People who believe in god are broken

[doG]

doG,

 

Exactly. There is a much difference between an apple and an orange, as there is between having an idea of God, and believing in the ideal.

 

Regards, TAR2

That's why it's OK to theorize deities but believing in them on faith alone is to be broken....

[Moontanman]

OK, I know this is anecdotal and you're not going to be able confirm it but here it is.

 

A guy known to me, who was a aggressive atheist most if not all of his life, went fundamentalist Christian a couple years ago. He went from asserting religion was total bollocks to creationist practically over night. It was very difficult to visit him, his "need" to convert everyone he came in contact with was quite a bit more than annoying. A few weeks ago he was diagnosed with a fatal inoperable brain tumor. The doctors said the tumor was in a part of his brain that controlled his cognitive and or reasoning abilities, I haven't seen him in a long while but it seems he had finally driven all his friends away due to his proselytizing but now the docs say his trip from reason to delusion was almost certainly fired by his brain tumor.

 

Just saying...

[tar]

Moontanman,

 

OK I think brain tumors, or drugs, or sleep deprivation, or sensory deprivation, as in a cave, can throw one rather off their game. Broken, or temporarily broken, or working without all their facilities, and such.

 

But I have always been a little off, myself. A little crazy, but in a controlled sort of way. I of course can't know how crazy or sane I might appear to others, other than going by what people say to me, or how they act toward me, or by a consensus opinion, or by a comparision of my thoughts and actions and motivations and such, to others around me.

 

I may be able to express my opinion and be understood, or not. I may score badly or well on one kind of "test" or well or badly on another. The criteria for crazy fit most everybody, in small ways, or every once in a while everybody's "judgement" slips.

 

My thinking on this, or my theory about it, is that there is a general standard of sane, rational behavior, that becomes "understood" to an individual, and it consists of, or an individual is informed of this, by not only the actions and determinations and observations of those humans around them, but of the actions and determinations and observations of others one learns about from news reels and history and literature and such. There IS a standard that one can hold themselves too, or compare themselves against.

 

So take it one step further. Is it "rational" to consider that there is a general standard of unbroken, rational, complete and solid, proper human behavior? Evidently there is, because we normally lock people away, who wander dangerously away from the standard. But since the standard is based on what other people think, and how other people behave, the standard tends to vary between families and groups, and societies, at any one time in history, and also varies in any one family or group or society over time.

 

So if you believe that there is one standard, that fits all, that anyone, anytime, anywhere, can judge themselves against, and call themselves either broken or fit, in reference to this standard, it is possible that the standard exists. Such a standard could be rationalized by a humanist. Or rationalized by an idealist. Or rationalized by a theist.

 

Or if some theist makes a promise to God, or submits overtly to this God's judgement, it should not be considered a completely, apples and oranges, different kind of thing, if one makes a promise to his/herself, or relies completely on one's own judgment or conscience, or if one submits to the laws and judgements and considerations of science or the courts.

 

We are not "broken" to submit to the reality around us. Its evidently, the proper, fitting thing to do.

 

Regards, TAR2