opnet [OpNet] Where is your god now?

[Wakinyan]

Nodelings.

A new question. How many of you retain your human faith? I know some of you like Preston and Seraphim obviously do. Who else?

If not then what have you came up with? Did you borrow from the humans to come closer to your God/s or have you taken a new direction?

I believe I hear god whispering in the wind. I smell him in honeysuckle and in decay.

It doesn't seem to detract from what I was told before I became, but it has enhanced it.

[Singularity]

My mother was always a strict Catholic and tried to pass it down to me and my brothers. It never really stuck in me, much like most Americans.

However, my own believes have radically changed since then. The closest label you could give me is Buddhist but even that isn't totally accurate. I've become a firm beliver that we all need to find our individual spiritual path, but I do admit that's quite the cop out.

[kestrel404]

I have always been a Christian with Agnostic leanings (or perhaps an Agnostic with Christian leanings, depending on your point of view). My faith has not changed significantly since my erruption, and neither has my practice of that faith.

From my point of view, god is in all things, in all places. A truly omniscient and omnipotent creator has both absolute power, and no reason to use the majority of that power. I belive that humanity was given free will, and that is probably the greatest thing we have.

[Sandcaster]

I was Agnostic before erupting, and remain Agnostic to this day. Quite simply, I know that I don't know.

[The White Rat]

God is dead.

[Doctor Nova Madigan]

My mother is something of a cafeteria Catholic, although even that limited devotion has lapsed. Growing up, we seldom had the time for religion. Aside from her occasionally presenting faith as a "good idea" for me, the issue was never really pressed at home. I'm in no hurry to give it a second look now.

[Troy]

We haven't met yet.

[Vixen]

Most of the time I guess I'm an atheist.

Most of the time I look around in the world in which we live and I can't really picture any kind of a divine plan. I hear about intelligent design and I think it's a load of dogshit, myself, because even if some God created the universe you have to ask who created God.

But sometimes, late at night, if I close my eyes and slow my breathing and reach out, I feel as if I can almost touch something deeper. I don't know what it is, but I have a notion of what it could be.

So I guess I'm technically an agnostic.

Mitch is a bit - okay, a lot - more easygoing than me. His attitude is 'you just don't know.' We debate this a lot and his notion is that if nothing in the universe can really be created or destroyed, then neither can the matter and energy that make up our own bodies. But that's another debate.

[Slattern]

Quote:

Originally posted by Troy:
We haven't met yet.

Really?

Too bad.

I met them when I erupted.

Oh...so...nice.

So...very...nice.

oooooouuuuhhhmmmmmmmmmm.

[Wakinyan]

God or gods make you have an orgasm?

Which religion is that and where is the church?

[The White Rat]

Quote:

Originally posted by Wakinyan:
God or gods make you have an orgasm?

Which religion is that and where is the church?

Amen brother.

[Ghostwriter]

I am a pagan, but I also believe that I am a goddess. Whether I will evolve into a major one is yet to be seen.

[Y.T.]

Why do you need anything "divine"? Isn't this world marvelous enough without throwing out the idea that there is something else?

[Deezy Klatta]

I have to admit, I'm not the most spiritual person. I've made it my business to understand, in excrutiating detail, the ways matter and energy can be put together and taken apart, to form the various doohickies one finds all around. This sort of constructionalist viewpoint doesn't lend itself well to a sense of mystic awe and wonder.

*shrug*

I guess if there's any way I can be said to find 'god,' it's in intangibles. Things like...imagination. Art and creativity. Concepts and ideals that aren't "things" and therefore can't be broken down and reconstructed with the tools I have.

Of course, the real question is if my attitude towards God has -changed- due to my eruption. The answer to THAT is much simpler. Yes.

[Singularity]

Quote:

Originally posted by Y.T.:
Why do you need anything "divine"?

I have my goddess; how could I not have something divine in my life?

[Y.T.]

If you really think that Singularity, then you are the first nova I know of who suffers from India syndrome. You should get some help.

[Singularity]

I worship Regan no more than she worships me... don't read into things so much, Y.T. It's called love, not a literal reading of only one definition of the word "divine."

[Y.T.]

Nothing akin to what meaning I was putting forth and you should have known that. So were you are trying to impress your wife, growing old and slow or trying to be an ass?

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

Quote:

Originally posted by Wakinyan:
Nodelings.

A new question. How many of you retain your human faith? I know some of you like Preston and Seraphim obviously do. Who else?

If not then what have you came up with? Did you borrow from the humans to come closer to your God/s or have you taken a new direction?

Tough one. Simply, yes and no. A lot of the cosmology I believed in still holds true, except that I am now part of it and not subject/subservient to it.

[Wakinyan]

You missed something important Juri. We are a little closer to it now yes. But we where always apart of it.

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

Quote:

Originally posted by Wakinyan:
You missed something important Juri. We are a little closer to it now yes. But we where always apart of it.

Well, Schnookems, maybe in your cosmology that's true. Since you don't know anything really about mine, that's a pretty arrogant thing to say. Sounds like you're applying your cosmology equally to everyone.

Fucking Christian.

And no, since you told me I was wrong before asking me to explain, I'm not going to tell you what my cosmology is.

[Wakinyan]

It's okay don't need to know.

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

Didn't figure you'd want to, either.

[Wakinyan]

Sorry just a little bitter, fire is a fickle thing.

[kestrel404]

This sort of constructionalist viewpoint doesn't lend itself well to a sense of mystic awe and wonder.

On the contrary, I find that the more I delve into the vagaries of the unnamed sub-quark particles and quantum energies, the more reason I have to believe in the gods and monsters than before.

"There are more things in heaven and earth..."

[Singularity]

Only speaking my mind and heart, Y.T.

Try it with Thrust, you might like the results.

[Deezy Klatta]

I guess I've always just held 'faith' in opposition to 'knowledge,' Alchemist. The more one knows, the less one has to take on faith.

Now, of course, at a quantum level, knowledge breaks down. You have your uncertainty principles, your probability smears...but even then, where science and philosophy start to merge, I still don't see faith coming into the picture. I suppose someone could accuse me of having 'faith' in the mathematical proofs and so on that tell us that these phase states exist...but that rings false. Scientific method, regardless of how 'fuzzy' the hypotheses and conclusions are, is based on empirical observations of phenomena. Now, by the time you get to subatomic levels, you're really observing phenomena that are only indirectly related to the phenomena that you're actually trying to measure, so it gets a little weird. But the PRINCIPLE of the thing is still there.

Faith is, as a rule, dogmatic. It's not based on observation, but on rote learning. People believe in the Bible because, when they were tykes, someone they trusted TOLD them to. And in time they backbuilt sufficient rationales to make it stick. And not to come down too hard, I guess there are questions of existence that have to be answered that way because they're about phenomena that can't really be observed.

But when I see quarks and gluons and all the pantheons of subatomic forces, I don't see God. It can be a sort of mystical experience, I suppose...but that's distinct from a religious one, in my mind.

Maybe I just over-catagorize though.

[kestrel404]

I hope you don't mind too much if I try to disabuse you of some of these ideas. It's been a while since I had a chance to dust off my debating skills, and it's one of the things that drew me here in the first place.

Quote:

Originally posted by Genesis:

I guess I've always just held 'faith' in opposition to 'knowledge,' Alchemist. The more one knows, the less one has to take on faith.

This, my friend, is a sad state of affairs. That's like saying that magnetism is in opposition to electricity, when they really both spring from the same elemental forces. I think perhaps you've had too much experience with the wrong kinds of faith.

Quote:

Now, of course, at a quantum level, knowledge breaks down. You have your uncertainty principles, your probability smears...but even then, where science and philosophy start to merge, I still don't see faith coming into the picture.

You've just touched on the heart of the matter, in my mind at least. At the lowest and most intangible levels of our reality, science and philosophy once again join together and become indistinguishable. As in the early days of our most venerated ancestors in science, the days of the natural philosophers like Aristotle and Plato, we have only our own intuitions and observations to guide us in discovering the whys and hows of reality below the quantum level.

Quote:

I suppose someone could accuse me of having 'faith' in the mathematical proofs and so on that tell us that these phase states exist...but that rings false. Scientific method, regardless of how 'fuzzy' the hypotheses and conclusions are, is based on empirical observations of phenomena. Now, by the time you get to subatomic levels, you're really observing phenomena that are only indirectly related to the phenomena that you're actually trying to measure, so it gets a little weird. But the PRINCIPLE of the thing is still there.

Agreed in all points, except that you must realize that your belief in science IS another kind of faith.

The most readily accepted tenets of our philosophy as scientists is also often the hardest to prove. We accept ON FAITH that if we throw a ball in the air a hundred times, and that it falls back to us a hundred times, that when we throw it in the air the hundred and first time, it will fall once more. We accept ON FAITH that, taking an empty barrel and placing twenty apples into it, followed by thirty apples, we will end up with a barrel of fifty apples. These are things we take on faith, and if I tried to tell you that either of these things, in the general case weren't true, you'd call me a fool. But still, it IS a kind of faith.

Quote:

Faith is, as a rule, dogmatic. It's not based on observation, but on rote learning. People believe in the Bible because, when they were tykes, someone they trusted TOLD them to.

No, dogmatic faith is based on rote learning, and it is the lesser kind of faith in my opinion. There is also reasoned faith, that faith which you hold that springs from your own understanding of the universe. This is an uncertain universe, and cause does not always lead to effect, nor does effect spring from cause in all cases. That's one flaw in the scientific method, it assumes that there is always a reason and an explanation.

But let's say that, one day, a nova materializes in the middle of a city, destroys it, and disappears. That nova is unknown to the entire universe because he came from outside of it, a parallel reality. As far as science is concerned, you have the spontaneous creation of matter and energy, an effect without cause. Yet, if you expand science to encompass every possible universe, I theorize (this I cannot prove, yet) that you will still have such events, effects without cause, because it is in the nature of reality to be infinite, and thus not defineable by any finite theory or set of theories.

What does this have to do with faith, you ask? Simply enough, I percieve these flaws in science, and yet I still believe in its validity. I acknowledge the cracks in the universe that allow uncertainty in, and I have faith that there IS a cause for every effect, even if it is unknowable.

I do not believe the bible in the literal way that some Christians do. In fact, I do not believe it in the form in which the vast majority of Christians take it. That's why I call myself a Christian with agnostic leanings. I would have taken the same concepts from ANY of the major religions, and my beliefs just happen to be flavored by Christianity.

It is my belief that there is an omniscient and omnipotent creator, or perhaps that the universe itself has a form of sentience at some deep level. It is also my belief that life (all life, not just humans, though in my own mind there is a hierarchy) exists at a level beyond the physical existence that science has thus far measured and perceived. Call it spirit, soul, or chi, it is an energy that exists beyond our physical selves and continues to exist once we are gone. I can not give any proof to these ideas, save that the sum of my life experiences have led me to believe this, and my intuition tells me it is true. THAT is faith, without either dogma or reason to support it.

Quote:

But when I see quarks and gluons and all the pantheons of subatomic forces, I don't see God. It can be a sort of mystical experience, I suppose...but that's distinct from a religious one, in my mind.

And to me, any form of faith can be held as religion.

[Y.T.]

Quote:

Originally posted by Singularity:
Only speaking my mind and heart, Y.T.

Try it with Thrust, you might like the results.

You know those who say that are often the first to reject those who are not like them. It is rather funny.

To be blunt if there is a God that fucker is nothing to be bowed to. If there isn't one, why bow to it?

I dare some to prove to me one religion that can be proven. Hell I dare anyone to show me a holy book that isn't a biased accounts of the history that can't be disprove in their secular history.

[Sandcaster]

Y.T.:

You missed the humor intended in Singularity's first post, and have apparently managed to miss the humor in his follow-up posts as well.

You really need to lighten up.

[Wakinyan]

I think YT misses the humor in a lot of things.

[Y.T.]

Sure, I will lighten up when we are not talking about a topic that has caused countless millions to die.A large part of those were killed. Now if you want people to read into the tones of other's posts you should also talk to Singularity. I put forth a simple and blunt post that was in no means light or humorous.

So until you can be unbiased I think you should take your rose tented view points andleave me alone.

[Sandcaster]

Y.T.:

Have millions been killed in the name of religion?

Certainly.

Have millions been killed in the name of what religion's novas do or do not follow?

Certainly not.

Have millions been killed because of this message thread?

Certainly not.

Have millions been killed because Singularity used the rather common joke of referring to his Significant Other as a goddess?

Certainly not.

My views are not rose-tinted (let alone "tented"). And as for leaving you alone, you effectively waived that right when you decided to post on a public message board.

Again: you really need to lighten up.

[Wakinyan]

No wonder Thrust wants to sex her up all the time. Getting her to stop ranting and being angry all the time is the only real alternative I see. But I bet even her sex is angry.

[Y.T.]

Why? Should I also make jokes about how slavery made "nigers" good at sports?

Who the fuck gave you the right to tell me what topics I should lighten up on? Have you seen the damage caused by the banning of birth control? Have you had to deal with radical zealots who the best thing you can do is kill them?

[Wakinyan]

Best we stop. She is starting to foam at the mouth.

[The White Rat]

Communism killed 100 million people, and its foundation was athiesm. I would say radical ideologies kill people, not just the ones with a higher power.

But then again, I have a desire to kill millions as well.

[Wakinyan]

Cool calm water Rat. Cool calm water.

[Sandcaster]

Y.T.:

"Why?"

For the sake of keeping things on an even keel, and subjecting you to less embarrassment.

,,

"Should I also make jokes about how slavery made "nigers" good at sports?"

False analogy. It has nothing to compare with someone joking about considering his partner a goddess.

"Who the fuck gave you the right to tell me what topics I should lighten up on?"

The fact that you posted in an open forum.

"Have you seen the damage caused by the banning of birth control?"

False analogy. It has nothing to compare with someone joking about considering his partner a goddess.

"Have you had to deal with radical zealots who the best thing you can do is kill them?"

False analogy. It has nothing to compare with someone joking about considering his partner a goddess.

Would you care to continue to make yourself look like an idiot, Y.T.? Or would you perhaps prefer to give up while you're behind?

[Y.T.]

Quote:

Originally posted by Sandcaster:
"Should I also make jokes about how slavery made "nigers" good at sports?"
False analogy. It has nothing to compare with someone joking about considering his partner a goddess.[/QB]

False analogy my ass. Both the slavery and the idea of tribal gods have warped and ruined many lives. Both are jokes. Both are positive from negative pasts.

The others were simply stating that both slavery and religion have had horrors in the past. For the most part slavery is gone. The horrors of religion? Is just better hidden these days.But you can't seem \to grasp that it is isn't just about the joke as it is about the context. War have been fought because people thought they saw divine signs, let alone have a living God they could talk to. So yes you can make joke about your lover being a god. Go fucking nuts. Just do not use my fucking my name or words in your fucking joke.

And just because you seem to be to get anything when I do not spell it out for you. The comments on birth control and zaelots were not analogies to the bad joke, they were question to your personal life. Have you ever had to deal with said problems?