swivel,
Wrong. Almost ALL of our decisions are based on sensory data.
Sensory data cannot determine outcome.
All the sensory data in the world will not prevent you or I from being shot tommorow, if that is going to happen.
People take almost nothing on faith.
Unless you know the outcome beforehand, most decisions are made in faith.
You don't stick your car keys in your ear to crank the engine. Every word you utter, every action you perform, is a type of mimicry and logical deduction.
That's not what faith is about.
Faith pertains to the things you cannot possibly know.
If Thug got sick after he ate the red berries and drank from the fishing spot, it is going to be "smart" to assume that there is something wrong with red berries and the water from the fishing spot. Even though only one of these is logically unsafe, evolution isn't set up to discover TRUTH, only survival and sex. So it has resulted in brain modules that use very loose ties between what happens and what caused it to happen. It is nature's motto: "Better safe than sorry".
What does this have to do with faith?
"Better late than sorry" is mans motto.
There is a TON of evidence that life is nothing but complex chemical reactions. DNA is a long polymer. Just a string of 4 different, simple chemical bases. These bases align to form proteins. Proteins effect change by altering the shape of compounds it bonds with. Biology = Chemistry.
The old "tons of evidence" routine again.
I'm going to be blunt with you, I think you have wishful thinking under the banner of faith. You don't
know anything.
Your hubris is disturbing; you do not know the first thing about me.
Unless everything you write is intended bullshit, and has nothing to do with what or how you really think, I believe I know something about you.
I was raised Episcopalian, baptized and confirmed. I didn't just go to church, I was active in it. Every year I still go home to a one-week revival we call "Camp Meeting" where we live in a large square of cabins around a common area that has a church and open arbor in it. My great-great-great grandfather was one of the founders and I helped rebuild that arbor after Hurricane Hugo. I work with the kids there, I am one of the few founding descendants that serves as an usher during services, and I have built dozens of homes through my church and Habitat for Humanity. I KNOW what faith feels like, and if it did not lead to real harm I wouldn't rail against it.
I also think horoscopes are bunk and that walking under ladders does not change your luck. Why do I not rail against these superstitions? These examples of faith?
These are not examples of faith, faith is a separate entity.
One can have faith in these things, if one uses them to direct their life.
Not walking under ladders for fear of bad luck, is just that, fear.
As far as horoscopes go, people who use them properly, do not rely on them. They use them as a loose guide. Of course people who rely on them, have faith that what they say is right, but that is not everybody who believes them to be valid.
Because these groups do not tell women that they are inferior. They do not ruin families by taking abortion off the table. They do not set up systems which promote non-sexual men to assume positions of authority before they realize that their lack of appetite for female companions was not a "sign from God that they were meant to be a priest", it was an indication of their pedophilia. Astrology does not stop stem-cell research, or make families keep their kids away from decent medical care, opting to "pray" instead. Nobody was burned at the stake or stoned over an Ouiji Board.
And you're saying
faith in God allows these things to occurr?
Where is your evidence?
Interesting rationale.
It perverts decent people into doing evil shit. And when heaped on our youth, it is a form of brain-rape that prevents their greatest attribute from ever flowering. It is pure evil and it needs to be mocked until it is no more.
I'm not even going to respond to this.
jan.
