i'm going to get this out of the way right here and now. when i first saw "Read C.S. Lewis and..." i thought, "what the fuck does 'Alice and Wonderland' have to do any of this? this deep son of a bitch has lost me." always get those two mixed up, yes. anyhow, were you defending your athieism to people who genuinely didn't know the difference between the two or were they ignorant types who wanted to bust your balls? if the latter, than i hope you delivered your explainations to them this exact way. if the former, i hope they at least walked away educated. i was raised by agnostic parents and personally have never felt any sort of spiritual presence of God/a god. the fact that people base man's creation on proof that God exists, i find myself asking
( ... )
damn, until just now i saw c.s. lewis and thought alice in wonderland also. fucking lewis carroll. i also always get upton sinclair and sinclair lewis confused.
and matt, i don't give a damn what you do or don't believe, let's just hang out and talk about music and beer.
no body was busting my balls at all. it was really just a discussion. i guess it could have been an argument, but oddly, i haven't been in an arguing mood lately. i just wanted to clarify though.
as far as the coffee: the sad truth is that most people are not confident in their own ability to make choices, not confident in their own reason, and not confident in their own opinions. when people are challenged, even simply by viewpoints that are contrary to those they hold, there is a sense of the need to defend and to prove one's superiority. it's a very disgusting, but pervasive, aspect of human nature. people don't like to think, they like their own opinions reaffirmed. lauren, don't make waves. nobody wants a wavey pool. except maybe us. and a few others.
i won't dignify livejournal with a formal response to this but i still want you to write me a damned letter like you promised. or at least give me your address so i can write you one
I can make this a semantic argument if you want! To believe or not to believe is to acknowledge and to acknowledge to confirm knowledge... DO YOU KNOW WHAT A GERUND IS? You heathen! I love you Matty.
i thoroughly disagree. if you ask any catholic why they believe in god their answer is faith. belief in god for all christians is based on faith. faith, defined, is a belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. they don't know, they just believe.
a gerund is a noun formed out of a word that is really a verb. :)
oh god i hope this wasn't about me! if it was i wasn't criticizing you.and you're right about everything. i agree that reason cannot ever finally answer the god question. this is because reason can only deal in the finite and hence immediate circumstances of existence. to go beyond these bounds is to defy reason. reason, in my opinion, is used by humans in the same way that animals use their natural tools to survive. we don't have claws or stingers or poison (which is totally a jip, by the way) so we can't defend ourselves effectively in the natural world on a situational level. say you're attacked by some wild animal; what happens? logically, you would fight back, but most likely you'd die. a tiger, for example, is a long seven foot stretch with four sets of claws, big jaws that can crush coconuts, speed and agility (gained by being a quadroped, a more efficient method of travel). the only way you can survive, ultimately, is by imagining that the tiger is there before it actually is, and getting out of the situation, or making
( ... )
(scratch the line after "beyond death"). This is because the imagined realm is, although based upon experience and sense, beyond them because it can contain entirely different possible outcomes that may or may not come to pass. if you were to draw a line chart, with time at the x axis, time defined as the movement of events, and the y axis being our knowledge of these events as they begin to compose a whole acumen, we'd see a continuous upward slope. (what we do not learn is also part of this trend, because we are at least aware that we don't know it yet). mind you, i am considering here only events which are experienced by a being in the physical world. if we consider this chart in the context of the non-physical, the imagined experience, the whole thing is flip-flopped. the more we consider in this vein, the less we ultimately finally know. therefore, what is impossible to know by any being ever is constantly moving forward into ever increasing levels of conjecture. death, defined biologically as the end of metabolic processes.
( ... )
and know that we will die someday. this is intolerable, right down to our genes, who need to constantly propagate either through offspring or the survival of the individual. as entirely unsurvivable, and as entirely unsolvable, what death is defies logic. god is a response to that, a doorway through which the living, thinking mind may pass into a more tolerable state of existence, in which death does not occur. as such the believer embraces this non-existant world view and lives, both physically and psychologically, content. in that sense humans are separate from are constantly trying to escape it. in short (sorry it took forever) logic falters where we can't experience, humans are sentient and therefore aware of themselves and the world around them and that there is a single aspect of existence that is unable to be considered in awareness, so there is something driving humans forward to define that aspect on its own terms. a yearn for something more, something tangible within that intangible zone, is something only humans posess.
( ... )
so, FINALLY, to be truly human, not just some animal bent on surviving the immediate world with whatever evolved tools it has, a person has to discard logic, and seek irrational answers in the rational world. god is counts as one of these as it is the root of all human thought and experience.
so really, for me, i can't help but believe in god, because i want to live beyond myself.
this is also why i believe in ghosts.
there's more, but i'm tired now.
i probably didn't make any points but i'll clear it up later, if you want.
Comments 13
Reply
and matt, i don't give a damn what you do or don't believe, let's just hang out and talk about music and beer.
Reply
Reply
as far as the coffee: the sad truth is that most people are not confident in their own ability to make choices, not confident in their own reason, and not confident in their own opinions. when people are challenged, even simply by viewpoints that are contrary to those they hold, there is a sense of the need to defend and to prove one's superiority. it's a very disgusting, but pervasive, aspect of human nature. people don't like to think, they like their own opinions reaffirmed. lauren, don't make waves. nobody wants a wavey pool. except maybe us. and a few others.
Reply
601 w palm dr #207
glendale, ca
91202
Reply
Reply
Reply
To believe or not to believe is to acknowledge and to acknowledge to confirm knowledge...
DO YOU KNOW WHAT A GERUND IS?
You heathen!
I love you Matty.
:P
Blake
Reply
a gerund is a noun formed out of a word that is really a verb. :)
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
so really, for me, i can't help but believe in god, because i want to live beyond myself.
this is also why i believe in ghosts.
there's more, but i'm tired now.
i probably didn't make any points but i'll clear it up later, if you want.
but actually we agree.
ack. matt is a cutie.
pitootee.
Reply
Leave a comment