iippo: What you would accept as "some sort of proof"?

Today we can "prove" a lot of things right or wrong, which were "proved" the opposite say 100 years ago. Our age is no more special than any other age before - so in 50 years, 100 years and so on from today - there will be people who will certainly prove that we were actually wrong about many things and wonder just how we could even believe in the crap we do today.

Just think about reality. Mean what is reality? Is it really 3d or could it be something else? Today we take it for granted that "ofcourse reality is 3d + time added" - but who knows what the next 100 years will bring and how that will change our perception of reality.

We have a lot of more or less well educated guesses, but how much a proof that is in the end? Then again, its completely different discussion is objective reality really more important than agreed upon reality...

iippo: Satanism is more of a philosophy than "proper" religion btw

orcishgamer: Well that's the thing, I'm a white, hetero, upper middle class male and I've felt it here (what's more I grew up religious and have studied a ton of religion, not enough for a degree, but far more than your average church goer), so I know where they're coming from, but I feel oppressed too and I'm not even getting the brunt of it.

orcishgamer: Ask most religious folks how much of the US is religious and they will usually woefully underestimate the real numbers. Depending on how you count only 11-16% of the US identifies as anything equivalent to atheist. Given that a lot of folks live in even more demographically skewed areas you can literally end up being surrounded by 98% religious people in a lot of places in the US.

iippo: I feel that is pretty big if there. Just feels...too petty to me. Talking about faith, i dont want to believe in petty God(s). But is ofcourse just my opinion and everyone is free to their own.

For example daily praying to any God(s) - i feel that sort of thing may make person think about some deep question and -perhaps- make the person that way more better. But I dont feel that daily praying (or any other ritual) is automatically any sort of free card to heaven.

iippo: I am not confident enough to judge any one on "universal level". I have my own opinions and standards, but I am well aware that my standards simply wont make it on certain parts of world. Objective moral standard might be cool and very assuring to have - just havent seen any better than "Do more good than evil"....But I cant really define what is good and what is evil.

iippo: Also, are we to be judged for our deeds or our intents?

iippo: Talking about that torturing babies is evil, then is it evil to abort baby? What if mothers health is in danger, does it make difference? Was aztec human sacrifice evil, if they thought it to be necessary to keep world continuing (I have faint memory of it perhaps having something to do with sustaining solar/lunar cycle)?

iippo: Who knows - maybe someone someone did get a fax from God, but how am I to know it? Even if the person walks to me on street and tells me "Hey I just got fax from God!" - well, there are also plenty other people trying to "sell" you their own religious views every single day just the same way. Could I really be expected to pick "the right one" on the street from all the possibilities thrown at you on daily basis?

iippo: ...which leads me to boring recap: Should there be omnipotent God(s) that is present everywhere - then I feel ill go less wrong by trying to discover his/her/its nature by myself, instead of picking one of the precanned products on the shelve.

Ano no, i dont believe this is cocky or arrogant in the slightest.

Mrstarker: No he doesn't.

Mrstarker: Proving the possibility of something is not the same as proving the existence of something.

Mrstarker: Design needing a designer _is_ anthropocentric thinking... or at least he's making a flawed analogy.

Mrstarker: Yes there is reason to doubt that. You assume it because of your experience, but there is no reason to apply it to the whole universe. Just because something is one way in the known universe does not mean it's like that everywhere.

Whitecroc: disagree. All that can be reliably said about something is that it exists. Anything more than that requires some sort of proof.

keeveek: I don't know if I'm exaggerating. Most civilized countries threw out religion from public life for a reason. I am against teaching religion at public school, so I wouldn't rather see my kid participating in them.

I agree that much depends on a religion teacher. My own in primary school was a fanatic priest who told me few times to knee before wall because I asked some "stupid" question.

It wasn't a city, a smaller town, so you may imagine why it's not that easy for parents to oppose an abusing priest, when "townfolks" support them from fear or "tradition".

My parents were brought up in strictly catholic family, so they tremble even today, when a priest is going from house to house in January to get money, because if you refuse a priest, he will call your name in public and the whole town will know that you didn't give him money.

I don't want my future family to be a part of that shit. I don't want a priest to have my kid's names in their records to use them to condemn them publicly because of something.

I don't know how long ago you were in Poland last time, but religion is still being forced on people, especially on the youngest ones. And it's more than 2 hours a week in school, because kids have to go to church every sunday, and every day during "roraty" to get first communion.

That's a lot of time for some wacko to tell my kid and convience him that his parents are going to hell. And when you are a 6-8 year old brat, you are going to believe him. And maybe we just want to spare ourselves quarrels like that and having to tell him that "thinking about girls is not impure and you don't have to worry about that", like my father had to tell me after religion classes.

Small kid may think that attending to religion classes and communion is a good thing, because "everybody else does that", but that doesn't mean we have to comply. Being "injected" with religion at a young age is in my opinion much more harmful than not being baptised.

And I'm not going to baptise my kid, just as I'm not going to enroll them to karate/boxing/pool/dancing/wrestling classes all at once, because if I don't do that, it may limit their possibilities. We will choose what we think is best for our children, knowing what they do and don't like, what their talents and possibilities are, and by hearing out their opinions.

Not just because "he may want to do something when he's 30yo". Because he might want to be a professional boxer when he turns 20, or a football player too. We can't predict everything.

keeveek: Probably. Just like I would refuse him after he tells "I want that toy because Toby has it". Kids arguments at that age are mostly "I want to take communion because Toby has", and it's not something you should simply follow, because your kid says so.

As I've said I will say again: I believe kids are too small to make choices like that. They are too small to buy themselves an expensive toy or create a twitter account according to law, so they are usually too small to decide if they want to be catholic or not. In my opinion, that decision should be made around 13-15 years old, and allow me to raise my children in that belief.

It would feel rather hypocritical if you let your kid to decide on its own about religion at the age of 8, but you don't let them stay outdoors as long as they want, because "They're just kids" ;-D

And with that, my kid will have a few years to check, get knowledge etc to know better if he wants to be catholic or not. If at the age of 13 or 15 he will still want to be a member of that church, that would mean for me he really wants that, not only follows the flock, because he wants to "fit in" with the rest of the kids.

But I believe it will not be a problem in larger cities in a few years from now, and a lot of kids will not have their communions, just because "it's what everybody's doin"

Of course I will let my kid to decide if he wants to be religious or not - when me and my wife decide the kid is ready and mature enough to do that. Being religious or not, is among the most important decisions in your life.

orcishgamer: If others' arguments, which are more well researched and better than any job I could possibly do here (or maybe anywhere) haven't changed your mind about Aquinas, I'm not about to try. There's plenty of great stuff on the subject, dunno if you've read it, kind of sounds like you have and it had no impact.

orcishgamer: As far as Carlin, come on, his bits are all over Youtube, just search for "carlin god" and you'll get the most famous bits. I suppose I could transcribe the gist of them here, but they're seriously like 3-10 minutes long.

Lionel212008: Failure to ascribe to social dogma certainly has consequences and leads to a phenomenon called " the suppression of radical dissent or thought". The dark ages could be cited as being an example of this widespread social phenomenon.... However while moralistic propaganda may to an extent rob of us of trenchant thought, reasoning and imagination it does serve some purpose.

Soyeong: Honestly, it's there, just go look:

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm

Soyeong: Of course, that would be why Aquinas doesn't argue for the possibility of something, but the necessity of it.

Soyeong: The argument is radically different from "design needs a designer". Aquinas would have rejected Intelligent Design.

Soyeong: The future is unknown to us, but we regularly use our past experiences to extrapolate what we think the future is going to be like when making our plans. What you are doing here is along the lines of telling me that I shouldn't make plans for next week because there is the remote possibility that somewhere in the unknown universe there is a pack a velociraptors with laser beams attached to their heads that is going to attack me tomorrow. I'll be happy to reevaluate my thoughts about their existence while I'm being mauled, but until then, it is irrational to use that say I shouldn't extrapolate from my past experiences.

Soyeong: ...which leads me to boring recap: Should there be omnipotent God(s) that is present everywhere - then I feel ill go less wrong by trying to discover his/her/its nature by myself, instead of picking one of the precanned products on the shelve.

DieRuhe: One wonders just how "dark" it was if the period from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance resulted in... the Renaissance. It certainly didn't pop up overnight! :-)

Ivory&Gold: Christianity isn't wholly contained in that one old book and whatever relevance it might or might not retain today. It represents the collective struggle of millions of people over the course of two thousand years, to reach for something higher.