The Hobby Horses of Belief (and assorted hazards)

Was the original question the difference between religion and spirituality?
If so, I would like to add my two cents worth.
Spirituality is a personal connection with universal energy, spirit or God, combing the oneness of all and mans connection to the planet.
Those in power knew in order to fully control mankind, they had to come between God and man, thus religion was born.
Now man had to go through those in power to get to God.
Religion is spirituality trimmed down, with the control factor added.
As I have said, just my two cents.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

In McDonalds the fries taste like they are made from pretty much the same cardboard as catholic crackers. Especially if you foolishly eat them after they have gone cold.

Maybe a little salt would make the crackers more palatable :cool:

Can somebody take one for the team and read this to the end?

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Can somebody take one for the team and read this to the end?

Done. He appears to be copy and pasting it on websites all across the internet.

Mostly it is a word salad version of arguments you have heard before. Specifically the fine tuning of the cosmological constants, and the "First cause" argument.

As always with this nonsense there are core assumptions at the heart of it that are not actually, to my knowledge, safe assumptions for us to be making namely:

1) That all of everything must have been caused. Like the "something from nothing" argument why do we assume one state as default and that therefore the other state was "caused"? They assume their god is eternal and uncaused. So why can all of everything not be? Why do we assume "something from nothing" when we have no valid basis for assuming there ever was nothing?

2) Thinking the constants fine tuned assumes there is only one set of constants that are valid and useable. This is Douglas Adams "Sentient Puddle" essentially. For all we know there might be infinite combinations of constants that would produce a universe capable of sustaining life. Either combinations of the constants we know of, or a universe which has some or all of the constants entirely different to the ones we know about.

3) Causality as we know it is based on time as we know it. The user is applying our version of causality to an assumption that that is always how causality works. Do we know this to be true? Our resident Physicist might be along to tell us. But I am not convinced it is a safe assumption at all. If one of the things that came into existence at/after the big bang was time.... then how can we apply the concept of time based causality to "before" the Big Bang. What does "before" even mean in this context even?

Basically what the user is doing, albeit using a lot more words than usual to do it, is applying some very understandable limits of human experience and thought processes to the universe as a whole and everything before/outside/unrelated to our universe we know nothing about.

Due to the draconian forum rules over there I avoid entering "does god exist" debate lest I fall foul of them. Were the mods to move the thread here, or were the use himself to come and join us here, we could discuss his arguments with him one at a time and poke them well full of holes. Especially as most of them are just copy and pasted from sources we all know and love from many years ago, who have been roundly and repeatedly rebutted over the years. From Aquinus to the.... lovely..... Lane.

Bit of a long read but interesting nonetheless.

Last July, the pattern of killings of Muslims grew so dire—in 2018, there were thirteen fatal cow-related lynchings—that the Indian Supreme Court demanded that the legislature formulate laws against the practice, which it has yet to do. Last month, Human Rights Watch released a hundred-and-four-page report documenting the violence, and the inaction—and abuses—of the government officials charged with investigating the crimes.



“Lynching has become a nationalist project,” Mohammad Ali, a prominent Indian journalist who is currently working on a book about the phenomenon, told me. He said few perpetrators are punished, which has created a culture of impunity. Killers are lauded in some quarters as heroes for defending the faith and eradicating Muslims.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/the-violent-toll-of-hindu-nationalism-in-india?utm_campaign=falcon&utm_brand=tny&utm_social-type=owned&utm_medium=social&mbid=social_facebook&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR06lZ8pnM3-eDoOFvAymsivlwQbhKKRfUPYwEJvU6XkhU4CKgDE5xRflvo

Good luck with this

Sorry about that earlier unintended pun

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2020/0519/1139231-wall-of-crosses/

It is good that these deaths are being marked, especially as funerals are so restricted now.
But it does feel a bit presumptious really, as if everyone who has died would have been a catholic/christian.

I think you're maybe being a bit oversensitive there. There is no implication that the dead were all Catholic or Christian. Catholics/Christians pray for/remember the dead because of their own beliefs, not the beliefs of those who have died.

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52786242

Religious events have been major spreaders of the virus in many countries, South Korea and France in particular.

10 May or 20 May though? Sloppy, BBC.

Frankfurt-Main presumably, not Frankfurt-Oder, but that is kinda nit-picking