lucifers for whenever you need a fire. oh you guys are talking about an imaginary persona. in that case lucifer for whatever you'd like him to be.
They are the right questions. What you consider to be outside the realm of possibility is based on your own individual "knowledge" (or lack thereof) and experience. It is predicated on what you believe to be correct. Your opinion that such a thing as God is "outside the realm of possibility." You have no way to prove this opinion, but you state it as a "fact." But this is not convincing to anyone. Anymore than someone saying "God is real! I know it!" is particularly convincing to anyone that doesn't already feel the same. You yourself point out in the Infinite thread that a wise person realizes that they lack. But does even the wise know what all they lack? What is possible? What is impossible? Many of the logical outflows, the determinations of possibility and impossibility, are based on previous experience and the reasonable expectation that given the same conditions the same outcome will occur. This is true for both Atheists and Theists.
It is more likely that the anti-Stefan Molyneux crowd are members of a cult, than those that agree with many of his points. Just sayin. The usual suspects are getting their feelings hurt in this thread, so I won't share more of my thoughts right now... Except to say thread be interesting.
right because multiple people independently coming up with "this molyneux fellow DJ keeps posting is setting off my cult indoctrination alarm" is what some secret shadowy cult told us to believe. I'm not joking, we all went to the meetings and watched the great leaders videos where we learned that the only way to not be corrupt is to be enlightened by means of pointing out molyneux runs a cult. we've done this and now we are enlightened and happy. we shall continue to point this out untill you too choose to become enlightened in this way. molyneux is a cult, may all of our futures be shiny and blessed.
In short, this entire thread is exactly what the picture in the OP was talking about. If I were to link this conversation to their pastor, he would say, "Told you so..." You guys are extremely intelligent people. Beyond my measure (I've had to look up words you guys have used). However, your intelligence has caused your wisdom to falter. Again, I wish you guys the best. I can not imagine living in this world without a shard of hope, future, or joy. None of which are possible without a Savior and a personal relationship with God. Interesting conversation though, I shall ponder on it for a while. Cheers...
It is creepy that you keep insisting Molyneux is the leader of a cult. I find such statements baseless. And I suspect envy and/or radical alarmism to be the etiology.
I was blessed with an IQ a few standard deviations in the "correct" direction, but I have also come to realize that intelligence is overrated. School of hard knocks. Keep on with your groovy path 007. I desire success and happiness for all, of course, but I don't have the time or money to meet everyone on this rock.
Fear not, I have plenty of hope, future and joy. Your God and Savior does not have the monopoly on such things, though I am glad you have found those things in your own way. Still, please don't presume that just because I do not share in your beliefs that I do not have joy in my life - I don't do that to you (or if I have, I apologize). There's plenty of hope, future and joy to be found in nature, in music, in art, in games, in literature, in other human beings and in simply being and living, and even other religions and belief systems. I, for one, am One of the things my wife loves about me is what I am almost always in a good mood
The argument is that the universe is fundamentally deterministic. And while on an individual level you feel like you have free will and it's functionally indistinguishable from that, the theory is that if one had full knowledge of all things, they could predict how everything would unfold because they would know how your brain works, the sum of your experiences, and what choice you would make given all that makes up who you are. You are, in this argument, simply a product of your programming, as it were. I have no proof of this, of course, but it is what is most logical to me. It barely matters on a day-to-day or individual-to-individual level though, so it's not worth talking about too much.
of course you do. not like you keep referring to his teachings every other thread. and that you have become enlightened since you started looking at his vids perfectly following the exact pattern most cults use. (that was sarcasm, you do both those things)
Belief in all-knowing, punitive gods aided the growth of human societies, study says Amina Khan Contact Reporter February 10, 2016 Belief in moral-watching, all-knowing, punitive gods might have helped human societies grow far beyond small, close-knit groups, a new study shows. Researchers who ran an experiment with a total of 591 people in eight different small-scale societies around the world found that people who believed their deity of choice knew about their misdeeds and would punish them were more likely to play fairly in a game where money was on the line. The findings, described in the journal Nature, hint at the integral role that certain religious beliefs may have played in the dramatic expansion of human societies. Part of what has made humans as a species so successful is their ability to form social bonds beyond family ties, developing larger and increasingly complex social networks. Many researchers have tried to explore what traits seem to power humans’ ability to cooperate -- sometimes to their individual disadvantage -- for the benefit of the greater good. This becomes an even more perplexing question as human societies extended beyond the communities where they might either know or be related to everyone they interact with on a daily basis. How do you treat strangers, if you don’t know whether they will abide by the same social rules that you do? Scientists have increasingly found a connection between the type of religion these societies have and their ability to expand, Purzycki said. It's part of a growing field of research called evolutionary research studies, which looks in part at the way human societies and human belief systems have co-evolved, and how religious beliefs can bring adaptive advantages. http://www.latimes.com/science/scie...punishment-society-spread-20160210-story.html
That's pretty well known. In fact, it doesn't even have to be a deity. If you even BELIEVE you are being watched, you are more likely to "behave" in a "culturally acceptable" way. Plus some "religions" in the eastern traditions like Confucianism don't have dieties per se, but still espouse particular behaviors, with things like filial relationships and social harmony being core tenets.
This type of effect has even be observed even in situations where you are only subtly reminded you could be watched: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9424-big-brother-eyes-make-us-act-more-honestly/ "We all know the scene: the departmental coffee room, with the price list for tea and coffee on the wall and the “honesty box” where you pay for your drinks – or not, because no one is watching. In a finding that will have office managers everywhere scurrying for the photocopier, researchers have discovered that merely a picture of watching eyes nearly trebled the amount of money put in the box. Melissa Bateson and colleagues at Newcastle University, UK, put up new price lists each week in their psychology department coffee room. Prices were unchanged, but each week there was a photocopied picture at the top of the list, measuring 15 by 3 centimetres, of either flowers or the eyes of real faces. The faces varied but the eyes always looked directly at the observer. In weeks with eyes on the list, staff paid 2.76 times as much for their drinks as in weeks with flowers. “Frankly we were staggered by the size of the effect,” Gilbert Roberts, one of the researchers, told New Scientist." (A small piece to the "free will" puzzle, to my mind.)
must suck to live in a honor/shame/face based soceity where your worth as a person depends on how others perceive you and thus don't do bad things for fear of dammage to that perception and do bad things if you feel you can get away without people knowing instead of a guilt based soceity where you don't do bad things because doing so would mean you'd feel bad about yourself. I'm gonna go on a short limp here and say this was probably not factor considered in this instance. coincidentally I find religions that focus primarily of actions causing effects in the afterlife are sort of weird guilt/shame/fear hybrids. instead of being purely guilt based as they are sometimes classed.
It's also tied into the "authority" effect, whereby people are willing to do terrible things because an authority figure asked them to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment One can see, of course, how this could be applied to religion as well.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ens-Birds-change-behaviour-think-watched.html This came out recently too, about how ravens behave differently if they believe they are being watched by other ravens, even if they cannot see such ravens.
