| Educated believers
Posted: 4/12/2008 10:40:43 AM | I think it all boils down to the difference between "Objective" and "Subjective" observations and experiences. Objective is that which one can prove empirically.. and show concrete evidence to another, but subjective experience is much more intangible... and can rarely be proven empirically. However, I do not think it is in the interest of science, or even rationality, that all subjective data be pooh-poohed and cast aside. If that was the case there wouldn't be psychology... because the processes which govern the symptoms of human behavior (healthy or unhealthy) are for the most part intangible, they are subjective. That is only one example... what about dreams? As of today no one can really PROVE they experienced a dream, or it's contents, or what that particular dream means to them, or has affected them... I would suggest that if we encountered a race of beings who did not dream that dreaming would be considered to them like some of us consider paranormal experiences. As unreal/fantasy...and maybe even a symptom of psychosis, or at least a cultural myth state.
Example: I've never been abducted by aliens (that I know of ) I don't know if it is something I can even really believe in... BUT, since I have not experienced it does that give me the right to deny anothers perceptions? It could very well be happening to some people...I have no proof of it, but neither do I have proof that it hasn't.
Another example: I HAVE had some experiences that suggest there is more to this world than just physical reality... but these experiences are "unprovable" I have no photos, or evidence other than my own experience, and analytical abilities.... but these experiences were VERY real to me, and have had an affect on who I am, what I do, how I do things now... and even sometimes why I do what I do. The matter of objective reality doesn't change the fact that I experienced some things which have made an impact on physical reality, in me and around me, but have no physical cause....just an effect. To a strict realist(materialist I guess) I would probably be thought of as somewhat self-delusional. Yet I KNOW that isn't the case.
I think one of the above posters had a good point about intelligence and education not being the same thing. I am intelligent AND fairly well-educated (self and academically), yet I am still a believer in something beyond... the only thing I can state positively is that my education and inborn curiosity has made simplistic understanding of the spiritual impossible. My understanding of the spiritual expands exponentially and becomes more abstract as I go along., the "BIG COP IN THE SKY" is a perception I can no longer hold as it just doesn't make sense when really studied from a broad base.
I think mankind is serching for balance, and I don't believe that can be achieved by narrowing things down to solely empirical facts nor ignoring data whether objective or subjective, either in a spiritual sense nor in a scientific sense.
Peace | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/12/2008 11:29:33 AM |
I belive your totaly disillusioned to belive the God you speak of would help you in this way. It is more likly you did it for yourself.
I don't know why you felt compelled to say this however this isn't the thread to debate people's beliefs there are plenty of them already that you can go and tell people they are delusional on those. I might even join you. However this is a thread to talk about what has led people to believe in a god. As an ex addictions counsellor i was quite torn between empowering and saving people. And felt my work with some clients was undermined by the disease model of addictions. But one thing for certain is that the 12 step program works for quite a number of addicts. If you've ever had to hold someone's arm together while waiting for an ambulance because they've cut it themselves with medical scissors in an attempt to kill themselves whilst in treatment for their addiction you begin to see just how powerless people feel.
I'd say if a belief in god saves a life god (whether he exists or not) has done more then what you are attempting to do in your response. If you don't feel like posting on topic please find a topic that matches your response. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/12/2008 11:48:00 AM |
I'd say if a belief in god saves a life god (whether he exists or not) has done more then what you are attempting to do
I feel you're right on the money when you say this... Not because I happen to have a belief in God but because I can see you care about the well being of others... I see more and more of that kind of connectedness every day... To me, that is more what's needed than a belief in (G)god(s), but if the belief helps some to be a better person, all the power to them, whereas if it's used to raise some above the rest, it goes against the connectedness I feel.
Maybe I need a coffee. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 12:15:11 AM | I'm almost finished with my masters in counseling, so I believe I qualify as "well educated." I believe in God because I've sensed something present outside of myself, "out there, somewhere" since I was old enough to understand the conception of another personality besides my own. I think the first time I became aware of His presence was when I was about three, almost four years old. Without going into a lot of detail, I was quite stressed at the time and experiencing a great deal of emotional turmoil. Through out my life I can say with certainty that the same presence I remember that day as a toddler has always been with me since that time.
I really can't say why some seem to sense and feel the presence of God and others don't. As I get older I don't particularly care about why and tend to simply mind my own business in this regard. I honestly believe that if one sincerely seeks God, He will reveal Himself to him or her. He has promised that this is the case and so I know that those who sincerely desire to know and experience God will be given the opportunity. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 3:43:19 AM | Praise Jesus for saving her from the disease he gave her!
BTW, how do you know it was meningitis if there was no evidence of it?
You obviously don't know me or my beliefs.... LOL...... I am not a Christian.
Just because "prayers" were said, that has nothing to do with Christianity.
We know it was menningits because cultures were done.... we weren't 100% sure until the results came back after the fact, but with all the other signs and symptoms, the medical staff worked on that premise. They were later proven correct, as the cultures took 24 hours to come back positive, but we didn't have that kind of time to play around at that time, given the circumstances. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 6:04:54 AM | "I don't know why you felt compelled to say this however this isn't the thread to debate people's beliefs."
What i said is not a belief but the truth, i dont make wild random thoughts.
crazy maybe you should think about your words and what you are saying here..
So you are saying if someone came onto this post and said, i was in my garden and the elf who lives there told me via a message from God to stop all the traffic as someone may get killed.
As this is there belief thats ok not too question it, in your own mind to find the truth?
"you begin to see just how powerless people feel"
It is not about how powerful you are that is Ego and Wrong View, and the feelings that flows though you body, which inc. belief, knowllage, and the truth. it is my belief if you build up your Ego to belive you can save everyone, it will lead too suffering.
Lord Buddha shown us the Eightfold Path, the 7th of the Eightfold path is...
Right Mindfulness... It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness.
i do not agree there is no god and i do not agree there is a god, as it is something that can not see the truth.
There are passages in the Bible that are right. Theres a saying which we us it is...
"if its not broken dont try and fix it"
i will now go  | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 6:24:11 AM | What i said is not a belief but the truth, i dont make wild random thoughts.
That may very well be - that you stated YOUR truth.... but it was still off topic.
The original premise of this thread was stated thus;
"So perhaps some of the more educated believers could shed some light on why they still believe in something that requires blind faith. What led you to believe as you do when there is not proof that a god exists?"
I believe the OP is trying to keep posters on topic, and not turn this into a mud-fest, and personally, I think he should be commended for it. We have enough mud-fests in these forums already. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 7:09:41 AM | | ALL religion is faith based. So there is a factor to have to believe in things that you cannot explain or understand. In my religion, Jesus understood that we would question, get confused, or doubt. Thats why there are so many verses in the Bible that clearly encourage us to keep believing. "For now you see through the glass darkly." | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 7:37:47 AM | ALL religion is faith based.
Not if your religion teaches to question everything including what your religion teaches you... That way you use your own judgement on what to believe and the wonder is also kept alive... Although Taoism and Buddhism (the main sects anyhow) don't have gods to have "faith" in they are still recognized amongst the world religions.
"For now you see through the glass darkly."
That's partly why we made fire... I don't mean any offence... Just saying. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 7:50:12 AM | Please no semantics on what belief is...
The question is very clearly stated there are many many threads that can go back and forth on what faith and belief and knowledge are. I'm only interested in what brought people to believe especially those who consider themselves well educated.
Thank you,
crazylilting | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 7:57:20 AM | ^^^ Sorry Crazy... It's just that semantics like that are what made me question and form beliefs in the first place... I don't consider myself well educated as I don't have any degrees, but I have been studying different Ways for like 25 years.
Sorry about debating on your thread... Guess I forgot what it was for in a way. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 8:06:19 AM | | No offense taken. I find others posts interesting, thats why I post. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 8:06:53 AM | You know.. I will say that as I became more educated I DID see much that would have turned me off of christianity if I had not already been turned off on my own..
Sooooo many times in class instructors would bring up how this discovery or that would have been accepted into the mainstream a lot more quickly IF... or how that scientist was executioned for heresy, etc... it even permeated into what was or wasn't acceptable in literature.. and I must admit to sitting in class seething inside..
I also took a sociology of religion class... no matter what religion or spiritual belief one had, we all ended up questioning, analyzing and dissecting the underlying reasons why...
You seem very interested in the reasons why people believe crazylilting... the book "The Sacred Canopy" by Peter Berger, while not a "light" read, is extremely informative in that regard and I think you may find it very intriguing..
Maybe much more so than the moses code, lol... sorry you can't get your money back, but at least you can say you opened your mind to something new... and I have to say, I was impressed regardless of the fact that our opinions on it differ :) | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 8:23:19 AM |
It's just that semantics like that are what made me question and form beliefs in the first place... I don't consider myself well educated as I don't have any degrees,
Wallpaper isn't a sign of intelligence, I know engineers who are actual rocket scientists & they can't sharpen a pencil... (which is why some engineer invented the propeling pencil..) | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 8:31:14 AM |
bear45408,
I don't see blind faith as a loaded phrase. It is the very nature of faith. I don't use the phrase to entrap anyone into some argument about proof. I'm well aware there is no proof this is why i enquire to what has lead some more educated people to god. I've seen the lower end of the spectrum where people have been led to believe by trickery and assigning religious meaning to wonderful feelings that result from the ritual of worship making them believe that god is responsible for the feelings and or staged miracles that may have been performed. I am curious how you reconcile your belief in god and science and more importantly what led you to believe in the first place. Fair enough. I was raised Jewish, a religion in which a wide range of opinion is tolerated. Like many, I went through a period of doubt, but found that I could rebuild faith on a rational basis.
For example, as a Jew and as a scientist I saw the example of the Holocaust. What does that tell me? It's a scientific fact. How could God let this happen? But it tells me something of the nature of God! If God exists, He takes this Free-Will business completely seriously. So in like manner, we can fathom out the nature of God, if God exists, and then see if we get a rational picture. Having put it all together with the the scientific evidence, I get a concept of God that does not seem very far-fetched.
Several points worth noting. He, She or It chooses to use natural phenomenon rather than supernatural phenomenon to do things. This is not surprising, as these are God's inventions in the first place. As mentioned, we have free-will. We are free to screw up, or to help make the world better. Our choice.
What comes after our lives is hidden from us. But it's unlikely that a God who put together endless worlds and galaxys and wonders in this life could only think of two choices later. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 8:39:24 AM | Hi sassyaquarious,
Believe it or not i am an open minded person. That is how i got to my present stance on belief systems in general. I have had the pleasure of experiencing many things people would consider impossible and even had to revisit these experiences and test them for myself to see if they were real or not just to know that my own mind was sound. I've been in so many sweat lodges and native spiritual circles i i've forgotten more then i know. I've attended hundreds of Rieki circles and general like minded circles. Attended a dozen spiritual training courses based on healing and transcendence. I've devoted hours of time at the willpower institute in Edmonton meditating and learning. I went to Christian churches and sought out the god of the bible for over two decades of my life. I've even developed my own healing process. These are not things a person who isn't genuinely searching does.
So when i ask a question it is of genuine curiosity. I think the why of belief speaks to the inner needs that people are trying to fulfil. Even though some people think that i think there is a difference between well educated people and those that aren't I don't think there is any difference at all. However i do find that well educated people can articulate the why more clearly.
Stonestongue,
No problem, if you wish to debate debate the reasons why, postulate to the why of belief and not the belief itself. I'm not really concerned if peoples faith are Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, etc... You get the idea. How speaks to the actual path, which is the question, Why is the next step really. Or the next logical question to the how, perhaps.
Clrwtrgirl08,
I did notice your comments and even though it didn't address the original question it was still quite revealing in its own way and relates to an earlier posters admission to the need for inspiration to keep believing.
TheLimey,
ummm You haven't addressed the question so i can't comment on much... moving on. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 8:51:31 AM | That's probably because I wasn't replying to you.... | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 9:07:13 AM | Jesus gives disease? How so?
It's in the Bible. Jesus created life, the universe, and everything in it. That necessarily includes diseases. The OT is filled with examples of Jesus sending diseases upon people. Who else do you think gave those Egyptians the plague of boils? | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 9:09:28 AM | You obviously don't know me or my beliefs.... LOL...... I am not a Christian.
Just because "prayers" were said, that has nothing to do with Christianity.
My mistake. I jumped to a conclusions there. Worse, I think I actually looked at you profile first to see if you were a Christian. Please accept my humblest apologies.
BTW, you can replace "Jesus" with whatever god you believe in and the result is the same. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 9:25:57 AM | I hope this thread doesn't get sidetracked. The topic is the educated people in and outside of faiths. I do believe that educated as well as intelligent people consist in both. Someone stated something earlier that made alot of sense. Religious people who are indeed intelligent, wholeheartedly understand that religion is questioned and for many reasons, however, they utilize their freewill in chosing to believe.
I am a believer of God but do relate to alot of the theories by atheists. I as a believer of God can state that one of the particular theories I support by the Atheist Robinson who I do believe is out of England (correct me if I'm wrong here) states that we should as a whole take the responsibility upon ourselves to be constructive human beings and not leave it up to an entity to quote "show us the way", we should be doing these things ourselves, I agree with this analogy as well as Robinson also states that alot of quote "religious" people utilize religion as a whole to hide within and basically not perform what they should indeed be performing to be good people in life. I do at times feel guilty for supporting these theories by atheists, but to me, even as a God fearing person, can not find fault in this logic. :)
Summing this up in my eyes, intelligence can be present on both sides of the fence here, I respect believers as well as non believers in their quest for the truth, as long as they continually seek the truth and not blindly think that God is just automatically going to take care of things for I feel that is not even containing common sense. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 9:30:33 AM |
There are thousands of them available at the Patent Office...
Yeah. Ha.
Seriously, someone once wrote here that a lot of people are unable to think conceptually. I didn't think that abstract thinking was a function of superior intelligence but the more I read these debates, the more I think it has to be.
If humans didn't believe in intangible, abstract, non-concrete concepts, we couldn't function at all. Belief itself is an abstract - yet the very people who claim they don't 'believe' in anything that can't be 'proven' believe there's such a thing as 'belief'. Ironic, isn't it?  | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 9:51:04 AM |
It has been said that the more educated a person is the less they believe in god.
That's an illusion. The more educated a person, the less s/he believes in the common descriptions/definitions of God. If you think about it, it's the natural course of events - the more a person gets acquainted with a subject, the more specific their definitions become and therefore are less similar to the generally known ones.
Here is an example: (Quoting some of Spinoza's propositions)
Proposition 13:
Absolute infinite substance is indivisible.
Proposition 14:
There can be, or be conceived, no other substance but God.
Proposition 17:
God acts solely from the laws of his own nature, constrained by none.
Proposition 18:
God is the immanent, not the transitive, cause of all things.
Proposition 19:
God [is eternal], that is, all the attributes of God are eternal.
Proposition 20:
God's existence and his essence are one and the same.
Proposition 26:
A thing which has been determined to act in a particular way has necessarily been so determined by God; and a thing which has not been determined by God cannot determine itself to act.
Now, how many people do you know who give such precise definitions? Spinoza was an intellectual and a well educated person. What's more, if you think about the propositions, in particular 13 & 14, what can you conclude about yourself? What's the next logical conclusion? What can you say about faith after this? | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 10:36:53 AM | My current understanding of God is the total sum of all aspects of consciousness. As each individual aspect of consciousness grows and has new experiences so to does God grow.
This reality is an agreed upon conscious creation by all the aspects that are currently experiencing it. Should we wish to change 'reality' all we have to do is change ourselves, one at a time. The more people focused on experiencing the same reality, the quicker that reality will manifest.
There are reasons why those in control continually 'condition' our minds with images of negativity. They understand that what you think of you will experience, so the more they can get people to stop thinking for themselves and have them continue to act as a repeater of the experiences they wish to have occur.
In my view praying serves two purposes. First, it keeps your mind focused on the changes you wish to experience, which speeds up their manifesting themselves in your life. Secondly, it allows your mind to be still, which allows your intuition or 'thinking on a higher level' to take place.
Everything you experience is a result of the 'tug of war' in consciousness. If a group of people agree on a common experience they wish to experience that will not affect anyone else's free will then they will experience it.
Manifestation DOES occur faster at higher 'dimensions' but only because there is a larger group consensus on what they wish to experience.
Now the strange thing is that on this plane we must 'create' using our bodies because that is all that we deem acceptable. In the past and most likely in the future, there were much easier ways to create our experiences that required much less energy. | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 10:58:35 AM |
My current understanding of God is the total sum of all aspects of consciousness. As each individual aspect of consciousness grows and has new experiences so to does God grow.
Beautiful | |
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| Educated believers
Posted: 4/13/2008 12:23:47 PM | I believe the universe is a reflection or mirror of the state consciousness of all of the aspects that are currently experiencing the agreed upon set of 'rules' (or science) for this reality.
We started together at the center and have slowly been drifting apart as we go our own ways individually having our unique experiences in order to gain personal understanding.
Over time (which in itself is an illusion) we will regain our understanding that everything is connected and we are all 'one' at the highest level, each here to experience on our own but together at the same time.
Eventually the expansion of the universe will stop as a sort of balance takes place between the thoughts of separateness and the thoughts of oneness. Then we will return to the center as we share our understandings with each other and become more and more of a collecting community.
First as a planet, then a galaxy and a eventually as a Universe (or one verse, one story) when everyone is once again One.
A 'time' is only the state of the universe at a given 'now'...
For instance lets say that you could take every aspect of this universe (or atleast what you were aware of at that 'time') and return it to the exact same state right now. Lets also say that you remember this 'now' as everything is the same again... would you say that you had gone back in time? How would be you able to tell one way or the other? | |
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