As children it's just an imaginary friend

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Sweet~T
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As children it's just an imaginary friend

Post #1

Post by Sweet~T »

And he isn't very friendly.

So what is the cause for our global mental illness?

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Re: As children it's just an imaginary friend

Post #2

Post by Elijah John »

Sweet~T wrote: And he isn't very friendly.

So what is the cause for our global mental illness?

Maybe it is not mental illness, maybe, just maybe believers are onto something.

But just to be clear, I reject the notion that believers are characterized by Fundamentalists, either Christian or Islamic.

The spectum is far broader.
My theological positions:

-God created us in His image, not the other way around.
-The Bible is redeemed by it's good parts.
-Pure monotheism, simple repentance.
-YHVH is LORD
-The real Jesus is not God, the real YHVH is not a monster.
-Eternal life is a gift from the Living God.
-Keep the Commandments, keep your salvation.
-I have accepted YHVH as my Heavenly Father, LORD and Savior.

I am inspired by Jesus to worship none but YHVH, and to serve only Him.

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dianaiad
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Re: As children it's just an imaginary friend

Post #3

Post by dianaiad »

Sweet~T wrote: And he isn't very friendly.

So what is the cause for our global mental illness?
Begging the question. First, establish your premise as a given; that theists are crazy, and that God 'isn't very friendly' as described by those who actually believe in God.

That might be worth discussing. This....

Is not. It's an exercise in drive-by sniping, not an opportunity for discussion. I suggest that you come up with a question that might actually tempt those who disagree with you to enter into a debate.

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Post #4

Post by master_blaster »

fear of death and irrelevancy?

a creator makes humans and the self out to be significant and ensures our lives have a purpose that will be explained and continue in some form - but without needing to take a shit or feel other pain ever again - after life is over

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Re: As children it's just an imaginary friend

Post #5

Post by no evidence no belief »

dianaiad wrote:
Sweet~T wrote: And he isn't very friendly.

So what is the cause for our global mental illness?
Begging the question. First, establish your premise as a given; that theists are crazy, and that God 'isn't very friendly' as described by those who actually believe in God.
Can we agree that if I drowned a bunch of puppies, it would be reasonable to say that I wasn't very friendly to puppies?

Can we agree that if I drowned a bunch of pregnant women, it would be reasonable to say that I wasn't very friendly to pregnant women?

Great flood. Case closed.

The horror and revulsion and perverted madness of God's subsequent actions doesn't even matter. The Great Flood alone, the systematic genocide of EVERY LIVING ORGANISM IN THE WORLD except for Noah and his ilk, is sufficient to irrefutably conclude that God is not very friendly.

Now, with regards to theists being crazy:

Craziness is defined as "a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior"

1) Theists believe in talking snakes, talking donkeys, flying horses, and flying reindeer.
2) These things are not real
3) Therefore theists are crazy

It's really not a hard argument to make.

Theists have perfectly normal perception when it comes to paying their taxes, taking the bus, making a sandwich. But when it comes to their theism they just stop having a normal perception of reality.

It will take me no effort at all to persuade you that penis-enlargement pills are a fraud, but if I have to convince you that several of the animals mentioned in the BoM did NOT exist in the Americas before Columbus, nor did several tools, that DNA testing shows native americans have no genetic connections to Jews but rather to northern asiatic people, that no lingustic connection to ancient egyptian or Hebrew exists, but rather to Siberian languages, that native americans did NOT have a 7 day week, that no ruins were ever found of the wondrous cities that were used for centuries, you'd just be impossible to persuade.

It doesn't matter how completely and irrefutably the empirical claims of your faith are debunked, you do not see it.

Theists are in "a state of mind that prevents normal perception". It couldn't be more obvious. It is extremely easy for me to convince Muslims, Scientologists, Hindus etc that your beliefs are patently false, and to convince you that their beliefs are patently false, but when it comes to your OWN preexisting beliefs, the same arguments you use to conclude scientology and islam are false cease to carry weight.

So, now that the two premises of the OP have been established to be true, that the fairy tale of God clearly depicts an unfriendly deity, and that theism in most cases is a state of mind that prevents normal perception, lets address the question the OP asks. Why?

The answer, in my opinion, is this: Fear of death, fear of the unknown, mental laziness whereby the brain finds a comfortable falsehood preferable to an uncomfortable truth.

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Re: As children it's just an imaginary friend

Post #6

Post by connermt »

no evidence no belief wrote:
dianaiad wrote:
Sweet~T wrote: And he isn't very friendly.

So what is the cause for our global mental illness?
Begging the question. First, establish your premise as a given; that theists are crazy, and that God 'isn't very friendly' as described by those who actually believe in God.
Can we agree that if I drowned a bunch of puppies, it would be reasonable to say that I wasn't very friendly to puppies?

Can we agree that if I drowned a bunch of pregnant women, it would be reasonable to say that I wasn't very friendly to pregnant women?

Great flood. Case closed.

The horror and revulsion and perverted madness of God's subsequent actions doesn't even matter. The Great Flood alone, the systematic genocide of EVERY LIVING ORGANISM IN THE WORLD except for Noah and his ilk, is sufficient to irrefutably conclude that God is not very friendly.

Now, with regards to theists being crazy:

Craziness is defined as "a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior"

1) Theists believe in talking snakes, talking donkeys, flying horses, and flying reindeer.
2) These things are not real
3) Therefore theists are crazy

It's really not a hard argument to make.

Theists have perfectly normal perception when it comes to paying their taxes, taking the bus, making a sandwich. But when it comes to their theism they just stop having a normal perception of reality.

It will take me no effort at all to persuade you that penis-enlargement pills are a fraud, but if I have to convince you that several of the animals mentioned in the BoM did NOT exist in the Americas before Columbus, nor did several tools, that DNA testing shows native americans have no genetic connections to Jews but rather to northern asiatic people, that no lingustic connection to ancient egyptian or Hebrew exists, but rather to Siberian languages, that native americans did NOT have a 7 day week, that no ruins were ever found of the wondrous cities that were used for centuries, you'd just be impossible to persuade.

It doesn't matter how completely and irrefutably the empirical claims of your faith are debunked, you do not see it.

Theists are in "a state of mind that prevents normal perception". It couldn't be more obvious. It is extremely easy for me to convince Muslims, Scientologists, Hindus etc that your beliefs are patently false, and to convince you that their beliefs are patently false, but when it comes to your OWN preexisting beliefs, the same arguments you use to conclude scientology and islam are false cease to carry weight.

So, now that the two premises of the OP have been established to be true, that the fairy tale of God clearly depicts an unfriendly deity, and that theism in most cases is a state of mind that prevents normal perception, lets address the question the OP asks. Why?

The answer, in my opinion, is this: Fear of death, fear of the unknown, mental laziness whereby the brain finds a comfortable falsehood preferable to an uncomfortable truth.
Well said.
However, most everyone believes in something - god, ghosts, love-at-first-sight, Santa, magic undies, etc. The difference seems to be how those believers interact with those beliefs. Some of these beliefs make people feel good. And that's all that matters to them.

Frankly, I don't care if one believes in Santa, god, magic undies, unicorns, mermaids or whatever - simply don't visit those beliefs on me or those who either don't want to hear about it or those who don't ask for it.

cnorman18

Re: As children it's just an imaginary friend

Post #7

Post by cnorman18 »

no evidence no belief wrote:Can we agree that if I drowned a bunch of puppies, it would be reasonable to say that I wasn't very friendly to puppies?

Can we agree that if I drowned a bunch of pregnant women, it would be reasonable to say that I wasn't very friendly to pregnant women?

Great flood. Case closed.
How about if said drownings were part of a work of literature which was written from a point of view, and with an intended meaning, that was entirely different from that assumed by those who approach it with an a priori attitude of total contempt, and who dismiss any other understanding of it without even attempted justification?
Now, with regards to theists being crazy:

Craziness is defined as "a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior"

1) Theists believe in talking snakes, talking donkeys, flying horses, and flying reindeer.
Really? "Theists," without qualification, which clearly and inarguably means ALL theists?

NO "theists" believe in or understand the concepts of myth, literary allegory, folktale, or metaphor?

Would you care to defend that claim?
It's really not a hard argument to make.
If one isn't ashamed of going to the grossest possible stereotype and smearing everyone in a very broad category with it -- no, it's not.

Whether or not that argument holds any water is rather another question.
So, now that the two premises of the OP have been established to be true...
Talk about begging the question.... I've never seen it done more explicitly than this.

Stuffing a very great many words in the mouths of a very great many others, and stuffing a very great many beliefs in their heads as well -- then claiming that those two arguments have been "established to be true"....

Well, suffice it to say that that "argument" is neither factual nor logical, and therefore hardly persuasive in debate.
The answer, in my opinion, is this: Fear of death, fear of the unknown, mental laziness whereby the brain finds a comfortable falsehood preferable to an uncomfortable truth.
Except that Judaism (to cite only one one example) has no formal teaching about a life after death, and that death remains an unknown to us -- and that Jews are more heavily represented, in proportion to our numbers, in the hard sciences and the legal profession than any other people in the world, both of which rather require clear perceptions, a command of logic, and uncompromising critical thought -- and that both of those facts have been true for centuries. Not even all CHRISTIANS fit these astonishingly shallow and pejorative stereotypes; I should know. For the first fifty years of my life, I was one of them, and even served as a minister in a moderately liberal denomination.

Sorry. It's hard to take pontifical pronouncements like these, so obviously based on little more than blatant prejudice and open contempt, seriously. Characterizing ALL THEISTS as "crazy," stupid, fearful, mentally lazy, etc., etc., based on the fact that the most dogmatic and literal fundamentalists sometimes are -- and I say "sometimes" because those descriptors do not ALWAYS fit even THEM -- is no more intellectually respectable, fair, or accurate than characterizing ALL MUSLIMS as violent terrorists or ALL BLACKS as drug-addicted criminals.

Or ALL ATHEISTS as murderous libertines and consciously immoral, selfish, hedonistic brutes, for that matter.

Do you call yourself a "liberal"? If so, you should be ashamed of yourself. What other group would you malign en masse because of the excesses of only a PART of it?

Do you call yourself "logical"? You aren't. You are exhibiting the logical fallacy of a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, or "destroying the exception" -- one of the thirteen original logical fallacies first identified by Aristotle himself.

I don't often bother with threads like this one, based on the egregious error that all "THEISTS" (again, how I hate that word) are the intellectual and moral equivalent of Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, or Fred Phelps. There are dozens, if not hundreds of such threads, and I have better things to do. But every now and then -- I just feel compelled to point out the intellectual barrenness and the objective inaccuracy of these simplistic and frankly rather vicious stereotypes, and these (I suspect, and more than suspect) conscious and willful "misunderstandings" and "oversimplifications."

I most often speak for modern Jews, but I have known more than a few conservative Christians (and MANY liberal ones) who knew a talking ass from a hole in the ground. Knock it off. If you mean "fundamentalists," say "fundamentalists." "THEISTS" does not have the same meaning; and you MUST know that, if you are one-one-hundredth as intelligent and active on this forum as you appear to be.

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Re: As children it's just an imaginary friend

Post #8

Post by Sweet~T »

[Replying to no evidence no belief]

Why thank you, i have a tendency to oversimplify but you obviously got my meaning

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Re: As children it's just an imaginary friend

Post #9

Post by Sweet~T »

[Replying to post 7 by cnorman18]

Now you're putting words in my mouth sir.

I never said All theists, while my friend might have. All I said was that our planet is racked with mental illness and then asked why?

This mental illness is simple really. Any religion or group that believes in unproven untested hypothesis, and then goes. about a campaign of attempting to spread this illegitimate belief (oft times through violence) around the world. I just went about it in a layman roundabout way.

But good sir, Sincerely, all of you, rethink insulting my intelligence for I hold the collective knowledge to disprove all your so called truths. With an IQ (not an accurate measure) close to that of Einstein.

First your Jewish torah is the type of allegorical overly metaphorical obviously sadistic unintelligent rambling paper waste not fit to clean my backside with, the adjoining Gospel and Qu'ran merely the uninspired unintelligent rambling of people who were either senile or considered insane.

Furthermore, an intelligent conversation cannot be had about these doctrine, despite your 'forgetting the exception,' for there is no exception. It's simple Theists of any faith are mentally ill to believe in a book of scripture written by uneducated unenlightened middle eastern neanderthals with severe mental complications. Furthermore to believe in a deity you have never and could never see, speak to, listen to, touch or in any other way besides twisting otherwise sound logic to fit your purposes.

Lastly, to defend such idiocy without pursuit of further proof. The problem of the Theists accepting what's before them as all they need to see. Read one maybe two maybe, just maybe, three texts supporting the same train of thought as though them 1-3 texts is all the theologic knowledge you will ever need.

Never knowing that these concepts were stolen from the Sumerians, Babylonians, Indonesians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Africans, Egyptians, Pagans and the list goes on. Stolen? Did I say stolen? Yes, yes I did, and I add to that blatantly plagerized.

I was there when they created the Christ. I mean the first one, the Sumerian son of the Sun who died for our indecency and resurected three days later.

Do some critical research, revisit your required reading add fifteen more texts and come at me again.

Edited to include.

Furthermore Aristotle and Plato were nothing more then egotistical unintelligent sodomites whose basic logic isn't much compared to a six year old child in todays time. You as a 'Hebrew' should wretch at the thought of them considering the sodomy (cardinal sin) and the blasphemy of gods name (cardinal sin.) Also the partying, drinking and food (gluttonly of the seven deadly) revelry (lust of the seven deadly) and general debauchery of the company he kept, so much so he was tried and executed for the corruption of the youth. Only uninformed, unintellectual who cannot form a thought of there own volition rely on the seedy underbelly of philosophical logic known as Aristotle logic. Think for a bit, form your own opinion, and retry.
Last edited by Sweet~T on Mon Jun 02, 2014 10:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post #10

Post by Wootah »

Sweet~T wrote:It's simple you are mentally ill to believe in a book of scripture written by uneducated unenlightened middle eastern neanderthals with severe mental complications.

:warning: Moderator Warning

Please avoid calling people on this forum mentally ill. Besides being an ad hominem it does no justice to those that are mentally ill.

Please review our Rules.

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