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brailsmt
Election Made Sure
Joined: 21 Jun 2009
Posts: 2206
Location: Zion (Jackson County, MO)
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 Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:17 am Post subject: |
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| Subversive Asset 2.0 wrote: | | Heck, even try answering Asimov's "The Last Question" -- the most pressing issue of the universe. |
That is an excellent short story.
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Mercury
Mormon Kuffar
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
Posts: 1569
Location: Enemy Territory
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:39 am Post subject: |
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| Subversive Asset 2.0 wrote: | | Mercury wrote: |
See, this is why I just need to stay away from conversations here right now. Regardless of whether or not SA 2.0 is trying to be rude or not, I'm taking statements and internalizing then as rudeness, much like I did with cumoms post. What I'm saying is it's not you guys, it's me. Regardless...
The biggest issue is I am scared to choose another "life path" in regards to organized religion or even a spiritual confederation, such as some may find in say Alcoholics Anonymous or other similar programs. So I have my own views on this thing we call life, and what may be in store for us in the hereafter. I do not understand why others who do not believe in a "creator" or "higher power" find it expedient for agnostics such as myself to do subscribe to what I am interpreting as another "religion" from the quoted post.
My spirituality is mine. As I said, I'm not trying to force it on someone else, or convert others to my point of view. Sorry if my view on it was not relevant or of worth for the continuity of this conversation. |
Well, I'm just trying to give you a word of advice. You have full choice over how you will try to improve yourself in this life (and in the next), so if you are going to say, "It's not you guys, it's me," then shouldn't you REALLY want to improve that. God or no god, I would think this is a clear, practical goal to have.
it just seems to me that we have *functional* belief systems and *dysfunctional* ones. And you have some *dysfunctional* belief systems. I don't care about what you believe. I care that you OVERTLY and OBVIOUSLY seem to not be comfortable with it. You OVERTLY and OBVIOUSLY seem to be hiding or running away for something that you find to be so unpleasant that you cannot accept it.
This simply doesn't seem healthy. |
I'll address the highlighted part here in a minute.
However, I think we are more talking past each other at the moment.
What I am OVERTLY and OBVIOUSLY hiding and running away from is the Mormonism that still permeates my life on a daily basis. What I am going towards in regards to my spiritual beliefs is still unknown to me. It is all new and I happen to find it refreshing. I feel liberated more and more each day. Recently, I've stopped wearing g's. That was a huge, HUGE step. Coming out completely to my wife was a huge one also. I do not find anything unpleasant about my continuing spiritual journey. Do I find it confusing at times? Without a doubt. What I am not looking forward to is the day that I share this with my extended family.
Now, the highlighted part. Instead of just beating around the bush, and either minimizing or denying what *IS*, because for me it is a a painful subject, one in which I still in the infancy of this process find to be shameful and a perceived weakness, is that I have had to come to terms that there is something *broken* with me. I'm currently in therapy with mental health professionals regarding depression, anger, bouts of euphoria, feelings of inadequacy and not worthy of either giving or receiving love, feelings of perceived persecution, etc. etc. all of which I am beginning to understand are the result of living with persons who have mental health issues, emotional, mental, sexual, and physical abuse, religious insanity, and my inability to cope with it all.
All of which is a huge step for me. I know there are mental health issues, particularly from my mothers side. Both of her grandfathers, my great-grandfathers committed suicide. They were known for exhibiting symptoms of mental illness along with alcoholism. My mother is bi-polar, or manic-depressive, or whatever the hell they are calling today.
And I have had issues with accepting that I am *broken* in this manner. It's obvious as all hell. I have lived this way for too many years. The manner in which I have coped with all this has finally broken, like a dam, and cannot be contained anymore. It's finally broke, and so have I. And it sucks. And it hurts.
So that is what I mean by "It's not you guys, it's me". For instance, with cumoms post the other day, I felt initially that he was baiting me, and responded as such. Then edited it after I concluded that it probably wasn't the way I perceived it to be.
So please excuse me for saying that I believe in a creator of some ilk, yet I do not know what path my spirituality is taking me on at the current time except for one that involves a lot of hurting and healing and not being able to map it all out point by point to be dissected here. Because I don't even know at the moment. I apologize for keeping it real.
And now I feel as if I have exposed myself as some psychotic, ax-murdering, out-of-control piece of shit that drowns kittens in the toilet and blows puppies up in the microwave oven. Whatever.
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Mercury
Mormon Kuffar
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
Posts: 1569
Location: Enemy Territory
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:44 am Post subject: |
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| brailsmt wrote: | | Subversive Asset 2.0 wrote: | I don't care about what you believe. I care that you OVERTLY and OBVIOUSLY seem to not be comfortable with it. You OVERTLY and OBVIOUSLY seem to be hiding or running away for something that you find to be so unpleasant that you cannot accept it.
This simply doesn't seem healthy. |
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Glad you have it all figured out.
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"We perpetuate the lie that the church's needs are greater, more profound, more virtuous, and more accurate than our own."
Lola-Cola 04/07/2009 |
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brailsmt
Election Made Sure
Joined: 21 Jun 2009
Posts: 2206
Location: Zion (Jackson County, MO)
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:01 am Post subject: |
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@Mercury:
I understand at least part of what you are going through. I left the church in stages. Once I openly admitted the church had issues, I still clung to a belief in god and jesus christ. Slowly, over a few months, I began to think about the nature of god, not the predefined nature of god that was force fed to me, but what I would consider the ideal god. It didn't take long to realize just how different my god would be from the mormon god we grew up with. Then I started to question whether god existed at all, and I read. I read a lot. It was then that I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and that book really woke something up inside me. For me, at least, that book was a defining one in my journey thus far. That is when I began to openly doubt and question god's existence. The last six months have served to really solidify the fact (IMNSHO) that there is no god.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I have walked a part of your journey and I know what its like to feel broken and awful because of the church. I know what it is like to face the idea of leaving the church without leaving god and faith. I hope you can find the help you need to arrive at your own conclusions. If anything I've said helps in any way (to draw you to atheism, or push you to something else), then I'm glad to have helped you discover what makes the most sense for you.
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AmazingDisgrace
Cuts like a Ruffalo
Joined: 02 Feb 2008
Posts: 121
Location: Florida
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:07 am Post subject: |
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When I was a theist, I took this assumption for granted, but we should ask ourselves: what reason is there to believe that existence is meaningless unless it goes on forever?
We can look at it inductively - suppose there's an afterlife that will go on for 1000 years, but at the end of that time our consciousness will cease to exist. Would this make our lives more meaningful than the average 77 year lifespan? What if it lasts for 10^1000 or even 10^1000^1000 years? Would an inconceivably long existence still be meaningless simply because it ends at some point? |
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Lola-Cola
Libation du Jour
Joined: 07 Sep 2008
Posts: 1042
Location: Seattle
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:31 am Post subject: |
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| AmazingDisgrace wrote: | When I was a theist, I took this assumption for granted, but we should ask ourselves: what reason is there to believe that existence is meaningless unless it goes on forever?
We can look at it inductively - suppose there's an afterlife that will go on for 1000 years, but at the end of that time our consciousness will cease to exist. Would this make our lives more meaningful than the average 77 year lifespan? What if it lasts for 10^1000 or even 10^1000^1000 years? Would an inconceivably long existence still be meaningless simply because it ends at some point? |
I like that reasoning too. Meaning is found in the defining lines, the boundaries, and thus the uses of a thing. And SA 2.0 nails it too with meaning being a subjective experience. Eternal existence is boundless, useless, meaningless. Big surprise there. 
However, this atheist still thinks objective reality is quite awesome -- granted, it's by my subjective measure but fuck, we humans have to accept this reality too. ETA -- Thank our predecessors that we have science to help us out cause religion has really let us down -- BIG TIME.
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Last edited by Lola-Cola on Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Lola-Cola
Libation du Jour
Joined: 07 Sep 2008
Posts: 1042
Location: Seattle
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:38 am Post subject: |
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PS, from certain perspectives ... you know, like dogs and flowers and pre-19th C humans and dead 3rd World babies ... 77 years is a fucking eternity. So qwitchurbellyakin! and start living foos!
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Sophocles
Election Made Sure
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
Posts: 981
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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| jahedgpeth wrote: | | Is it our own selfishness that drives us to tear down “religion”? Do we want “believers” to come around to an atheist way of thinking so that our own lives will be a little more fair, safe, and have less friction? Is it our desires to have a workable environment for our genetic information to grow and thrive? What is it that drives people like Hitchens? I don’t get it when I consider the ramifications of a reality that means nothing. |
This reminds me of some statistical analysis that Thomas Gilovich did in the 80s which basically debunks the idea of the "hot hand" in basketball. Turns out shooting a basketball is like flipping a coin, and streaks (consecutive strings of makes and misses) arise as often as random chance would predict.
What drives us to do research like this? There is no practical benefit to be gained from this knowledge, nothing that benefits the coach or the players during the game, that I can see.
Besides, the idea of the hot hand is fun. I remember a video game in the 90s called NBA Jam where after your player scored three uncontested shots in a row he would be "on fire" and make everything he put up until the other team scored. Why take away that fun?
Coaches who encounter Gilovich's research have been known to dismiss it. They don't care what some scientist says, no one is going to tell them not to feed the ball to the guy with the hot hand. I don't have a problem with that at all, because it's just basketball. But this tendency to dismiss real evidence in favor of our perceptions can be problematic in other areas. As much as learning new things, it's unlearning things that are wrong that advances civilization.
I think the value of this kind of research lies in honing our thinking process. The hot hand is an example of sloppy thinking. It's seeing patterns in randomness that aren't really there. We seem to be hardwired to do this, and knowing that helps us to recognize the tendency in other applications where it might make a real difference. Besides, getting past our cognitive biases in order to more accurately perceive reality is a worthwhile pursuit in its own right, even if the practical results aren't immediately useful (or attractive).
To answer your original question, J, in matters as trivial as basketball, I don't care if people believe in a god any more than if they believe in astrology. But astrologists don't have a lobby that influences our foreign policy with regard to Israel. I could care less if someone practices alchemy in their garage, but I would care if alchemists were trying to get equal time in public science curricula.
I don't believe in a god or an afterlife, but I still live my life as if my choices matter. Because they do, to me. And when I play basketball I still feed the guy with the hot hand, even though I know it doesn't exist, because it's fun. |
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cumom
Election Made Sure
Joined: 22 Aug 2006
Posts: 6852
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 12:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Mercury wrote: | | So that is what I mean by "It's not you guys, it's me". For instance, with cumoms post the other day, I felt initially that he was baiting me, and responded as such. Then edited it after I concluded that it probably wasn't the way I perceived it to be. |
I think I missed this. What thread was this? |
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Mercury
Mormon Kuffar
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
Posts: 1569
Location: Enemy Territory
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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| cumom wrote: | | Mercury wrote: | | So that is what I mean by "It's not you guys, it's me". For instance, with cumoms post the other day, I felt initially that he was baiting me, and responded as such. Then edited it after I concluded that it probably wasn't the way I perceived it to be. |
I think I missed this. What thread was this? |
t-shirt thread. like i said. i have issues right now. it's really not cool at all. sorry.
just please, please no one start acting like mercury is the person in the room that everyone smiles at and shakes their head yes to just appease the crazy person.
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"We perpetuate the lie that the church's needs are greater, more profound, more virtuous, and more accurate than our own."
Lola-Cola 04/07/2009 |
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brailsmt
Election Made Sure
Joined: 21 Jun 2009
Posts: 2206
Location: Zion (Jackson County, MO)
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 1:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Mercury wrote: | | just please, please no one start acting like mercury is the person in the room that everyone smiles at and shakes their head yes to just appease the crazy person. |
That sounds like the temple... LOL
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Lola-Cola
Libation du Jour
Joined: 07 Sep 2008
Posts: 1042
Location: Seattle
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 1:07 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, yeah, Soph. It always begins with fun and games.  I like your point and I hate being part of a perceived fun-sponge, but my time in Mormonism taught me one thing if nothing else: "faith is a principle of action."
There is no "I'm doing this just for fun" or "it's okay to believe whatever as long as you don't let it cross into the real world -- as long as you don't let it affect me or others." We live as we think. What we think colors aspects of ourselves and how we see the world in subtle ways. To ask someone to do otherwise is to ask them to lie to themselves and others -- possibly one of the few things that actually makes ignorance irredeemable.
So, being a fundie for striving toward the closest proximation of objective reality possible, I have to say I much prefer an open and public advocacy of rational discipline. Even for the apparently innocent and fun stuff.
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wry catcher
Holier than thou...yes, this means thou
Joined: 22 Aug 2006
Posts: 5179
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 1:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Merc, I hope you will take it *totally* in the spirit it's intended when I say I'm very hopeful for you and proud of you. I'm really glad you're taking care of yourself this way, or starting to, which is huge. |
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jahedgpeth
White Noise
Joined: 28 May 2008
Posts: 1820
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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| wry catcher wrote: | | Merc, I hope you will take it *totally* in the spirit it's intended when I say I'm very hopeful for you and proud of you. I'm really glad you're taking care of yourself this way, or starting to, which is huge. |
X2
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GhostPuma
Election Made Sure
Joined: 24 Feb 2009
Posts: 140
Location: Can't, there're watching!
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Mercury wrote: |
So please excuse me for saying that I believe in a creator of some ilk, yet I do not know what path my spirituality is taking me on at the current time except for one that involves a lot of hurting and healing and not being able to map it all out point by point to be dissected here. Because I don't even know at the moment. I apologize for keeping it real. |
Merc, I love reading your comments so don't stop posting whatever you do. All the arguments here at FLAK usually end up constructive after a few pages have been logged. I think most of the people posting here have gone through similar transitions and feelings when trying to leave the church and ultimately it has led many of us from organized religion all together. From what I've read you've already made much progress and I hope you can find the right place for you. As for myself, I have no need for religion whatsoever in my life anymore. It was a hard process but one I don't regret for an instant. I consider myself an atheist because I believe that the probability of a 'God' is very, very minimal. I consider such things as my family, nature, and laughter my religion now. The thought of nothing after this life is actually comforting to me. I think we can help improve the life of our family/friends and just do the things that will help others and this planet. If I can help in part accomplishing these things then I feel I have lived a meaningful life. As corny as it is I have always loved the starfish story because it really embodies what I believe this life is for me. I'm going to post it just in case someone hasn't heard it a million times in church already. Enjoy or stop reading here if you want.
Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.
One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.
As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.
He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"
The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."
"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.
To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."
Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"
At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."
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