members. Them folks are seriously broken.

[Iggy]

Iggy,

 

I have already admitted to such on other threads and probably this thread. I spoke to God and made him a promise when I was 13. I remember a time in my life when I actually "felt" Jesus' love in the air around me, when I was maybe 20. I saw the ghost of a man who had hung himself off the lamppost at the end of his driveway years before when I was 18. I and a group of others witnessed some "visitors", some lights, fueling up on a high tension line, for many minutes, before whizzing up and off, at unthinkable speeds, when I was 18, I had an epiphany on a mountaintop in Germany when I was in the Army in 1980 where I "understood" treeness and life on Earth, and how life had grabbed form and structure from a universe tending toward entropy, for what is but a fleeting moment in the expanse of space and time, I twice (the only two times I tried) ended long term droughts by humming an indian rain dance to the clouds while flying out of the drought stricken areas, while in my forties.

 

So yes, I have had some hard to explain away experiences.

That is more than I could have hoped for. While I don't share your belief in God (or the divine or whatever you might call it), I certainly recognize the category of experiences you're addressing. I don't think them odd at all.

 

And I understand about biases and illusions and chemicals affecting ones perceptions and memories and such, and I am on a general quest to understand and explain everything I have witnessed to the point where there is no contradiction, and everything makes coherent, consistence sense. But I am just one guy.

In this case, you aren't just one guy.

 

It is actually relevant. Earlier in the thread Inow quoted the newest version of the DSM (a version that isn't on most psychologist's shelves yet), and it says the following:

 

Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith).

Now... Inow wants to call belief in God delusional based on the above. I would suggest, obviously, that what you've felt and experienced is something "ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture". It is also "an article of religious faith".

 

It isn't delusional, and don't let anyone tell you that it is.

 

That's hate speech!

 

And since I don't consider myself broken, they probably are not broken, either.

 

Regards, TAR2

Amen, brother.

Except for Al Queda members. Them folks are seriously broken.

 

Well... not every belief is broken, but some consequences of faith clearly need stomped out.

[tar]

iNow,

 

I know that now. But at the time, it was God to whom I made the promise. You know, the beginning and the end fellow.

 

Regards, TAR2