Og

Calling an idea "stupid" is just slightly less useful than calling the person stupid (at least in your case above, calling a person stupid can tell us quite a great deal about you).

Perhaps you could clarify why the act of rejecting your specific notion of punishment for disbelief is somehow any different than your rejection of the islamic or hindu notions of after-life punishment or any of the other myriad rejections.

You seemed to indicate that you weren't "brave" enough to take the stance against your specific religion. I can only imagine that your reasons are cultural as I'm sure that many muslims have just as strong a conviction as you do about their path to heaven. But somehow, you have the courage to reject their notions of the afterlife and their god's judgment for your behaviors.

I'm just trying to flesh out your sarcastic condemnation from above. You indicate that the agnostic idea is stupid yet you take an atheistic stance to all manner of opposing hell ideas and thus risk your eternal damnation. It seemed like you were a bit confused, and angry about it.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

buzz2

I'm not angry or confused OG. No reason to be angry. And I know what the bible says about our immortal soul. So, I'm not confused either.
But, the idea of being willing to risk eternal damnation still seems dumb to me.
Why would folks do that, knowing what the consequence will be? Maybe that part is confusing to me. So in a sense, maybe I am confused about that part.
When someone knows the path to Heaven, and still curses HIM. Why don't you try to help me to understand that?
Seeing all that's going on in today's world, how can one not see the prophesies of the bible coming to pass? Wars and rumors of war. Natural disasters on the rise. Famine and pestilence. The dramatic increase in man's knowledge. These things are all foretold. How can you all still deny HIM?
The bible says that every person will see the coming of the Lord. Obviously, that wasn't possible back when that was written. But, now with the advent of news media around the world and the internet, it is completely possible. Everything IS coming to pass just as GOD said it would in the bible.
The beasts of the world will rise up against man. There is an increase in biological disease around the world. The bible is completely true and accurate.

Og

I am trying to help you understand this. Your understanding resides in your answer to yourself about why you reject other holy books (of islam, for example) and their notion of hell. You are surely an infidel damned to hell according to Mohammad.

Yet you feel the strength of will to utterly reject the islamic stance on paths to heaven. You reject the catholic view of the path to heaven (through intermediary saints, etc). According to all of these other people, you are "risking eternal damnation"...

Why do you take this risk? Why have you chosen to follow your specific path to heaven? When you understand why you reject the other notions of damnation, you will understand why I reject yours.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

buzz2

OH OG... COME ON MAN!!! Is that all you've got? Answering a question with a question? That's some more of that egg-head, brainiac, nonsense. Why can't you just give me a straight answer? I'm really not into the philosophical
mumbo-jumbo. I just don't get it, man. Your gonna have to come down out of your higher learning tower and talk plain English to the common folks like me. I'm not quite up to your speed when it comes to the high-brow stuff.
Just a simple answer will suffice. OK?

Og

High brow? Why do you reject islam as the path to heaven?

It is necessarily mutually exclusive (in a literal interpretation) with your path to heaven.

Simple question. This is clearly not "all I've got." It's simply the way I'm approaching this conversation. This is called teaching. You don't always just spell out a specific answer in someone's face. You need to adapt the presentation of the answer to meet the perspective of the student.

You've said that you don't take the kind of "stupid/risky/brave" stance that agnostics take. I'm saying that you do. Furthermore, I'm saying that you KNOW the reason that agnostics take the stance they do on your version of heaven/hell reward system. You take the same stance with regard to a myriad of mutually exclusive faiths. Your label of the agnostic or their approach as stupid simply reveals a lack of self awareness on your part.

Simple question to you: Why do you reject the muslim path to heaven through submission to allah and the teachings of the Quran?

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

buzz2

From what I know of the quaran, which is very little,.. I don't believe that we are supposed to murder innocent people to please GOD. I don't believe that there is 72 virgins waiting for me in Heaven if I go and blow myself up. That's
suicide,.. the only unforgivable sin. The way I see it, Islam is a false religion and a religion of hate. The Holy Bible is the only way. The GOD of Jesus is the one and only. Islam is a religion of Satan. It states that in one passage of their Quran. I don't remember where exactly. It's a religion of lies and deceit. So, now tell me why you believe the way you do. If you can.

Og

Aye. You use your rational mind to analyze the nature of the world and what god YOU would want to worship. Then you choose your stance accordingly.

The stance I take is identical. I just happen to have a much better understanding of things like the interconnected network of biomaterial between your ears and the way it produces a human being's behaviors.

To me, the notion of the existence of a god who judges individuals based on their behaviors as free moral agents is simply false. We are not free moral agents. Saying that I'm going to hell is like saying that a tornado is evil for killing a person. It's not. It's a complex confluence of events that's part of the whole... There's no intrinsic identity to it that can be blamed for anything.

So in an identical fashion to your analysis (and rejection) of this specific doctrine due to your interpretation, I make a certain stance. You are risking a lot by rejecting islam as their hell can be quite a horrific place. Yet you are brave enough to do it because of your reasoned analysis of what little you know about it.

So if you want to call the agnostic stance stupid or brave/stupid, then you'll have to call your stance against islam equally stupid/brave. And a muslim or hindu will label you an atheist/agnostic where their god is concerned.

What if god were as horrific as you described above? Certainly you don't believe that he is, but I don't know what is inhibiting this as a possibility in your mind.

This courage/stupidity that you describe is derived from a reasoned analysis. Instead of socially provided christian queues (i.e. what you use), I use empirically derived scientific queues to drive my stances on such things.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

buzz2

Ok Og

The Open Mind

By the way, it's "cues", not "queues".

By the way, I'm ok with you (Og) using what you call scientific cues, but not everybody agrees with what such a thing means. My way of seeing "scientific cues" is epistemic humility with respect to reality in opposition to making grandiose pontifications with respect to something that is always in flux, such as our grasp on that odd fellow called "reality".

Og

Hrm. Can you expand on this thought? Where do you think I have overstepped my characterization of "cues" into a realm of something in flux? I don't think systems engineering or mathematics of signal transduction and computation is in flux.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are