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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: Ishtarr

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: Ishtarr


I still find a religious view a more sensible approach than an atheist one -especially positive atheist- because a religious approach has nothing to loose and something to gain.

No, it doesnt. Pasal's fallacy rears its ugly head again.

It's got nothing to do with Pasal's Wager, because I don't consider the benefit or choosing religion as a belief system to be eternal bliss, but instead, the benefit of having the social interaction, the hope, the comfort and so on people derive from having religion.
Even if the believe in God turns out to be wrong, people still have gained something from believing.

Pascal's Wager states that believing in God is only a benefit if the believe turns out to be true. I don't think that's a correct point of view.

Mind you, I still find any choice in faith around the existence of God, be it atheism or religion to be a less sensible approach than agnosticism, but if one feels compelled to base ones views on faith, the religious approach is the more sensible of the two.

It doesnt require religion to have social interaction, hope and comfort. Reliance on religion for those things is the result of indoctrination, nothing more. What they lose from believing is the ability to base their actions on logic, untainted by mythology, and to the extent those behaviors differ they have lost. They also lose the time spent worshiping and praying and the money spent donating to structures that exist to create and then feed on their need.

Doesnt sound at all sensible to me.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: Ishtarr

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: Ishtarr

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: Ishtarr


I still find a religious view a more sensible approach than an atheist one -especially positive atheist- because a religious approach has nothing to loose and something to gain.

No, it doesnt. Pasal's fallacy rears its ugly head again.

It's got nothing to do with Pasal's Wager, because I don't consider the benefit or choosing religion as a belief system to be eternal bliss, but instead, the benefit of having the social interaction, the hope, the comfort and so on people derive from having religion.
Even if the believe in God turns out to be wrong, people still have gained something from believing.

Pascal's Wager states that believing in God is only a benefit if the believe turns out to be true. I don't think that's a correct point of view.

Mind you, I still find any choice in faith around the existence of God, be it atheism or religion to be a less sensible approach than agnosticism, but if one feels compelled to base ones views on faith, the religious approach is the more sensible of the two.

It doesnt require religion to have social interaction, hope and comfort. Reliance on religion for those things is the result of indoctrination, nothing more. What they lose from believing is the ability to base their actions on logic, untainted by mythology, and to the extent those behaviors differ they have lost. They also lose the time spent worshiping and praying and the money spent donating to structures that exist to create and then feed on their need.

Doesnt sound at all sensible to me.

Apparently you have a hard time differentiating between dogma and faith.
I've never said that people who are indoctrinated are better off.

What I said was that if one feels compelled to CHOOSE to live one's life having faith, that CHOICE has a benefit.
Those indoctrinated don't apply, because they never made any choice.
But for a person who rationally has looked at their options, if they want to choose a path of faith it's going to offer them more than to choose a path of disbelieve that can more easily be wrong.

Further, you seem to falsely equate organized religion with having the faith that God exists. Besides the fact that there are many religions a person can choose that don't practice indoctrination, there is also the option of just believing in God, without ascribing to any practicing organized religion.
Most people I know who believe in God don't go to church, don't waste lot of time worshipping (they only do it when they want to derive personal strength from it at the moment) and don't spend money at all on donations to maintain physical structures.
They have just, personally, decided that they believe their is a God, and perceive that choice to be a strong asset in their lives.

If your stance is really that one shouldn't make choices that one derives personal enjoyment from, irregardless of the fact that there may be a cost associated with said choice, I imagine you to have a very boring life... what, devoid of hobbies or any kind of personal satisfactory experiences. Believe in God is after all, in essence, a hobby like any other, with the same kinds of "costs" associated with it as with other hobbies, and the same kind of personal satisfaction derived from it.
It even kind of makes me wonder what the heck you're doing on a BDSM site, considering that being here, arguing on message boards, waste a lot of time, and the practice of BDSM has by it's very essence certain "costs" associated with it.

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

BDSM by its essence has costs associated with it? That one Im not following.

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ORIGINAL: Ishtarr

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

BDSM by its essence has costs associated with it? That one Im not following.

The most basic one is the fact that it severely limits the available dating pool for a person... unless they're out on a mission to converts vanilla's to BDSM, which carries it's own cost, and is only ever really effective when the BDSM desires are only very mild to begin with.

It has like all things -including religion- an impact on one's world view, and carries a danger that some of that worldview change may lead to indoctrination. You don't have to be on this site and message board long to realize that a lot of people on this site have been indoctrinated by certain believes they've acquired through their association with BDSM.

It has the cost associated with the fact that BDSM, regardless of it's form and level of extreme it's taken too, is a dangerous activity. Just about any activity associated with BDSM can go wrong, and can have dire consequences when things do go wrong.

All of this obviously applies to most things in life, BDSM is by no means the exception, but considering that such is the case, I don't see why religion or faith should be considered any different than most things in life.
Now if you want to single out deliberate indoctrination as a problem, I can follow you there. But indoctrination does not equal religion.

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

And again, in the vast majority of cases religion is based in indoctrination. If everyone were left to find religion on their own their would be a helluva lot more atheists in the world. Europe is headed that way already. Care to posit why? I have some ideas on that.

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ORIGINAL: Ishtarr

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

And again, in the vast majority of cases religion is based in indoctrination. If everyone were left to find religion on their own their would be a helluva lot more atheists in the world. Europe is headed that way already. Care to posit why? I have some ideas on that.

I'm European so I know what you mean, though I disagree.
From my own perception, Belgium -where I'm from- doesn't have incredible amounts more atheists than the US does.
What it does have an incredible amount more people who, though they believe in God, don't actively practice any religion and/or are associated with a specific religion.

I've never met a person of faith in the US who claimed to believe in God, but didn't associate themselves with a specific religion, usually christianity, even if they never ever set foot in a church or read the Bible.
In Europe, meeting people who believed in God, but would never call themselves christian or anything else, where quite common.

As to why that is, I really don't know, but I would assume that it's because the teaching of ethics, philosophy and religion is a much heavier focussed on in school. Children growing up, from a very young age, are actively exposed to a varied array of different points of view, including having at least rudimentary instruction in the differences between various religions, starting in elementary.
It makes it easier for most to choose to believe in God, without being indoctrinated into it.
In fact, I can't name you a single person in Belgium under the age of 40 whom I know to be religious due to indoctrination.

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ORIGINAL: SpanishMatMaster

"I can prove that I have a nose, but I can't prove the existence or non-existence of Azonier. "

This is by pure logic, completely wrong.

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

As far as the reason for Europe being less focused on organized religion it is, imo, largely related to the declining need for a religious safety net which has been supplanted by the socialist safety net.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: SpanishMatMaster

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

You know what to do if you want an answer from me which is not part of playing the game. New thread or PM.

If you are addressing the recent post in which I quoted you, I would beg you to notice that it did not ask a question.
K.

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ORIGINAL: SpanishMatMaster

Ditto.

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ORIGINAL: SixMore2Go

Ok then, first off, Ishtarr, I like the agility of your mind, when you decide to rid yourself of that rather large and scary looking fellow you're hanging off of in your picture, you drop me a line straight away now, you hear?

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ORIGINAL: SixMore2Go

1. Yes, I am an agnostic.

2. I am an agnostic, because while there is too much beauty in this world to preclude the existence of a God, there is also too much ugliness in it to allow for one. So, I am left to waver back and forth, which has led me to me present state of profound uncertainty.

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So what you're saying is that if I ever divorce you'll drop all you're doing, fly over here, and come comfort me?

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ORIGINAL: SixMore2Go

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So what you're saying is that if I ever divorce you'll drop all you're doing, fly over here, and come comfort me?

Well now, that depends, now doesn't it? If the aforementioned large and scary fellow is off someplace else, then aye, of course that's what I meant, my speculoos. On the other hand, if he is reading over your shoulder, then no, not at all, of course not, its just that I have some sticky personal issues that I need some sound advice on.

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ORIGINAL: SixMore2Go

And me darling, any man is large and scary when you're looking up at him from under his wife's bed, don't you know?