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The one true religion

A discriminating intellect is that in which knowledge based only on words, real knowledge and ordinary knowledge based on sense perception or reasoning are present in a mixed state and the mind alternates between them.

"When the time of destruction is at hand the intellect becomes perverted." Vridha Chan. 16:17.
Topic of discussion
Five Tests of true religion - Feb 08, 2002
  1. It (revelation) must exist in its entirety from the very beginning of creation for all of mankind, and not over a long period of time after.
    Oppose - It is unjust of Yahwe, Allah and Christ, to deprive millions born before the revelation of the Ten Commandments, the Q'uran, and the New Testament of His 'divine wisdom'. An injustice which cannot be the work of a Just, Compassionate and Merciful God.
  2. It must conform with (immutable) Natural laws
  3. Oppose - The cause of the physical body is the reproductive element - any other method as man was created from dust or blood-clot and all other miracles of God and Prophets are a breach to this law.
  4. It must be in harmony with reasoning.
    Oppose - Incest which results in mental and physical infirmities, is an immoral action and it had to be the same also in the beginning (creation of one man and one woman).
  5. It must be in harmony with science.
    Oppose - Modern science has proven creation to be more than 6,000 years old, the earth is spherical and it rotates and revolves, contradictions to the Torah, Bible and Q'uran.
  6. Its truth must be confirmed by four evidences :-
  • Direct Cognition - Not all that is known by perception can be true.
  • Inferences - God is eternal therefore we can infer that there were past creations and as well as there will be future ones.
  • Testimony - The testimonies of Rishis, sages and seers of the Vedas (altruistic teachers are all in harmony with each other.
  • History - There are many books (Mahabharata, Valmiki's Ramayan) and source of other civilization which speak of the past ancient Vedic (Aryas) civilization of 5,000 years ago and earlier.

Let's be reasonable when it comes the most abstruse science of God (wisdom), the ignorant (by repenting) and the wise (by austerity) can never reap the same rewards.


WARNING! Reader's discretion is advised - the truth offends!
Past dialogues debunking Religion
Other discussion boards:-  Can a fool, fool God?    Do all paths lead to God?   Debunking evolution
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Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

(PART ONE)

You might think it futile to debate whether or not God exists because, well, you can't prove a negative! But actually, there are a few tricks in the bag that we can pull out to prove such a thing doesn't exist. Let's start off with the very idea of God. Does it make sense? No more than a rounded square does, right? But what about evidence? We've looked, and we haven't found God, therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that he. . . doesn't exist. After all, being omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscience, are incompatible with the natural order.

Atheism has evidence, and it's overwhelming. Let's do a common thought experiment: imagine its your birthday, and your boyfriend's baking a cake today. But when you arrive, there's no cake. All you see is a full box. In other words, had the cake been baked, why is it still here, unmade? This analogy, of course, represents God. Had theism been true all along, we'd expect certain things to align with it in nature.

I've broken my argument up into five categories:

1. If God exists, why does he hide himself?
2. The success of the natural sciences proves God's a fairy-tale for adults
3. The mind-body connection, not problem
4. Evolution kills a perfect designer, i.e., God
5. The abundance of pointless suffering. . .

So let's jump in, shall we?

1. If God exists, why does he hide himself? Now this is a no-brainer: had God created the world in which mankind could form a loving bond with him, why does he make it so difficult for us to find him? I mean, try loving your father having never known him, right? It's impossible. Moreover, countless billions have died never having known God, therefore, it would be unreasonable to claim that all reasonable people could make a transcendent connection to this divine figure. Had God truly cared for such a personal connection, why not send a booming voice to declare it so, or give each one of us an inner-awareness of his presence? In other words, where's the sky-writing here? Because to be brutally truthful with you, I'd argue that the reason he's so silent is because. . . he doesn't exist at all.

2. The success of the natural sciences proves that God doesn't exist because we haven't detected him in the natural world. now, you're going to say, "Well, we don't need to detect him because he's spiritual," and I'll rebut with, "but did he not create the natural world? So isn't God suppose to be natural?" This is because a supernatural God, outside of the natural order, could not have created it. He'd have to have been part of it. No analogy can give it justice, you just have to have the right amount of knowledge and imagination to see what I'm saying is true. Nothing outside of nature can effect it, and therefore, God isn't some causal agent. Science has ignored God, we've explained things without him for so long, so why do we need him now? Why, ever?

3. The mind-body connection is simple. We all have perception and consciousness, but it was once believed by Western philosophers that the mind was grounded in some "hard to explain" substance above our heads, just floating around somewhere. This duelist picture of an undying spirit inside a corruptible body, has fallen over the wayside in the past century. At the forefront, there are two main reasons for it: 1) it's not clear how an immaterial soul can cause changes in the body, because a soul, we're told by grand sages of the past, are purely non-physical, I mean, you can't heat up the darn thing. But if you can't do that, if you can't interact with it, how does it interact with you? If its not a form of mass, how can it have a cause-and-effect relationship with your physical body, brain? 2) Is the mere fact that there are specific correlations between the mental and physical attributes, for example, take the cognitive ability of language usage and facial reasoning. Both are localized in the brain. This is also true for brain injuries, as they can cause very distinctive changes to perception, cognition, even personality. Again, how could any of this be possible had the mind truly been independent of the body? Let's take this further, neither could God be a disembodied form of consciousness. It was expected that religion would conceptualize the soul, as God is the very essence of such a belief. Atheism, however, needs no commitment. We've got no strings attached. And if you're going to argue now that atheism allows for no moral consciousness, that humans are just meat shaped in form, and that we somehow need this "soul" thing to account ourselves, all I'll say is that you're mistaken. After all, how is it that we've allowed ourselves to hold a soul accountable for its wrong doings but not a person? Does the soul go o trial for murder? Come on, give me a break!

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

(PART TWO)

4. Evolution. . . has proved beyond a doubt that our brains are the most complex things is all existence. Likely, I mean, you never know, you might just step out your door tonight to see a flying saucer, but chances are, they don't exist either. Merely a figment of the imagination. All jokes aside, it's no wonder that theism has chosen us, the human species, to be the focal point of God's creation. Our complexity, they'd argue, prove a designer. However, when we first started studying the process which created us, we met some unexpected challenges to theism. Evolution has a way about itself to be awfully. . . wasteful. When people create something, we try to design the components in advance, to have the perfect product, but evolution is, as Richard Dawkins put it, a "blind watchmaker." Natural selection, the main engine, is just random: it designs a whole array of things, and then, by trial and error, discards those which don't work while at the same time, keeping all the goods. In other words, it's just darn dumb luck that we're here. No human engineer would make new configurations to preexisting structures (he wouldn't build a bridge by trial and error), therefore, we primates have been cursed to have many traits that are just dysfunctional today. For example, the openings for both breathing and swallowing are so close together that we often chock. Our appendix is apparently useless but can get life-threatening infections. The birth canal is too small, increasing the chances of injury or death during delivery. Ever more horrific, is the fact that almost every single species on earth. . . went extinct. Every museum of natural history is just a junkyard of failed experiments. I don't know about you, but if I had commissioned God as the sole designer of such a wreck, I'd be asking for my money back. Do you still think there's an all-powerful rational being now?

5. The abundance of pointless suffering. . . beware, this will be a real tear-jerker, well, if you're still reading this, you've been warned. As anyone who watches the news will tell you, everyday, poor, innocent children suffer. Some even die. The statistics show that more people are killed in America every day then 9/11. A lot of these "attacks" are preventable diseases, some of them killing over one million children a year. If we say that terrorist attacks are evil due to the inflicted suffering on humans, what about this sort of suffering? Therefore, your God, my friend, is a terrorist, and either he doesn't care about the suffering of children, or he permits it for some reason. However, if he's suppose to be morally perfect, why this contradiction? What's the greater good that comes out of the painful deaths of thousands of children each day, or, what's the evil being prevented had they been spared? Theists have been struggling with this one for centuries, I guess God was just too much a coward to tell them why (actually, had he truly loved us, we'd be the first to know why bad things happen to us). But the focal point is this: children die, and nothing better happens. I mean, me aren't discovering new ways to stop things like malaria, nor do such things make me and you better people to help fight for lives. Even if it were so, why should their suffering make us more virtuous? And to top it off, God isn't even here to comfort us. He has abandoned us. And yet, you still worship him day and night and prostrate yourself in front of him. A better conclusion is that there is no such thing as a perfectly good and loving God. Death is nothing more than a tragic, pointless disaster. There was never any plan which allows children to die, and nothing could ever justify it, not even an eternity in heaven, for it's just not moral to do such a thing to children.

Okay, maybe you still don't understand what I'm getting at, if so, that's alright. See if this makes sense, then apply it to your all loving creator: imagine a God of evil. He's evil all right, but he permits good things to happen in the scheme of things for reasons which we cannot know which will lead him to higher evils in the future, evils which we can't yet comprehend. Mull over that for me, if you will. Ask yourself, does it make sense? No more than an all good God permitting evil. Flip it either way, there's no silver lining to this.

I'll end with Epicurus, he said the following, which nicely summarizes my argument above:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able to? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able to, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able to and willing? Then from where comes evil?
If he is neither able nor willing, then why call him God?"

In Conclusion. . .

Again, had God truly existed, this universe would have yielded different results. But the obvious is there, and now it's just a matter of accepting it. The Bible once said that only fools disbelieve in God. Well, we sure made good work of 'em. Taken as a whole,

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

1. If God exists, why does he hide himself?
Vj ~ God isn't hiding. It is only the wise can see him.


"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell

So Tesia, which one best describes you, stupid or intelligent?

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

Funny that you quote Bertrand Russell, he would have called your religion irrational.

I ask you, why did God devise the universe that only the wise can see him, and what is "wise"? It appears to me that your sages would have called themselves wise so that only they could interpret God's wishes.

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

Funny that you quote Bertrand Russell, he would have called your religion irrational.
Vj ~ Maybe, but he was honest in saying he had doubts. Can you say the same?

I ask you, why did God devise the universe that only the wise can see him,
Vj ~ Very simple, because the state of being stupid and full of doubts can't do it.

and what is "wise"?
Vj ~ One who is not stupid or full of doubts.

It appears to me that your sages would have called themselves wise so that only they could interpret God's wishes.
Vj ~ Well you don't expect the stupid and you (full of doubts) to "interpret God's wishes" do you?

PS.
You can't call a religion irrational if you haven't studied it.

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

I can all a religion irrational, in fact, all religions are, in a word, irrational. Mr. Russell was a committed atheist, he never doubted his atheism.

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

I can all a religion irrational,
Vj ~ Sure you can, it is what fools do. If you weren't you would have already pointed it out.

In fact, all religions are, in a word, irrational
Vj ~ "Science without RELIGION is lame, and religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein.
Here you must contend with another genius of his time. I'm sure you could explain the latter part of his quote to be true, but what about the former?

Mr. Russell was a committed atheist, he never doubted his atheism.
Vj ~ So how does that free the intelligent of doubts?

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

Your arguments aren't real. They're full of fallacies. Einstein didn't believe in god, he meant religion as a metaphor for the universe.

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

Your arguments aren't real. They're full of fallacies. Einstein didn't believe in god, he meant religion as a metaphor for the universe.
Vj ~ And you think being stupid or intelligent and full of doubts best qualify you to make such statements?

We gave the world science!
"We owe a lot to Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made." Albert Einstein

And here is the source knowledge.
One of the originators of the Physical Evolution Theory, Dr. A. R. Wallace was the first to strike down the Social Evolution Theory. He rightly affirmed that:
"The Veda admittedly the oldest book in the library of mankind contains the essential teachings of the most advanced religious thinkers and is a vast system of religious teachings which are pure and lofty.”

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

You’re hopeless. Keep your biases, goodbye.

Re: Spiritual jumping-jacks? Take a break and be an atheist

You’re hopeless.
Vj ~ That's what the fox says when it cannot reach the grapes.

Keep your biases,
Vj ~ If it is, I learned it from Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Dr. A. Wallace.

goodbye.
Vj ~ Goodbye and thank you for the dialogue.

PS
Again, had God truly existed, this universe would have yielded different results.
Vj ~ If you reject the notion of a creator, how could you possibly know what he is capable of doing?