Renouncing Reason

[Obvious Leo]

The thread is well named since a quest for "ultimate truth" requires a renunciation of reason a priori.

[Skip]

I enjoy watching how they always make a "gotcha!" play on the verb to believe. They pretend "belief" = "faith".

It doesn't. They're different words, just as "run" and "canter" are different; "canine" and "dingo" are different.

[Lacewing]

Here's what it looks like to me...

"And thus, when one is forced to play, he must renounce reason to preserve his life,"

The game of life is unexpected and unknown and it cannot be survived or fully experienced if limited to (or contained in) static ideas of reason.

"...rather than risk it for infinite gain, as likely to happen as the loss of nothingness."

It is a pointless quest to use ones static notions as the basis/proof for some sort of ultimate conclusion.

The thing about God is, it won't reveal its existence to anyone that doesn't 'believe'...

How convenient and convoluted. Maybe the same is true of the Loch Ness monster... and the entities that are creating crop circles. If you don't "believe", then you won't see! Is ANY of it really there? Does it matter? Might it all just demonstrate potentials of experience? Why make any of it more important than anything else -- perhaps to make ourselves feel more important and right for believing/seeing one thing or another?

...two heavy taps on my right knee were the answer. 'Right.'

This is simply part of your fantastic trip. We ALL have fantastic trips... and we receive direction and insights in many different ways. It would be a mistake for any of us to think that our trip reveals some ultimate definition, accuracy, or truth for all.

God is the minds para_sight. If you believe, you may get the chance to discover exactly what that means.

Only according to the trip you are on... which, firstly, appears (?) to lift you above others because of what you believe/see, and... secondly, doesn't seem to recognize that people can have extraordinary levels of vision, understanding, and awareness through many different paths. Just because you attribute such a thing to a particular god does not limit such a thing to that.

...just taking a piss on the less intelligent stance of atheism

A very stupid thing to say. Theism and atheism are not a measure of intelligence.

There is an entity that asked YOU for your belief,

For many people, there is NO entity... and NOTHING is being ASKED. Rather, there are simply people like you insisting that what you believe is the law of the land whether the rest of us believe in it or not. It's ridiculous. There is NO singular, absolute, ultimate belief for all. Look all over the globe... and look throughout all of history. Why would the grandness and infinite potential of all-that-is BE SERIOUSLY CONDENSED DOWN into some singular belief system?

Whatever answer you think you have is for you. That's how it is for each of us. We share what works for each of us... and that's the extent of it. Why is that not good enough?

[Skip]

So, there you go:
An entity that doesn't manifest itself unless you believe in it asks you to believe in it so that it can manifest itself. But then, of course, asking would be a manifestation, so it can't actually ask you to believe in it until after you believed in it, by when you wouldn't need to be asked.
Go, bet your life on it.

[Lacewing]

So, there you go:
An entity that doesn't manifest itself unless you believe in it asks you to believe in it so that it can manifest itself. But then, of course, asking would be a manifestation, so it can't actually ask you to believe in it until after you believed in it, by when you wouldn't need to be asked.

This summary is priceless.

[Obvious Leo]

There's also a fair bit of the Catch-22 story in the whole question of belief in the supernatural. Yossarian was asked this question by his commanding officer after he refused to fly any more combat missions "But what if everybody felt the same way as you did about this?", to which he replied "Well in that case I'd be a damn fool to think any differently, wouldn't I?"

This little theme repeats throughout the story in many guises and its relevance to questions of reason and faith are significant. I would suggest that the reason why so many people continue to claim that they believe in god is because they've never bothered to think about it. They are neither theists nor atheists, but apatheists, because they couldn't give a shit one way or the other.

[Skip]

Or because it's safer, more practical, easier or more convenient to go along with what everyone else is saying they believe. You don't need to be sure that they believe it, any more than you need to convince them that you believe it, just so everyone is saying the same thing.
I'm pretty sure that's what Pascal had in mind.

[Obvious Leo]

I'm pretty sure that's what Pascal had in mind.

I'm pretty sure you're right because Pascal was no fool. He would have known perfectly well that a mind can't reason itself into a belief but it could easily reason itself out of one so he was basically just expressing the doctrinal position of all three branches of Abrahamic monotheism which specifically forbid its followers from subjecting the nature of their beliefs to rational analysis. This is what the parable of Eden is all about because it is made explicit in the Adam and Eve story that the fruit from the tree of knowledge is forbidden to the believer. Knowledge is seen as god's business and not as man's business, which must surely be the greatest scam ever dreamed up in human history. Those privileged few who have granted themselves the right to interpret the will of god then have the rest of humanity to serve them as their submissive slaves. I wish I'd thought of it but I guess it's all about who gets in first.

[Skip]

Given L. Ron Hubbard, you didn't miss it by much!

[Lacewing]

...all three branches of Abrahamic monotheism which specifically forbid its followers from subjecting the nature of their beliefs to rational analysis. This is what the parable of Eden is all about because it is made explicit in the Adam and Eve story that the fruit from the tree of knowledge is forbidden to the believer. Knowledge is seen as god's business and not as man's business, which must surely be the greatest scam ever dreamed up in human history. Those privileged few who have granted themselves the right to interpret the will of god then have the rest of humanity to serve them as their submissive slaves.

AMEN!

What kind of god wouldn't welcome questions from its creations? And wouldn't provide straight, direct answers? And would, furthermore, punish/condemn any who didn't buy into its master plan?

[Obvious Leo]

What kind of god wouldn't welcome questions from its creations? And wouldn't provide straight, direct answers? And would, furthermore, punish/condemn any who didn't buy into its master plan?

There is no such god, Lacewing, and anybody who says different knows nothing of god. My late mother was a devout believer although only those who knew her intimately well could possibly have known this because she regarded her belief as the most personal of personal relationships between herself and a god which she freely explained to me was of her own creation. She almost never spoke of god and she wasn't in the least dismayed when I abandoned all notions of god in my adolescence and she said so to me quite plainly. She said her god couldn't care less what I chose to believe or not believe but what he did care about was how I chose to live my life. I still get a tear in my eye when I recall these words of Mum's because she taught me more about god than all the priests or rabbis or imams ever possibly could have.

[Lacewing]

...she regarded her belief as the most personal of personal relationships between herself and a god which she freely explained to me was of her own creation.

Beautiful and powerful!

Bless your wise Mum.

She said her god couldn't care less what I chose to believe or not believe but what he did care about was how I chose to live my life... /...she taught me more about god than all the priests or rabbis or imams ever possibly could have.

I can't imagine a truer image of the "god concept" than that. Such truth is not about all the particular stuff/beliefs we wear wrapped around us (that's simply for our own individual comfort and inspiration) -- truth and glory(?) are about who we actually are and what we do with it. (No particular god required, and no need to carry a god banner as a symbol of ones divine association.) We're already ALL of it... to do with it as we will.

[Hobbes' Choice]

...all three branches of Abrahamic monotheism which specifically forbid its followers from subjecting the nature of their beliefs to rational analysis. This is what the parable of Eden is all about because it is made explicit in the Adam and Eve story that the fruit from the tree of knowledge is forbidden to the believer. Knowledge is seen as god's business and not as man's business, which must surely be the greatest scam ever dreamed up in human history. Those privileged few who have granted themselves the right to interpret the will of god then have the rest of humanity to serve them as their submissive slaves.

AMEN!

What kind of god wouldn't welcome questions from its creations? And wouldn't provide straight, direct answers? And would, furthermore, punish/condemn any who didn't buy into its master plan?

One that had no conceptual apparatus; will; motivation; desire; awareness; needs; cognizance? Or one that did not exist.

[Obvious Leo]

Such truth is not about all the particular stuff/beliefs we wear wrapped around us

Exactly. And this.

are about who we actually are and what we do with it.

What we think can certainly define us in the way we are but it is what we do that shapes the future, both for ourselves and for the world around us. What we think is an ever-moving tableau but once a thing is done it can never be undone and thus the mark we stamp on the future is an indelible one. I don't mock those who find a "god concept" useful for themselves as long as they're willing to extend me the same courtesy when I say that such a concept is not for me. Furthermore I resent the hubris of those who dare to suggest that my own preferred world-view in some way makes me morally inferior to themselves because they have an invisible best friend and I haven't. I'm just an ordinary Joe minding his own business and tapping out his words on a coffee-stained keyboard and I don't need lectures in morality from hooded bandits beheading innocents in the middle east or fanatical zealots lobbing bombs into fertility clinics. Is this too much to ask?

[Kayla]

for some reason i am thinking about these guys:

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/leg ... 0221142440