REAL debate thread for RELIGION

[brownjenkins]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
Whether trouble follows or not has nothing to do with the question of whether or not it really is truth.

but it has everything to do with whether it is a good for society... compromise and understanding do wonders for human relations... i'd almost go so far as to call that an absolute truth

Actually, it seems to me rather the reverse.

If you were walking with a group of people, and you all arrived at a fork in the road, suppose you were the only person who really knew which way was the correct way to your destination?

Everyone else might disagree with you, ignore your words. "No, we think it's this way."

"But I know it's this way!" you might say. "I've gone that way many times!"

"No, surely it's this way," they say, and they continue off that way.

That's often how it feels when people write off absolute truth, and the finding of it, as impossible. Simply because it is outside their own experience, they make judgments upon what other people's experience is. Rather than it being the Christian, or the Muslim, who is being presumptuous, it seems more presumptuous to say "you're wrong", making assumptions about the other person's experience.

you are comparing something that is knowable (a physical destination) with something that is not (the existance of god)... even some of the very religious posters here have admitted that god's existance cannot be definatively proven

btw, i am not saying "you're wrong"... i am saying that one must always consider the possibility that their beliefs are wrong

So naturally we should lump them all together and say none of them is right, correct?

yep

Huh? Just because in pre-history no one believed the earth went around the sun, does that mean it's not truth?

I really do not understand that argument.

With God it is the same as my example with the earth going around the sun. Maybe not everyone perceives it, but it is there. If it depended upon everyone perceiving it for it to exist, it could not exist. In other words, we are all controlled completely by our own perceptions, and there is nothing outside of our own perceptions. Our perceptions control everything. Right and wrong do not exist, as a matter of a fact, nothing exists unless I know it exists. Which is frankly ridiculous.

it seems ridiculous to us today... but it was perfectly valid to make the argument that the earth went around the sun 2000 years ago... it wasn't a "truth", because it wasn't proven... but it wasn't wrong either, because it wasn't disproven... god falls into the same category

Everyone cannot have their own truth. If you exchanged the word truth for the word belief, your statement, I think, would be quite accurate. The fact is, our own perceptions do not have such a great impact upon truth and reality. Truth exists independant of our own senses, even if everyone in the world has their senses telling them the wrong thing (for example, the sun). Spiritual reality doesn't have to be any different.

i'd say that maybe you need to exchange your word truth for belief... physical things can be proven (unless you want to get really esoteric), concepts like absolute truth and god are another thing entirely... one only needs to look as far as the myriad of "truths" that exist in our world concerning a supreme being to see how true this is