Religion & Theology (& should we respect beliefs)

[JAStewart]

What if ducks were actually God in an earthly form, laid out to look over everyone and what they are doing?

If ducks were God then would they still be a bird?

 

Considering that a deity is supposed to be something that you cannot prove and must hold on faith, then this is irrational and I will not rationalise an irrational question.

 

However, if I choose not to regard a duck as a bird, who's to say I'm wrong?

"You can call an shovel and ice-cream machine but its still a shovel". - Butters Scotch, South Park

 

Well, you can think of them to be whatever you want, but then you'd be in denial. Duck's are members of the Anatidae biological family. No-one needs to tell you that you are wrong.

[Pooks]

You are suggesting that Science is fact. Ducks may not even exist and may be a figment of our lowly human intelligence.

 

Praise the ducks!

[ArabiaTerra]

You are suggesting that Science is fact.

Eh... Yes. Proveable fact backed by evidence. Something which religion sadly lacks.

 

And my definition of religion would be: "Any set of beliefs which cannot be challenged yet has no supporting evidence whatsoever".

 

The whole point of my objection to religion is that it is not true or fact. I wouldn't normally be annoyed about this if it wasn't for the fact that the vast majority of the poor confused dupes who do believe in Dog seem to have this strange idea that they have a duty to ram their dogma down my throat.

 

One might be asked "How can you prove that a god does not exist?" One can only reply that it is scarcely necessary to disprove what has never been proved. ~David A. Spitz

[Njugle]

And my definition of religion would be: "Any set of beliefs which cannot be challenged yet has no supporting evidence whatsoever".

 

A bit like the widely spread belief amongst normally rational people that duck quacks don't echo.

 

Widespread and yet utter bunkum and seemingly nothing to do with religion.

 

 

hmm, Perhaps there is more to this holy duck thing than we realise. They attract religion! And if their quacks don't echo they are 'supernatural', which could qualify as worthy of deification!!

 

I wonder what their, as yet, esoteric ducktrine will be!

[KOYAANISQATSI]

at the most basic level we do have an undeniable creative deity in the sky every day,

 

You could be on to something.

Here's one claiming Jesus is in fact the Sun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4_O-Zd1bec&feature=related

[KOYAANISQATSI]

Welcome, to the other side of reality.

 

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/8346/zeittitlebdu3.jpg

 

While this film is aimed to prove everything presented as truth, one should watch this with an open mind. Take in all the topics, then do your own research, just with any speaker/film/presentation. To blindly follow is pure ignorance.

 

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/main.htm

[KOYAANISQATSI]

Walk like an Egyptian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSaihY5Qug8&feature=related

[ArabiaTerra]

All of the above is based on the assumption that Egyptian dating is accurate, which it probably isn't, and that biblical dating is accurate which it most definitely isn't.

 

BTW, if you want a really good book on this subject, try "Act of God" by Graham Philips. It neatly explains the 10 plagues of Egypt, Exodus and the remarkable reign of the heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten, by tying them in to the only event in the ancient world which could possibly explain such legends, the eruption of the volcano, Thera, the modern name for which is San Torini.

 

P.S, This eruption was also responsible for the legend of Atlantis, believe it or not.

[heretic5]

No religion has provided satisfactory bases for anything much concerned with the concept of reality...

Ah yes, reality. Well, the fact that space, time, mass and energy are quantized suggests that this is a virtual reality which is being displayed in a monitor which has less than infinite resolution and less than infinite repetition rate. None of the virtual realities, of which we are aware, is self-originating. If this is a virtual reality, and it too is not self-originating, then there is an originator of this virtual reality. If there is an originator of this virtual reality, then it might have provided a message to us. So it seems that it might be beneficial to us to look for such a message, yes?

[KOYAANISQATSI]

If there is an originator of this virtual reality, then it might have provided a message to us. So it seems that it might be beneficial to us to look for such a message, yes?

 

Indeed

 

Ralph Ellis wrote a book called "Jesus, Last of the Pharaohs" where he claims Jesus was the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra and named Ptolemy XV, the last of the Ptolemic Pharaohs, or as Julius liked to call him, Caesarian, which means little Caesar. When Caesar was named god by the Roman senate, he was considered god to the whole world. Caesarian was also recognized as god in Egypt as the son of Cleopatra. She named him king of kings at the age of 13. When Julius got knifed by the senate, his son Octavian took control of Rome and ordered Caesarian dead. Cleopatra feared for the life of her first born son, and sent him to India with her most trusted servants, who became parent guardians to watch out for him. Could these servants be Mary and Joseph? For anonymity, his name was changed to Esau, which means son of Isis, and just happens to be the Egyptian name for Jesus.

 

In 1887 Nicolas Notovitch wrote a book called "The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ" which tells of his discovery of ancient scrolls that tell of a philosopher named Isa who arrived as a teenage boy from a small Mediterranean country to study the teachings of Buddha, five hundred years after Buddha died, which coincided with the lost years of Jesus.

 

Now here's the freaky part.

 

Mary Magdalene, or Cleopatra Selene, was the half sister of Jesus. She's also identified in the Bible as Mary Cleopus or Mary of Cleopatra.

The wedding Jesus and Mary Magdalene attended was actually their wedding, otherwise the Bible would have said something about their hosts. (I guess incest is best)

Since Jesus lost everything because of Octavian Caesar, he wanted to get it back so he had a plan to take over the Roman Empire, by starting a new religion and turn it into the Holy Roman Empire.

 

Since Jesus was well trained in ayurvedics and meditation and able to shut off pain, and since he had a foot pad on his cross to hold his weight, and since he was on the cross for only six hours before his friends got him down and immediately took care of his wounds with expensive healing oils and herbs, is it possible he survived his crucifixion and allowed his death and resurrection to go on as a way to solidify his new religion? Was this all part of the plan?

 

Now these people were far from poor. Mary Magdalene, or Cleopatra Selene, was wealthy, as were all of their friends. Their bloodlines were directly from Caesar, Cleopatra, Alexander, and the greatest nobility the world has ever seen. These were very rich people with a plan to take over the world.

 

And this bloodline traveled 2,000 years to Queen Elizabeth herself.

That's right. Elizabeth is the last Hebrew Pharaoh and ruler of the world with The Vatican as the religious head and Rothschild as world banker.

 

Hey, don't take my word for it. This stuff is out there if you dig for it.

 

Just keep your eye on Prince William. Sure as God made little green apples he'll emerge as the world ruler in five years. That is, if we live that long.

[Ghostrider]

If there is an originator of this virtual reality, then it might have provided a message to us. So it seems that it might be beneficial to us to look for such a message, yes?

 

The flip side of this is of course, that if this is a virtual reality created by an originator, that origniator probably also created us within that virtual reality, and as our originator it knows full well the varying but limited intelligence it allocated to each and every one of us. Therefor it also knows full well that, unless it gets a kick out of observing us endlessly chasing our tails looking for what we don't know is or isn't there, and endlessly fighting and squabbling over it, it needs to provide any and all messages obviously, clearly and unambigiously. Until such time as it does, I consider it a waste of time and energy looking.

 

When someone is fried by a bolt of lightning, which if this is a virtual reality, must have been sent by the originator of that virtual reality, the message is loud, clear, and unmistakable. The poor sod who just got hit had played the game and, for whatever reason, had just gotten the "You Lose!" message. Those sorts of messages us poor relatively dumb homo sapiens can more or less understand, anything less and it's right over our heads, or has use running round like headless chickens chasing shadows in the fog. If this is a virtual reality, with an external originator, it knows any messages sent that amount to less than a bolt of lightning we will either not recognise, or misunderstand, therfor if any have been left or sent, then that originator cannot be too bothered whether we find and/or understand them, or not. As any which may have been are so well hidden, or are so obtuse that much of mankind has spent countless thousands of years searching and squabbling over them, and is no nearer a concensus now than the day he began, If they are no more important to the originator than it has made them as difficult for us to find and comprehend as they have, then I fail to see how it can be of any importance whether we find and/or understand them or not.

[heretic5]

The flip side of this is of course, that if this is a virtual reality created by an originator, that origniator probably also created us within that virtual reality, and as our originator it knows full well the varying but limited intelligence it allocated to each and every one of us. Therefor it also knows full well that, unless it gets a kick out of observing us endlessly chasing our tails looking for what we don't know is or isn't there, and endlessly fighting and squabbling over it, it needs to provide any and all messages obviously, clearly and unambigiously. Until such time as it does, I consider it a waste of time and energy looking.

 

Thanks for constructing the chain of logic shown above, and in the rest of your post. For the benefit of discussion of that chain of logic, let us suppose that there are at least two sorts of originators. One possible sort would be an originator who originated a virtual reality (VR) in which characters in the VR could possibly originate additional VRs within that VR, and so on and so forth. Another possible sort of originator would be the one just mentioned, ie, a character in a VR who makes an additional VR within that VR. For the sake of clarity, we could label the first sort "primary" and the second sort "secondary".

 

The perspective of either sort would likely be different than ours. It would seem to follow that the objectives of either sort would therefore be different than ours. It might therefore be possible that their methods of achieving their goals might be different than ours. Given these possibilities, it would seem to follow that we should therefore endeavor to find any such messages, despite the valid-to-us chain of logic which you expounded, yes?

[KOYAANISQATSI]

[heretic5]

youtube video

 

Thanks for the video. The artist seemed to try to change perspective, and I believe that the artist suceeded somewhat. But toward the end, one of the characters (Satan?) said that there was nothing but empty space. In the case of the primary originator, there would probably be no environment, not even empty space. This would probably be the case because space is quantized along with time, mass and energy. So space is probably as much an aspect of the primary VR as time, mass, and energy seem to be. Given that this were to be the case, then the perspective of the primary originator is probably even more different than portrayed in the video, yes?

[KOYAANISQATSI]

(Satan?) said that there was nothing but empty space. In the case of the primary originator, there would probably be no environment, not even empty space.

 

He might have been telling porkies. I hear he's got a bit of previous there.