Messages

I kinda wonder why I'm arguing when my arguments get ignored all the time. So I'm outta here. 

1) Comparing the existence of love and the existence of god is silly. Plus, the believer doesn't want the existence of love to be proved, he wants proof that the non-believer loves e.g. their parents.
The important difference is that there's tons of evidence that a deep emotional bond we call love exists (even if it's just a chemical reaction of some kind), as opposed to zero evidence that a god exists.
Thus, no sane person would (should) deny that love does exist, and saying that there's very probably no god is equally logical, regarding the amount of evidence for both hypotheses.
In my book, believing in whatever deity you chose is fine, as long as you don't live life differently because of it. It all breaks down to Pascal's Wager, which is flawed in many ways. Look it up.

I'm sure everybody believes in love. Just as we all believe in belief.
....ehm, wait, this doesn't sound right, though that would be the right comparision.
So I think you missed the point there.
I compared love to faith, because the latter was deemed irrational. I thought this didn't describe the problem if there was any.
So it's not about believing in love, but the irrationality of it.
Faith in god is irrational, love is irrational.

That "recpect it all" actually has never done. We do not respect one man who believes that killing virgins is good for his Karma, do we? We do not respect people telling Jews are fags and that we must gas them all, do we? We do not respect someone denying holocaust (We don' t... In many countries we imprison him even...) Which is good.

I am not trying to say that religious people are virgin killers, antisemites or holocaust negationists, ok? My point is just that "We never respected EVERYTHING".

It's one thing to have a personal faith/belief, but another to use it as a motive for your actions. Like I already said, it doesn't excuse crusades, terrorism or some actions of the Bush administration "in the name of god".
I wonder why you come back to this point, though.

[their]

THUS I SHALL BURN IN HELL FOR ETERNITY!!!1

How dare you...blah blah.

People dare to judge themselves and others on daily basis.

To any matter, I can apply whatever approach I want. I believe in.

I believe in physical world, what I can see, hear and touch -- therefore laws of physics.
This gives me hope and sense of security dealing with world and life. This keeps me safe. Like your religion keeps you.

How dare you to tell me I cannot have my beliefs and explanations?

Don't I deserve way to understand and deal with matters I cannot understand fully? Don't I have right to deal it with my way to not be lost in a world of things beyond our comprehension? Am I forced to follow the way Holy Bible explains those things?
What if my Bible has "Physics for 8th grade" written on its cover? Are you saying that my beliefs are worse than yours?

So my religion renders yours highly unlikely. Does that mean I'm judging you?

By not believing what you do, and calling it impossible or stupid, I'm practicing my religion.
EXACTLY what you do when practicing yours, denying all science.

How come you can do that, and I'm automatically a dickhead and evil when I dare to do this?

I am so, SO terribly offended.
Heartbroken.
I won't post in this thread anymore.

:'( :'( :'(

Now what's your problem anyway?
LGM wasn't ignorant of your views, attacked them or talked to you specifically.

Can we do that? Because "Religion works for me for being a better person, it is a set of moral rules, etc, etc..." is an argument believers constantly say.

Not their religion or faith. Look, did you read what LGM wrote, he had a good point and actually his post was one of the few here that I found to be enlightening. Some people follow what the church, the pastor and the pope has to say, yes. Others just believe in god, other also in the bible, but don't care about what those clerical authorities want you to believe or to follow.

Of course, when the "church" pisses it off, they inmediatly claim "THAT is not religion!!!"

Huh? Who does that?? Maybe they say that it's not their religion/faith/belief whatever. Or maybe they say that it's not christian/jewish/muslim/whatever.

What I'm getting from all what you write here is that you generally think that religious people are suspect, you're skeptical of them and assume the worst. You throw them in one pot and you won't stop doing that so there's no point in discussing it.

When I read your post in full length, though (which is hard because your stereotypical world view disgusts me a bit) I see that you have some valid points.
Yes, it's evil to act in the name of religion, like starting a crusade or doing terror acts. There's not question about it. I think this is the main criticism you can throw at the Bush administration.
Also, I'm not sure if anyone said that religion is about making you a better human being? Is atheism about that? I don't think it's either.

@InCreator: Who the fuck are you talking to?

Yeah, that has been said before and I think we all agree on that. And I don't think there are many people who literally believe in the bible, that's why I don't see a point in discussing that further.

Dito.

I'm not sure if I ever said differently...
Personally, I'm not religious at all, so I'm not arguing for myself here.

I wouldn't want to go as far as to convert Nacho to Christianity now.
I just hope that he will realize that religion or the belief in god can have value for some people.

Are they Christians or not?

Like I said, "They are some kind of christians, though."

If this is too cryptic for you, then I give you a yes.

Which semantics? I asked if Jehova' s witnesses are Christians. You said no.

"Christian: One who professes belief in Jesus as Christ or follows the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus; one who lives according to the teachings of Jesus"

Therefore, Jehova' s witnesses (according to you) do not professe belief in Jesus as Christ or follow the religion based on the life and teaching of Jesus, and they don' t live according to the teaching of Jesus.

Where is the semantic problem?

Well yeah, I said that they aren't the same, since they deviate from the catholic and evangelical church for example. They are some kind of christians, though. You can't just generalize.

Christian: One who professes belief in Jesus as Christ or follows the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus; one who lives according to the teachings of Jesus.

Okay, I am going to imagine again, based on your posts:

Jehova' s witnesses, mormons, amish do not professe belief in Christ and do not follow the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus.

Imagining is cool...

Well, here we may have a problem with semantics. Like I said, you can't throw catholics, evangelics, mormons or Jehova's witnesses in one pot (not only because this might amount to cannibalism ). They all may be some kind of christian, but not the same.

I said love is rational? Where? I mentioned three examples of why love does not annoy me, and many others, as Religion.

You may not have said that, but how is one irrational behaviour better than another?

And all the things that seem to annoy you about religion don't seem to have anything to do with the personal belief, but instead with the intertwinement  of state and church. I think this discussion could settle if you managed to distinguish between these two points.

Hope, love, trust, happiness are supposed to have a supernatural source?

No.

Which doesn't make love rational, though.

Also, as far as I know, hope, love, trust, hapiness isn't receiving taxes at any country in the world.

Two.

What has this to do with a personal belief in some kind of religion?

Hope, love, trust, hapiness, is not teached at school...

Three.

What has this to do with a personal belief in some kind of religion?

We are discussing the possible need for seperation of state and church all over again. It has nothing to do with the validity of religion itself.

Anyway, are you recognising that Religion is the same as hope, love, trust, hapiness? Do you finally recognise that Religion is a feeling, and nothing else?

If the answer is "yes", we can, finally afther 8 pages, end the discussion. Weeeh!

I don't remember anyone disputing this, so you basically only imagined an opposition. Interesting!

Finally a believer recognises that "Religion is not actually that big".

Religion plays a big role in the life of some people. Do you want to dispute that?

Jehova' s witnesses are Christians, Do we agree?

Well, they're as much the same as the evangelical and catholic church are the same, or the mormons and the amish are the same, so in other words, they aren't.

Well, you can still expect common sense from religious people.
Also, I don't like the concept that someone tells other people how they have to believe or what they have to believe in, like the pope or leader of religious sects do.

And a belief in god isn't more irrational than love.

And Ozzie, i think you should say "A post from Nacho that is, in my opinion, sensible" From my point of view, all the post I do are sensible, otherwise I wouldn't post them ^_^.

Your definition of sensible certainly differs from mine then.

A sensible post from Nacho, woo! Sorry for my sarcasm, but I am surprised...

Anyway, it's true that it's quite weird to how many different conclusions people come through reading the bible.
Maybe it's often too vague, outdated or just too difficult to understand for some people? Can't tell, never read much of it.
Anyway, christianity is based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and the basic principles he preached are all about peace, selflessness and tolerance. So anyone who deviates drastically of those is morally not a christian in my opinion.

The generalization in this thread is driving me nuts.
It may be a personal weakness to believe in god or to cling to a religion.
But then, many big questions are still not answered by science, so how should I answer myself things with that I don't have the faintest idea how they could work or could have happened without believing in god, maybe?

But even if at some point in time all those questions will be fully answered, people would still need to know, understand and accept them. They may choose simpler explanations, though.

Whatever, people are imperfect by definition, and I'm glad it's this way.

But how are you making things better by telling them that they are stupid for believing in a god?

Am I stupid because I am ridiculously bad in sport or can't think abstractly?
Because I'm incapable of good english or have a relatively short attention span?

Every person has its strength and weaknesses, and if people believe and pray to a higher spirit to make them feel better then you shouldn't have a fucking problem with that.

@Stupot: Depends on your education and where you grow up, I guess. Here in Germany we don't pray or sing hymns in school (not that I can remember at least!) and the religious education is quite open to the world of science, the modern society and their views.
We learn that the bible isn't meant to be taken literally.
So, I don't know. I can't say that I come from a christian family, but yeah, I got taken to church a few times, I was in the kids church choir (so actually quite voluntarily) and had religious class in school until the tenth grade. Then on the spur of the moment I switched to ethic. I actually was kinda surprised I did this seeing my choice of subjects after the holidays. I think I learned more there, but I never had to defend my belief or lack thereof in any way I can remember. While state and church aren't really separated in Germany religion isn't really force upon kids.

Of course, except if you parents force you to it, but well, how should society change that.

[more]

To follow-up:

Let's please not talk about the separation of church and state. That topic just completely annoys me.

Why? I'm interested to hear how this could annoy you more then a discussion about religion itself...
I mean, I didn't want to involve you into this discussion anyways, just wanted to point out to Nacho that he might be annoyed with religion and religious people for the wrong reasons.

@Ozzie: We simply can't  demmand separation of church and state if believers don' t recognise that their beliefs are indistinguisable from any other belief created by man, because if they don' t recognise so, they will allways find that they have "the divine right" to keep church and state together.

Oh yeah, those evil believers, they're all the same.  :
France has a seperation between state and church since.....well, a very long time.
How the fuck did that happen? How could it happen?  

@Nacho: Then the separation of church and state might be a more appropiate subject matter to discuss, though.

@Nacho: You know, people that believe in god, put their faith in him, don't necessarily state his existence as a fact or are forcing other people see it that way. Yeah, there are those "conservative" idiots that call themselves christians that defend any action they take with their religion and declare every word of the bible as a fact. Personally I'm insulted by those guys out of many reasons, but one is that they call themselves something they clearly aren't. Christianity is about peace and tolerance, but they're the opposite, aggressive and intolerant. They're just a vocal minority though, so whatever.

What I wanted to ask is: Why don't you let people believe what they want?

Well, I think it would be cool to make a spiritual game of some kind, a christian one or whatever.

I think I'm an agnostic more than anything else, kinda in the way like Ghost said, "I dislike god for not existing".
Religion is something I don't care at all about, but I kinda find the idea intriguing of believing in and serving a higher spirit, yeah, but since I can't believe in it it doesn't work.

Anyway, I thought The Apostle was a awful to awesome (depending on the scene) spiritual movie. The first half hour was terribly preachy and a conversion scene later on is just laughable. But it portrays the life of a pastor who helped to bring people together and build a peaceful community that's there for each other. It's not that good/evil though since earlier on he murdered some guy his wife had an affair with.

To return to topic: I think if you make your game interesting, humane and somehow manage to portray the nature of religious beliefs and faith without wanting to convert your audience then you might be on the right track in my opinion.
If you want to bring people together to work on a christian game than you need a clear vision, though. It's an intriguing outline, but it may need more, just saying.