"Little deviation"? You are the one asserting a false dilemma based solely on your chosen perspective (
"reality tunnel"). Just because there are a variety of conceptions of god does not mean that the majority of those conceptions are in any way "sketchy" or uncertain. You are also making a hasty generalization of all conceptions of god that heavily glosses over the individual conceptions. These fallacious arguments have a definite atheistic/agnostic bent. The "standard" is that, among the majority who do believe in a higher power, the overwhelming majority believes in a specific god:
"Higher power" or "universal spirit" are terms used for a "sketchy" conception, and these statistics show that these are an overwhelming minority. The "standard" is that those who believe in a particular god do not feel any uncertainty about its nature, and this is a natural consequence of faith. Even among differing denominations of Christianity, where they greatly disagree about biblical interpretation, their concept of god is largely the same. This is why their god has very well-known attributes, i.e. omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, etc..
again with the semantics about what i meant. I would suggest that quite a few of those people who believe in God don't go to church or know what faith they even belong to. gallup says, "Gallup International indicates that 41%[1] of American citizens report they regularly attend religious services," so at least a good chunk of the other 40% who believe in God are kind of "sketchy", along with the 12% higher power people, but whatever. Your idea of sketchy and my idea of sketchy may be different.
And why do you insist on introducing new non sequiturs at every turn? What does the problem of evil have to do with the belief in a god?
the "problem of evil" is about people saying "yahweh sucks", which is what i was still talking about. The only reason there is a "problem of evil", so-called, in western philosophy, is that the christian God is supposedly deficient, which comes up every time there is a big storm, or someone has to eat chocolate ice cream (i am just messing with you with the ice cream thing). It is certainly not an uncommon idea.
Again, why can you not just admit that you were talking about a small subset of the population when you say "common"? I have no false idea about what you said, as you have already fully verified it:
You have already admitted that what you said was qualified as pertaining only to this particular subset.
no, i specifically qualified my point when i said "for one thing" in that very sentence. Sciforums is only one example. It is ok if you just wanted to bring up the basically useless idea of how "common" must something be to allow me to use the word "common".
Show me ANY source that supports that usage. I have looked, just to give you the benefit of the doubt. Nothing. And the more bare assertions you make on the matter, without any support whatsoever, the deeper you dig your hole. Now you could try to say, for example, that becoming a Rastafarian is an ad hoc excuse to smoke pot, but even that does not make Rastifari an ad hoc religion.
Let me put it this way, "christianity is the religion many people use,
for the special purpose presently under consideration by them of defining their God,
lacking generality or justification, and without a systematic investigation of other possibilities." That is exactly what i meant by adhoc religion.
ad hoc [ad hok; Lat. ahd hohk]
1.
for the special purpose or end
presently under consideration:
ad hoc
for a particular purpose only;
lacking generality or justification: an ad hoc decision
Between the Tim Leary "reality tunnel" and the "whatevs dude", maybe you are better off sticking to the pot smoking.
nice ad hom. You should just put that in your sig,
Syne, "ad homerator".
I don't smoke weed or do drugs, by the way. Although a lot of the great thinkers of history did get pretty wild, anyway. If you classify Leary as an unintelligent person, you are in rarefied air up there with the greatest minds of history, looking down on us humans. Not saying he was any great guru of mine ( i did meet him just before he died, when he was already kind of fried, which was interesting), but the "8 circuits of consciousness" is one of the truly great maps of the human experience.
Are you done with you little tantrum? Opportunus means convenient, so how is the "closest thing you can grab" not convenient? And how often a phrase is used is no excuse for misuse. I guess you would also defend the usage of "ironic" by Alanis Morissette with an argument by consensus as well.
I still think "opportunus" is not something in the common usage, but it could be useful talking to the rarefied few looking down on me and tim leary. Also, re: alanis, any song about a fork and a knife, is bound to have some illegitimate gobbledygook happening.
No, just another in your ever-growing list of complete non sequiturs. It would be a false dilemma to suppose that disagreement about many unrelated biblical principles necessitates a fundamental disagreement about the nature of a god.
i was making a point about specific principles, but once again you insist I was talking about something other than what i was talking about, even after i explain what i said. It must be weird for you, living with the magic power of knowing what people think, when it disagrees with what they think. Confusing.
Thanks for illustrating my point so well. You very well may need to believe that a bridge will hold you before crossing it, but that belief does not mean you MUST cross every such bridge. Belief does not necessitate action. Contingent is not the same as necessary. Damn, just crack a dictionary.
Nice set up to point out how narrowly you read. And i quote, "Damn just crack a dictionary"...
con-tin-gent - 4. dependent on or conditioned by something else "payment is contingent on fulfillment of certain conditions"
SO you said
"No, your actions are inconsequential to your belief."
I feel they are actually quite important and significant indicators of a particular belief, as explained by looking at the belief the bridge you are going to cross will not fall down, and the walking across it being contingent on that belief. BUT MOSTLY i said, we aren't going to settle that issue here. We might as well talk about something SOMEWHAT pertinent.
Where in this do you see anything that indicates that these are commandments or in any way obligatory. If you read just a few sentences further you would find:
"For by the fruits one knows the things that are yours..."
none of this is any less, or more, obligatory than the same verses when they appear in the canon, which solidifies my point that Iranaeus and other sources may also have not been totally clear on what was intended, may have rejected these other christians, for the sake of creating a solid power structure. So, they may have been attacked not necause they were actually lawless, but because they didn't think about God "right". What would Iraneus have said about Luther??????
Another related concept is the moral core of an individual, which is assumed to be innate. This, in some religious systems and beliefs (e.g. Gnosticism), is assumed to be the basis of all aesthetics and thus moral choice. Moral codes as such are therefore seen as coercive�part of human politics. -wiki(morality)
If the words �ethics� or �morality� are taken to mean a system of rules, then Gnosticism is opposed to them both. Such systems usually originate with the Demiurge and are covertly designed to serve his purposes. If, on the other hand, morality is said to consist of an inner integrity arising from the illumination of the indwelling spark, then the Gnostic will embrace this spiritually informed existential ethic as ideal.
To the Gnostic, commandments and rules are not salvific; they are not substantially conducive to salvation. Rules of conduct may serve numerous ends, including the structuring of an ordered and peaceful society, and the maintenance of harmonious relations within social groups. -gnosis.org
Christians view their code of conduct as normative and compulsory.
How is this any different from what Nietzsche would accuse christians of, but perhaps not Gnostics, i.e., that christians only do the right thing for the wrong reasons? So, the gnostic says, "do x, because if you are knowledgable you will see that x is good", and the christian says, "do x because God said it is good". The first is just a more psychologically adult way of achieving the same goal, i.e. the goal of having people choose to do good things and not bad. Or perhaps one just says, "look in your heart and you will see that your teacher is right". Hard to say.
Also, I would ask what the difference is between those who truly believe they are saved, "by grace, not by works, so that no man can boast," and that particular gnostic idea about compulsory actions. In both cases the works are not salvific. Gnosticism clearly has to have some set of morality or the earlier Valtninus excerpt would be a total relativist mess and this idea about gnostic poo-pooing the creator God wouldn't make sense either-
" In sum, the Paradise story taken literally, with its rather crude anthropomorphisms and descriptions of ungodlike or even morally dubious behavior on the part of the creator, clearly held the potential to be truly offensive to many ancient readers. Thus the fact that in demiurgical texts certain elements in this particular story are often selected for "reversal" or adjustment of "value" is not at all surprising." from rethinking gnosticism by R.G. Williams
The gnostics pretty much all believed that the creator God was a bad dude, so yet again (bringing us back to our thread topic), we have people saying, these ideas we are setting forth are basic truths, from the highest inspiration, and they happen to coincide with my greater understanding of God rather than that of the less knowledgable jews and other christians. They had to have a moral principle in order to make a pronouncement about the creator God, or what was sin and not sin, and what was morally dubious.
Do you think they just said to each other, "don't sin, whatever that word means to you"?????? I am not saying it isn't possible that SOME of the Gnostics, although clearly not all of those we label gnostics, truly had some floating principle whereby lack of knowledge was the only true sin (delusion), but i do feel confident in saying that using the word "never" would be a mistake when talking about Gnosticism.
Nope, repeating a convoluted mess does not make it any less convoluted. Are commentaries on the Bible any more reliable, seeing as they are just as biased? Ultimately, we have no more or less than the scripture. Everything else is open to the same biases.
Including material from the other side we could perhaps make a more fair judgement. I agree there is a hell of a lot of bias floating around, but better to have two opposing ideas to check out than one, and we didn't even have anything from the gnostics until 1945. I will be maintaining my "slow to judge" policy, not that this little chat wasn't fun. If you have anything more solidly pointing out moral relativism, or come across it in the future, I do find the Gnosticism subject quite interesting and would appreciate seeing it.
