May I be a skeptic?

format_quote Originally Posted by wilberhum

No problem. I have told my story before. I will PM you.

Thanks!
Peace.

Philly, I'm assuming you were "Christian" before you became agnostic?

Same here. I was there 22 years old,fairly intelligent, a thinker not a acter, getting married in the sight of god and it all seemed OK.
It's what I had been taught since nursery school.

It takes a leap of faith to lose the faith, because what then have you got?
If someone takes 40 years to break from indoctrination, thats not a indicement of them. It just shows how powerful the concepts of organised religion are!

Peace

format_quote Originally Posted by Philosopher

Yeah dude. Life is short, and there is no afterlife. Enjoy it while you can. Dont let religion (a virus of the mind) ruin it.

Sure, go out and play. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die.


I'm not a Christian to get into heaven, but because in finding abudant life in Jesus I have been able to avoid the type of hell you keep describing for me to accept here on earth. There really is more to this life than living and dying and trying to make it through the night.

Link Removed.

More To This Life
by Stephen Curtis Chapman

Today I watched in silence
As people passed me by.
And I strained to see if
There was something hidden
In their eyes.
But they all looked back
At me as if to say,
"Life just goes on"
The old familiar story,
Told in different ways.
Make the most of your own journey
From the cradle to the grave.
Dream your dreams tomorrow
Because today life must go on.

(Chorus
But there's more to this life
Than livin' and dyin',
More than just tryin'
To make it through the day.
More to this life,
More than these eyes alone can see,
And there's more than this
Life alone can be.

Tonight he lies in silence
Staring into space
And looks for ways to make
Tomorrow better than today.
But in the morning light
It looks the same.
Life just goes on.
He takes care of his family,
He takes care of his work.
And every Sunday morning
He takes his place at the church.
And somehow he still feels
A need to search.
But life just goes on.

(Chorus)

So where do we start
To find every part
Of what makes this life complete
If we turn our eyes to Jesus we'll find
Life's true beginning is there
At the cross where He died,
He died to bring us

thats a lovely song, and very true.

It still holds true if you take out the last 6 lines.

But we each find our own way in life and need different things from it to make sense.

I understand the "life sucks and then you die" philopsophy, because that was my attitude for many years. I thought I was too intelligent and too rational to fall for any religious teaching. Now I consider myself too intelligent and too rational to fall for any athiest teaching. Life takes strange turns sometimes.

format_quote Originally Posted by Grace Seeker

Conversely, when someone says that they will not believe because they are skeptical and just know that nothing can be true that they are incapable of knowing through their own powers of observation and logic. I am thoroughly unimpressed. That person is not a doubter. They are a convinced and fully converted anti-theist. I just ask that they not lie by also claiming to be open-minded, for they have closed their mind to even admit the possibility of God.

I admit the possibility of god, I'd argue for the likelyhood of it.
From my researches and investigations, I'm convinced (at the moment) that God has nothing to do with the Quran or Bible.

format_quote Originally Posted by August

This universal standard of morality can't come from human beings, or else everything would merely be a matter of our own perspective.

It can come from human beings and it is a matter of our own perspective. We just happen to share mostly the same perspectives on things.

format_quote Originally Posted by Grace Seeker

Conversely, when someone says that they will not believe because they are skeptical and just know that nothing can be true that they are incapable of knowing through their own powers of observation and logic. I am thoroughly unimpressed. That person is not a doubter. They are a convinced and fully converted anti-theist. I just ask that they not lie by also claiming to be open-minded, for they have closed their mind to even admit the possibility of God.

Not really addressing your point at all, but a side note I'd like to make. Anti-Theist seems to have multiple meanings. I consider myself openminded and given evidence I'd likely come to believe in God (though I doubt I'd worship it even if it does exist). I however consider myself anti theist. Not because I'm 100% that there is no God, but because I'm against the idea of Gods and the ideologies that are attached to them.

format_quote Originally Posted by Keltoi

I understand the "life sucks and then you die" philopsophy, because that was my attitude for many years. I thought I was too intelligent and too rational to fall for any religious teaching. Now I consider myself too intelligent and too rational to fall for any athiest teaching. Life takes strange turns sometimes.

There are no atheist teachings.

format_quote Originally Posted by Philosopher

Why one god? Why not many Gods? Why an immortal, omnipotent god??

Meh, sure. No problems with that. i kinda like the old idea of the God of Mustard throwing a few laserbeams around at the God of Tomato Sauce for taking his followers.

However there is one point, The Goddess of Reality TV Shows needs to interceed seriously. Whats with Big Brother at the moment? Are people not reading her message correctly?
Thou shalt not putteth the Chav with the Yuppie? Have we forgotton that?

format_quote Originally Posted by August

Then what you're describing isn't a universal standard of morality. You are talking about a moral code that is based on your own perspective.

Sentence B does not follow sentence A by necesity. You may very well be talking about a universal code of morality and still have it based on your perspective.

As I noted above, we just happen to share the same perspective on most moral issues.

And note, that we DON'T share the same perspective on everything... so moral senses vary from culture to culture on all but the most base points (ie murder, theft, etc). All of these base points derive from experiences all these cultures have in common.

There are no big surprises here.

I think that that falls apart when you look at what happens when two differing moralities conflict. For example, when a religious wakko group starts killing people. Who are you to say that what they do is wrong? Their perspective is that their actions are perfectly moral. However, I'm sure you would say that their actions are morally wrong and must be stopped. You are appealing to a standard of morality that is outside of yourself.

No I'm not. That standard of morality is entirely within myself. And the wakko religious killer group's twisted sense of moralit is entirely within themselves. And it didn't come naturally I bet. I bet it took a holy book and some charismatic leader to get them there.

Now, you might call this an ethical principle that most cultures follow, but majority opinion does not determine right and wrong.

As you noted above yourself, that depends entirely on perspective.

It should be noted that this argument is not sufficient to prove the existence of God

It isn't even relevant to the question. A universal code of ethics could come from any number of places other than god. Even could have been implanted or bred into us by aliens. Just as plausible.

I think that recognizing this universal morality is the necessary first step.

There is no _complete_ universal morality as you just noted above. There are points on which everybody seems to agree and others on which many of us disagree. The points on which we agree derive from common circumstance and condition. We are after all all human beings living with finite resources and aware of our own eventual demise.