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Religion IV: Deus vult!


Ser Scot A Ellison

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Preachy Twits: Please Go Away!

For both the fundie christians and the pushy atheists, it's not enough to know what they believe. It's not enough for them to be absolutely certain that they're correct. If other people don't agree with them, regardless of what those other people think, regardless of whether those other people are interested in listening, they must go out and aggressively convert people. You must listen. You must be convinced. Anything less than perfect agreement is more than just disagreement - it's like it's a personal affront.

There's another major common thing between the fundies and the pushy atheists: it's how they approach the non-believers/believers. When a christian twit comes to preach at you, they always firmly believe that you've never really heard of christianity. They really believe that no other christian has ever approached you before; that all they need to do is lay out the reasons why you should accept Jesus, and if you listen honestly, that you'll believe it too. They're repeating the same thing that any non-christian has heard a thousand times before. But they really, genuinely believe that they're the first one to bring their arguments to you. Because the argument is so powerful, so self-evident, that if you'd ever heard it before, you'd be a fundie just like them!

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Yeah finally a philosophical thread. I've been searching for one for quite some time, but didn't expect to find it here

Here's a good introduction to theist philosophy's historical foundations in Greek & Judeo-Christian thought.

Here's the main category TOC:

I.Foundation for the Study of Religion

II. Philosophy of Religion – a foundation

III.Ancient Greek influences on religious philosophy

IV.Judeo-Christian influences on religious philosophy

V.Philosophy of Religion

A. Traditional arguments for the existence of God

B. Challenges to religious belief

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The natural disasters front can be countered in a number of possible ways:

1. God exists, can control natural disasters, and in doing so is actively malevolent.

2. God exists, but cannot or will not intervene in natural disasters:

2a. Because God merely set up the universe, and plays no part in its operations (the Divine Clockmaker).

2b. Because God delegates such malevolence to an independent being (the Devil), with a view to testing his creations.

2c. Because natural disasters are fundamentally amoral events, they don't interest Him.

2d. Because God is not truly omnipotent. He wants to help, but can't, for fear of something worse happening.

3. God exists, can control natural disasters, and is using it to punish wrongdoing.

4. God exists, can control natural disasters, and is doing it to test faith (basically 2b, except that God is doing it directly, rather than outsourcing it to the Devil)

5. God exists, may or may not have anything to do with natural disasters, but He is so far above our comprehension that for all we know, natural disasters are a good thing long term.

6. A combination of 2b and 2d: God exists, but he has a genuine Manichean opponent (not an underling like the Devil).

7. A combination of 2c and 5: God is a Cthulhu type figure: not so much malevolent, as no more interested in the doings of humans than we are by flies.

8. God has ceased to exist for whatever reason, so by definition, cannot intervene.

Then there is 9. where God is too busy drinking beer, scheming against other gods, committing adultery, and killing people that have displeased him to care about stupid tidal waves and earthquakes. A view that can be more or less found in some of the old Indo-European religions.

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Is Ayahuasca Grooming a New Generation of Healers?

Ayahuasca has been coming to the attention of popular press — and mainstream culture — over the course of the past few years. 2014 has seen folks like Lindsay Lohan come forward about the medicine and its healing potencies.

In this clip, Rak Razam riffs on the possibility of an awakening of “neo-shamanism” in the West, not only healing people but developing life-long connections with the medicine and the compulsion to become healers themselves in their own communities...
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