If there was no imagination, we would all be robots and you jerks wouldn't have anyone to argue with. Stop complaining.
why is it so difficult to go without getting drunk? maybe religion is some people's elixir much the same way. and why do you care? no one is telling you to just deal with miserable reality and stop drinking. why cant you just enjoy reality for what it is?
i like to get drunk, but only temporarily. the rest of the time i live in the real world. is your position that religion is lies, but people should be allowed to lie to themselves? that is my position too, i am glad we acknowledged that it is all lies. why do you care that obama's political ideas are wrong? why does anyone discuss anything? basically the whole world is under the spell of institutionalized fantasies, i think it is fascinating, you dont?
i am not sure what you mean. you either acknowledge that the universe is what it is, or you make up silly fantasies to explain it and believe them to be true. i am wondering why we cant just say "i dunno". here, sam harris has a nice explanation for you and tirk: "“atheist” is a term that should not even exist. We do not, after all, have a name for a person who does not believe in Zeus or Thor. In fact, we are all “atheists” with respect to Zeus and Thor and the thousands of other dead gods that now lie upon the scrapheap of mythology. A politician who seriously invokes Poseidon in a campaign speech will have thereby announced the end of his political career. Why is this so? Did someone around the time of Constantine discover that the pagan gods do not actually exist, while the biblical God does? Of course not. There are thousands of gods that were once worshipped with absolute conviction by men and women like ourselves, and yet we all now agree that they are rightly dead. An “atheist” is simply someone who thinks that the God of Abraham should be buried with the rest of these imaginary friends. I am quite sure that we need only use words like “reason,” “common sense,” “evidence,” and “intellectual honesty” to do the job. So many gods have passed into oblivion, and yet the sky-god of Abraham demands fresh sacrifices. Wars are still waged, crimes committed, and science undone out of deference to an invisible being who is believed to have created the entire cosmos, fine-tuned the constants of nature, blanketed the earth with 20,000 distinct species of grasshopper, and yet still remains so provincial a creature as to concern himself with what consenting adults do for pleasure in the privacy of their bedrooms. Incompatible beliefs about this God long ago shattered our world into separate moral communities—Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc.—and these divisions remain a continuous source of human violence."
you were the one preaching about how you live in reality. apparently not so much. no it is my position you cant speak for other people no matter how much you disbelieve what they claim to have experienced. Like I said, religion and the spiritual are abstract and personal by nature. just think if your experience with your creator or higher power is like an emotion or feeling, similar to instincts in animals. something you know but can never prove to someone else. on a level indescribable by most standards. maybe, just maybe everything isnt all black and white in our complex world. I do not know so I do not claim to know. because it directly affects my pocketbook. this dude i know runs one of those 24 hr gyms where i signed up. he said hes gonna have to close because obama has taxed him out of business. this is why i care. maybe, maybe not. you've already admitted you cant accept anything without physical or scientific proof. maybe you're missing out. just think if that abstract relationship with god is like being drunk all the time. wouldnt that be cool. read that long ago. and by long ago i mean a day or two.
enjoying a drink is like a delusional philosophy based on fantasy, if you say so. it seems unlikely that you are so patient with people that are trumpeting the myths that society has not decided to respect. yunno, like scientologists. if tom cruise says "yunno the thetans or aliens or whatever speak to me", i dont imagine you would say "fair enough, he has subjective experience". you would say "that guy is a stupid toolbag". we as a society seem to be wildly biased towards some lies and against others, but they are all the same. the pope is great, everyone respects him, but tom cruise is a asshat. but they are exactly the same. all claims submitted without evidence are equal. lots of things would be cool if true. how am i to tell the difference between truth and fiction if i am gonna start believing things without evidence. is there no standard?
That's not what I said. I said why can't we enjoy reality and enjoy unreality, as well. Novels and movies are unreality and we enjoy them. Fantasy of any nature is unreality. Scientific reality is the fabric of our physical universe, but it damn sure ain't the creative, the artistic, the visionary, or the transcendental fabric of the human universe. Humans must understand reality, but are not bound by it. We can imagine. It is what makes us human.
i guess when i asked earlier why we have to make up wild fantasies, i should have added "..and then believe that they are true". i obviously didnt mean we shouldnt read tolkien. i meant we shouldnt believe tolkien is reality. or the bible.
no getting drunk could be a way to make your day more tolerable. many claim that their relationship with a spiritual power allows them to live in that higher state all the time so they dont feel the need to get drunk. maybe you're just crying out for god in that bottle. it has nothing to do with patience. I can decide whether i agree with someone or not based on my own personal experiences. the further that is from mine, the more absurd it sounds. still doesnt mean it didnt happen. thats why they are my beliefs, not yours. if i had a friend who became a scientologist, id not mock and call him a douchebag. id try to understand his position but if i couldnt, so be it. tom cruise, on the other hand, is fun to mock whether its his elevator shoes or gayness. i feel like mocking scientology for letting tom cruise in. take the position that just maybe a spiritual relationship is like an emotion or instinct or the other examples i gave. something almost impossible to describe but its as certain as hunger or thirst. or like the unyielding desire to bang gina carano. just because you cant really explain or prove it doesnt discount its happening either. we are some pretty complex beings with really complex brains. we cant always explain everything. including what we feel. sure, if you're talking about submitting an insurance claim. but people's personal experiences with the spiritual are clearly not something so neatly wrapped in a small box like you need in order to comprehend it. or believe it exists. which is why you cant even wrap your head around the possibility in the first place. well if your creator talks to you tomorrow thru an internal speaker within your head it would be cool as hell but you could never prove it. but i dont need evidence of it. because i dont really care one way or the other. thats between you and it. you're the one obsessed about others spirituality. it may be a cry for help.
