Never being in the place I could be mistaken. This is the point of this thread to get more knowledge about religion in these Nordic countries and Europe in general.
Actually no, most of Europe is pretty secular. Spiritual conversation just doesn't happen in plain sight like it does in America. In fact after living in the UK and attending a school that was said to have a religious base... it wasn't until I returned home that I saw just how in your face and "out and proud" Christians were in the US. People complain that the US is becoming a more secular nation, but when you travel overseas and see that most churches are sort of traditional pieces rather than spiritual... you see that we're just following a similar course as the rest of the world.
I really hope people on this thread are not claiming it is a good education that leads people away from religion.
Well you can say this however... When you are young and surrounded by what your parents raise you as, and what church is down the street... you usually have no idea of what else is out there based on what you have seen in an arguably small bubble. When one leaves for college or travels the world, it can make one lose sight of religiousness because they either learn things about other religions, meet people from other walks of life, or discover some things that make them question why they believe what they do. To be fair, this process can also make one MORE religious.
But really I think many Americans call themselves what they were raised to call themselves. Then when they are adults, they remain that label even though they may never walk into another church or touch a Bible... they may not even KNOW what they believe, but because granny took them to a Catholic Church... they are Catholic.
People often speak about Catholic pedophiles, but what about the atheist ones? Do atheist think that they are immune to such abnormal behavior? Christians generally are not so convinced of our own virtue as atheist are.
I think it has more to do with people telling someone "no." The more you hear "no" about something, the more tempting it can become. It could be argued that those with the weirdest sexual kinks are the ones who have been repressed from exploring more "normal" behaviors... So when something more diviant presents itself... temptation is far stronger for someone who is constantly kept from it. For an Athiest, the temptation just isn't there unless there is a deeper pshycological reaosn, like abuse. Not saying it couldn't be the case for the Priest... but it's more than likely because they aren't allowed to marry or have a "normal" and "healthy" relationship with other people.
The thing to note is that secular society has by and large made a "God" of science. This is quite different than to claim that science has become a "religion," and I do not claim that; secular people do not have set creeds, rituals, modes of worship, etc. But I do think that many educated people believe that science represents "the only way forward," or the "best hope for humanity," or some such; and there is a (frequently unspoken) confidence that any and all problems confronting us can be resolved if only scientific progress advances sufficiently. Eden was only ever a myth; but someday we shall be able to manifest a real Eden of our own devising.
But where is there any reason to have confidence in this assumption? Nearly every scientific discovery has opened up more paths of inquiry than it has closed off; new answers lead to new questions. Moreover, even the most moral applications of science have tended to create new moral crises.
Example 1: Industrial agriculture. The idea was to solve world hunger; but the practice proved unsustainable. Now arable topsoil is disappearing at record rates, deserts are expanding, fossil fuels are running out, and species are going extinct in droves as still-starving people desperately cling to survival.
Example 2: Modern medicine. Combating illness and prolonging life = unmitigated win, right? Wrong. Now painful questions about quality of life and euthanasia, or about who gets a life-saving organ transplant and who doesn't, are being asked which never were before. Societies are struggling to deal with burgeoning numbers of unproductive elderly people who are living decades longer than they used to. People with serious genetic defects, who earlier would've died in childhood, are surviving to reproductive age and passing on their defects to the next generation, reducing the overall fitness of the human race. Misuse and abuse of antibiotics has created drug-resistant "super bugs"; the matter of a global pandemic now seems to be a matter of when, not if.
The thing I wonder is whether most secular people have really considered the very significant shortcomings and problems with the scientific endeavor up til now; or whether they are simply entranced by the next iteration of the iPhone. Because, if it is acknowledged that science cannot "save us" (and I really see no reason to trust that it can), then perhaps a yawning void, reeking of nihilism and absurdism, will be felt to open in the souls of many -- a void traditionally filled by the religious quest.
Perhaps the real significance is not that irreligious countries have well-educated citizenry, but that those countries have overwhelmingly been peaceful and prosperous in recent history, which tends to breed (irrespective of scientific acumen) a sort of complacency or indifference to deep questions of purpose and meaning. It's one thing to ask, "Is there a God?" if you're sitting in a comfortable home and the biggest thing you have to worry about is whether to order out from Pizza Hut or Dominoes. It's quite another thing -- a more visceral, urgent thing -- to ask, "Is there a God?" when you're in daily danger of hunger, disease, assault, and death.
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Love. Forgive. Trust. Be willing to be broken that you may be remade.
I hardly think that the fact that "science" is not a magical sky wizard who will grant your every wish is a count against it. The real world is full of trade-offs and tough choices. That has no bearing on the core fact that the scientific process is the single most effective method at understanding our world.
The thing I wonder is whether most secular people have really considered the very significant shortcomings and problems with the scientific endeavor up til now; or whether they are simply entranced by the next iteration of the iPhone. Because, if it is acknowledged that science cannot "save us" (and I really see no reason to trust that it can), then perhaps a yawning void, reeking of nihilism and absurdism, will be felt to open in the souls of many -- a void traditionally filled by the religious quest.
I'm sorry, what? What do we need to be saved from? Death? According to everything we know, we're going to die - every single one of us - and we just stop existing and never exist again. Eventually we'll probably figure out AI and have indefinite life spans, and then our sun will burn out or Andromeda will collide with us, and we'll be erased from existence forever if we haven't moved to another star system by then. It all eventually ends in the heat-death of the universe (unless we figure out how to beat entropy, which I will not discount). That's just how it is, and I don't see how saying "well, that sucks" does anything to change it. Your suggestion seems to me rather like looking at an empty wallet and saying "Well, there's no way I can cope with not having any money, so I guess I'll just have to pretend I have money".
To the OP: This may answer some of your questions. Generally, as happiness, education, and general prosperity indexes increase, religiosity declines. My personal take on it is that a lot of the need for religion is a by-product of fear of other things; in essence, religion helps people cope when times are hard, or at least takes advantage of those who've fallen on hard times. When your basic needs are already taken care of by the state, there is less to fear and more time for critical thinking and leisure in general. America is the only real extreme outlier in terms of wealth, education and etc versus religiosity.
But I do think that many educated people believe that science represents "the only way forward," or the "best hope for humanity," or some such; and there is a (frequently unspoken) confidence that any and all problems confronting us can be resolved if only scientific progress advances sufficiently.
While nobody with any education on the subject claims that science can solve every problem, it is a truth of logic that the scientific method is the best for finding solutions. This is because the scientific method is nothing more or less than figuring out what works - any effective way of evaluating the reliability of a proposed solution to a problem is by definition science.
Moreover, even the most moral applications of science have tended to create new moral crises.
If you are seriously thinking of equating the moral dilemmas of modernity with the miseries which almost all of mankind historically has had to suffer and, outside the First World, continues to suffer, then you are ignorant and utterly lacking in perspective, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. What you're describing are, literally, First World problems.
Many of the claims you make have no factual basis, and those which have a factual basis are not instances of science making things worse, but simply of science not making things perfect... yet. Desertification? You know the Sahara and Arabian Deserts are manmade, right? Starvation? Look at all the people who aren't starving anymore. Limited organ donations? Better being on a transplant list than not being on a transplant list. Unproductive elderly? Better than unproductive child corpses courtesy of cholera. Genetic defects weakening the race? Not even going to touch that one. Super-bug pandemic? Easier for fearmongers to write about than to actually happen.
Because, if it is acknowledged that science cannot "save us" (and I really see no reason to trust that it can), then perhaps a yawning void, reeking of nihilism and absurdism, will be felt to open in the souls of many -- a void traditionally filled by the religious quest.
You're describing the existentialist movement that appeared after the end of the First World War.
The proper response to which is, "Get your **** together, you big baby. You don't like it, do something about it."
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Example 2: Modern medicine. Combating illness and prolonging life = unmitigated win, right? Wrong. Now painful questions about quality of life and euthanasia, or about who gets a life-saving organ transplant and who doesn't, are being asked which never were before.
... I'm at a crossroads here, because I've got all of this societal conditioning that tells me that yelling in someone's face is wrong and impolite, but on the other hand I know that if I were truly a friend to someone speaking this, and if that person were in front of me, that I would be wrong for not smacking him upside the head, metaphorically or literally or both, for saying something like this.
There's an article in the recent National Geographic about a group who goes to see this nomadic tribe in New Guinea. The article starts out with a rescue mission to save a 15 year old woman and her baby from dying to pneumonia, which among other preventable diseases has caused many such nomadic tribesmen to become terminally ill. Later the woman is shown to have recovered through use of antibiotics when they take her to a village to get medical attention.
And the funny thing is when I read this and I actually thought to myself, "You know, the next time someone posts something on MTGSalvation about how much better life would be without modern technology, I'm going to remind them how much life sucked without antibiotics and surgery and the germ theory of disease."
The reason people never asked questions like who gets a transplant is because they didn't have transplants, most civilizations didn't have surgeons, and most people didn't live that long because they died to diseases that are entirely preventable now.
the matter of a global pandemic now seems to be a matter of when, not if.
We've had global pandemics before. All of them are diseases that are extremely uncommon if not unheard of in modern day first world countries. This is including the fact that travel between countries is at a level unheard of even a matter of decades ago.
The fact that we don't have a global pandemic now is attributable to modern medicine. Or do you believe that with the Center for Disease Control and vaccinations and antibiotics we are somehow more susceptible to disease than in the 1940s when polio was still endemic to America?
The thing I wonder is whether most secular people have really considered the very significant shortcomings and problems with the scientific endeavor up til now; or whether they are simply entranced by the next iteration of the iPhone. Because, if it is acknowledged that science cannot "save us"
We no longer live in the Enlightenment mindset that rational thinking and science will somehow solve all the human problems and bring the world into a Star Trek/Voltaire's El Dorado vision of the world, it's true.
Having said that, to deny the achievements of the Enlightenment and the coming of age that man and his endeavors to understand the world, to deny these accomplishments is to do a disservice not only to man, but also to God.
Consider the case of Benjamin Silliman, one of the first professors of Natural Philosophy at Yale and professor of the budding new field of science known as geology, who put American science on the map when he conducted one of the first scientific studies of a meteorite, and later received world fame in his lectures in which he taught people that meteorites were rocks that fell from space composed of various elements and not demons.
The fact that we don't believe in demons, witches, sprites, or that the planets rotate in perfect circles pushed along celestial spheres by angels is because of the Enlightenment and the lasting influence of the discoveries made during it.
(and I really see no reason to trust that it can), then perhaps a yawning void, reeking of nihilism and absurdism, will be felt to open in the souls of many -- a void traditionally filled by the religious quest.
Then you do what everyone else learns to do when they become spiritually lost: you stop trying to go back to what came before, and instead understand that you have learned a lesson and go onto the new place, whatever it is.
Perhaps the real significance is not that irreligious countries have well-educated citizenry, but that those countries have overwhelmingly been peaceful and prosperous in recent history, which tends to breed (irrespective of scientific acumen) a sort of complacency or indifference to deep questions of purpose and meaning. It's one thing to ask, "Is there a God?" if you're sitting in a comfortable home and the biggest thing you have to worry about is whether to order out from Pizza Hut or Dominoes. It's quite another thing -- a more visceral, urgent thing -- to ask, "Is there a God?" when you're in daily danger of hunger, disease, assault, and death.
Look, let's be real here: It's absolutely true that human beings in affluence tend to be blinded by a delusion that they are immortal and indestructible.
But I will take that over cholera, or polio, or the bubonic plague, or starving to death, or freezing to death, or having to walk miles upon end for unsanitary drinking water any day. Recognize that if you're complaining of boredom and the fact that you're not exposed to death enough, you are enjoying a level of luxury the majority of the people in this era cannot claim.
And deeper questions are FAR easier in a society where college education is the norm than in a society where people move great distances to hunt migratory animals to survive and infant mortality is commonplace.
If you are seriously thinking of equating the moral dilemmas of modernity with the miseries which almost all of mankind historically has had to suffer and, outside the First World, continues to suffer, then you are ignorant and utterly lacking in perspective, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. What you're describing are, literally, First World problems.
Really? Really? Maybe I didn't go too far, but not far enough. And if I come off as a zealot Luddite who has no gratitude for the achievements of science -- I'm not, and I do. Hell, I'm sitting in a climate-controlled house typing this, and my wife would be dead twenty times over if not for modern medicine. Nevertheless, I am getting so sick of people claiming that science is the best thing that has ever happened to the human race; because frankly, it's inseparable from the people who practice it -- people who are, to use a despised religious term, "sinners."
Many of the claims you make have no factual basis, and those which have a factual basis are not instances of science making things worse, but simply of science not making things perfect... yet.
Like I said, maybe I didn't go far enough.
People have always found excuses to kill one another. But why was the twentieth century the bloodiest in world history? It was science that made the Holocaust, the Soviet purges, and every other hyper-efficient, industrialized episode of genocide possible.
It was science, not divine revelation, that made nuclear weapons a reality: that brought us nearly, on more than one occasion in the Cold War, to the brink of utter annihilation.
Desertification? You know the Sahara and Arabian Deserts are manmade, right?
I'm sorry, I thought that was my point.
Starvation? Look at all the people who aren't starving anymore.
According to starvation.net, more than 800 million people in the world are malnourished and more than 35,000 die daily of starvation. According to http://www.globalchange.umich.edu, the total population of the world at the time of Christ is estimated at around 300 million; and that number did not get much higher until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, finally hitting the 1 billion mark around the year 1800.
Look at the numbers. The raw number of malnourished people in the world today is 266% greater than the total number of people on the entire planet for the majority of the world's history. Is that not appalling? But that's what you get when you mix the science of industrial agriculture in with human fecklessness, irresponsibility and greed; and you can't ever un-mix it because, hey, it's only humans who do science.
Limited organ donations? Better being on a transplant list than not being on a transplant list. Unproductive elderly? Better than unproductive child corpses courtesy of cholera. Genetic defects weakening the race? Not even going to touch that one.
"First-world problems?" Fine, fine; but they are problems, are they not? And they point, methinks, to an overarching, subtle and sinister problem: the inevitable devaluation of human life in a world where it's become almost too easy to stay alive. People start getting cynical and judgmental, you see...
"Why should he be eligible for a liver transplant? He ruined his liver by drinking too much; he doesn't deserve another chance."
"Why should I have to fork over so much of my paycheck to help pay S.S. benefits to some nonagenarians? They got to live long full lives, and here I'm struggling just to make ends meet."
"Why should the school district pay so much money for specialized teachers and individualized lesson plans just to help a handful of disabled kids perform up to some bare minimum standard, while they're cutting advanced placement courses and preventing the really smart kids -- the ones who might actually do something useful with their lives -- from achieving up to their full potential?"
Is it not telling that eugenics programs -- those designed to cull humans "unfit for life" -- achieved their greatest expression in the most technologically advanced and sophisticated societies of their day? And the attitudes that underlay those programs are still with us, perhaps to be expressed on a global rather than national scale, if the privileged people of the West start feeling too much of a pinch and start to ask themselves, "Why should we send any kind of aid at all to (for example) sub-Saharan Africa? They haven't been able to get their **** straight after all this time; they don't deserve any more help from us. Let nature take its course; let them starve."
You're describing the existentialist movement that appeared after the end of the First World War.
The proper response to which is, "Get your **** together, you big baby. You don't like it, do something about it."
And we've tried to do something about it, haven't we?
Except, have we really tried? A few people have, of course, both religious (like Mother Teresa) and irreligious (like Bill and Melinda Gates). But is it not true that most people in fact value science and technology, not for how it can help the least among us, or even for what it can tell us about the world, but just what it can do for them? Is this not simply old-fashioned, selfish human nature?
I submit that science has simply shown us for the sinners and lunatics we are. The greatest scientific strides were made in times of war; apparently humans are never so ingenious as when devising new ways to kill one another. And now we have invented and innovated ourselves to a place where, whether by nuclear war, widespread environmental collapse, or some "super bug" engineered by a yet unknown evil genius, we are perfectly poised to (more or less) wipe ourselves out.
I do not think this is a misanthropic or fatalistic view, but simply a realistic assessment of the facts. And I propose that we will best forestall any undesirable fate by ceasing to pretend that science is God's greatest gift to mankind since... well, since mankind jettisoned God. To take the blinders off, and to see science for the mere tool that it is, a tool which has perennially been a double-edged sword. To be more willing, therefore, to seek spiritual solutions to our problems and grievances: to consult with the wisdom of the past a little more and to appeal to our tireless inventors a little less.
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Love. Forgive. Trust. Be willing to be broken that you may be remade.
Nevertheless, I am getting so sick of people claiming that science is the best thing that has ever happened to the human race; because frankly, it's inseparable from the people who practice it -- people who are, to use a despised religious term, "sinners."
It was science, not divine revelation, that made nuclear weapons a reality: that brought us nearly, on more than one occasion in the Cold War, to the brink of utter annihilation.
You've defeated yourself.
Panda, I say this as a friend and colleague: you want to go to bed and get some rest before posting further. Whatever you're pissed off at, whatever vindication in your life you feel you need, it isn't in this thread, and your continued ranting is akin to digging yourself deeper into a hole.
Panda, I say this as a friend and colleague: you want to go to bed and get some rest before posting further. Whatever you're pissed off at, whatever vindication in your life you feel you need, it isn't in this thread, and your continued ranting is akin to digging yourself deeper into a hole.
How have I defeated myself? I have tried to see the self-contradiction in the two snippets you quoted, but I cannot. Also, I am perfectly awake; I work the night shift and my bed time isn't for a few more hours.
Moreover I fail to see how you can call my arguments a "rant." But I will try to make as simple and unemotional a synopsis as possible.
Without science: People reproducing roughly at the replacement rate with infant mortality factored in. Life for many is "nasty, brutish and short." But people are still capable of finding joy and fulfillment with their lot, as ancient love poetry shows. Human existence is potentially sustainable indefinitely, up to the point where the sun grows too hot (at least another eon down the road).
With science: People reproducing at explosive, exponential rates. Life for many is still "nasty, brutish and short," although for a privileged minority it's better than ever. But human existence has become certifiably unsustainable on its present trajectory, to the point where you have one of the brightest minds on the planet, Stephen Hawking, predicting that if we don't colonize outer space, within 1,000 years the human race will cease to exist.
And maybe we will be able to use science to invent our way out of the present crisis; but it's a crisis that science (in tandem with politics, from which it is inextricable) created in the first place. So respect for the scientific method is fine and well; but to adopt a reverential attitude towards the institution of science, as a number of secularists have done, is a terrible mistake.
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Love. Forgive. Trust. Be willing to be broken that you may be remade.
I... I'm going to leave the point by point to others because its late,
Panda, your better than this, please sleep on it and try to see how your attacking strawman and that Highroller is looking out for you, he isn't saying you contradicted yourself, its more that you are saying really outlandish stuff that, once unpacked, looks like sensationalist anti-progress stuff.
Nevertheless, I am getting so sick of people claiming that science is the best thing that has ever happened to the human race; because frankly, it's inseparable from the people who practice it -- people who are, to use a despised religious term, "sinners."
Really? I'm getting sick of people claiming science is anything but an amazing success.
Like I said, maybe I didn't go far enough.
People have always found excuses to kill one another. But why was the twentieth century the bloodiest in world history? It was science that made the Holocaust, the Soviet purges, and every other hyper-efficient, industrialized episode of genocide possible.
It was science, not divine revelation, that made nuclear weapons a reality: that brought us nearly, on more than one occasion in the Cold War, to the brink of utter annihilation.
The twentieth century is not, contrary to popular belief, that much worse than previous centuries. Yes, more people died. As a percentage of population, however, roughly as many people died in the American civil war (of potential combatants) as did in world war 1 (around 2% in both cases). The second world war is worse, at 4%.
Of course, if you look back further, to the hundred years war, 2-3 million died (ballpark) - which is between 10 and *20%* of the total population of the UK and France at the end of those wars. Obviously lots of people were also *born* in those periods, but still - seems pretty bloody to me.
According to starvation.net, more than 800 million people in the world are malnourished and more than 35,000 die daily of starvation. According to http://www.globalchange.umich.edu, the total population of the world at the time of Christ is estimated at around 300 million; and that number did not get much higher until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, finally hitting the 1 billion mark around the year 1800.
Look at the numbers. The raw number of malnourished people in the world today is 266% greater than the total number of people on the entire planet for the majority of the world's history. Is that not appalling? But that's what you get when you mix the science of industrial agriculture in with human fecklessness, irresponsibility and greed; and you can't ever un-mix it because, hey, it's only humans who do science.
800 million people. Out of 7 Billion. The equivalent of less than 3 million in the time of christ.
Pretty sure we're winning that trade.
"Why should he be eligible for a liver transplant? He ruined his liver by drinking too much; he doesn't deserve another chance."
"Why should I have to fork over so much of my paycheck to help pay S.S. benefits to some nonagenarians? They got to live long full lives, and here I'm struggling just to make ends meet."
"Why should the school district pay so much money for specialized teachers and individualized lesson plans just to help a handful of disabled kids perform up to some bare minimum standard, while they're cutting advanced placement courses and preventing the really smart kids -- the ones who might actually do something useful with their lives -- from achieving up to their full potential?"
I'm not sure which of these debates are not worth the benefit. I'll happily discuss who should get organ transplants if it means my niece, age 1, had a shot at one rather than the technology not existing. I think it's reasonable to discuss how we pay for those in their 90s...on the grounds that it means I have a shot at another 60 years of life rather than maybe 15. And we should discuss how we split the funding for schools.
How are any of these 'cynical and judgemental' conversations? Surely they are better than conversations like '7 of my 9 children died before age 10. I'm so lucky to have done better than average'
Is it not telling that eugenics programs -- those designed to cull humans "unfit for life" -- achieved their greatest expression in the most technologically advanced and sophisticated societies of their day?
People in America today have eugenics programs? Or in Australia, or the UK, or Germany?
Oh, you mean the Nazis. Yea, I think they have *other* problems than science.
I submit that science has simply shown us for the sinners and lunatics we are. The greatest scientific strides were made in times of war; apparently humans are never so ingenious as when devising new ways to kill one another. And now we have invented and innovated ourselves to a place where, whether by nuclear war, widespread environmental collapse, or some "super bug" engineered by a yet unknown evil genius, we are perfectly poised to (more or less) wipe ourselves out.
I do not think this is a misanthropic or fatalistic view, but simply a realistic assessment of the facts. And I propose that we will best forestall any undesirable fate by ceasing to pretend that science is God's greatest gift to mankind since... well, since mankind jettisoned God. To take the blinders off, and to see science for the mere tool that it is, a tool which has perennially been a double-edged sword. To be more willing, therefore, to seek spiritual solutions to our problems and grievances: to consult with the wisdom of the past a little more and to appeal to our tireless inventors a little less.
Right - because taking spiritual solutions to scientific problems is always so helpful. Like the way that it means instead of having spent a decade using stem cell research to cure a variety of diseases we've nailed our feet to the floor and made it as difficult as possible.
And the 'wisdom of the past' tends to be some old garbage which has no value. There is a reason, nearly all the time, why the 'wisdom of the past' is 'of the past'; it's because it isn't, as it turns out, terribly wise.
How have I defeated myself? I have tried to see the self-contradiction in the two snippets you quoted, but I cannot.
You started by saying that science is inseparable from the people using it. You then proceed to blame science for all the ills of the modern world, ignoring what you just said: that the real problems of the modern world are people being people, and indeed, the reason why it is the problems of the modern world as opposed to the problems of the primitive world is because of scientific discoveries.
Panda, I'm going to repeat it: you need to get some rest. You're in no condition to post right now. You are smarter than what you're posting, and we all know it, including you.
I understand that life is messed up for you right now and you're trying to sort through it. But whatever or whoever you're pissed off at, it's not here, and you might have come here trying to blow off steam like in your previous afterlife thread, but spending time here isn't going to make you feel better. None of the anger you express here is going to be pointed towards its actual target, which is whatever is bothering you, and consequently all of your posts are going to come off as exactly what they are: unproductive, directionless ranting.
Without science: People reproducing roughly at the replacement rate with infant mortality factored in. With science: People reproducing at explosive, exponential rates.
But yet, it's the religious folks who are all about "pumping out babies" because birth control is wrong, and because creating new Christians yourself is the best way to convert.
When science gives us an option for birth control... the religious folks are the ones telling us not to give it to our teenagers who will go out and shag in the woods regardless... making more babies and giving us more problems in our welfare system and lower class.
I'm certainly willing to say, science is not the be-all-end-all... and that science has given us some MIGHTY scary things. However, it's hard for me to think that all scientists are Athiest mongrels waiting to push a moonbase agenda.
How have I defeated myself? I have tried to see the self-contradiction in the two snippets you quoted, but I cannot. Also, I am perfectly awake; I work the night shift and my bed time isn't for a few more hours.
Moreover I fail to see how you can call my arguments a "rant." But I will try to make as simple and unemotional a synopsis as possible.
Without science: People reproducing roughly at the replacement rate with infant mortality factored in. Life for many is "nasty, brutish and short." But people are still capable of finding joy and fulfillment with their lot, as ancient love poetry shows. Human existence is potentially sustainable indefinitely, up to the point where the sun grows too hot (at least another eon down the road).
With science: People reproducing at explosive, exponential rates. Life for many is still "nasty, brutish and short," although for a privileged minority it's better than ever. But human existence has become certifiably unsustainable on its present trajectory, to the point where you have one of the brightest minds on the planet, Stephen Hawking, predicting that if we don't colonize outer space, within 1,000 years the human race will cease to exist.
And maybe we will be able to use science to invent our way out of the present crisis; but it's a crisis that science (in tandem with politics, from which it is inextricable) created in the first place. So respect for the scientific method is fine and well; but to adopt a reverential attitude towards the institution of science, as a number of secularists have done, is a terrible mistake.
The "science" that produces population booms is... boiling your drinking water.
No, really. Introduce that one piece of tech to a pre-industrial society, you produce a population explosion EVERY TIME.
The problem isn't science itself, though. The problem is that medical science improving lifespan and quality of life isn't matched by a shift in cultural mores. Notice that most of Europe is at or below replacement levels in population. The US would be, except a steady flow of immigrants props our population up (both by introducing more people directly, through immigration, and because immigrants have more children).
The population curve after gaining industrial medical technology isn't exponential growth, it's an 'S' curve - you get exponential population growth for a while, then your culture norms catch back up and your population growth flattens back out.
Sustainable high tech populations are definitely possible.
Panda, I'm going to repeat it: you need to get some rest. You're in no condition to post right now. You are smarter than what you're posting, and we all know it, including you.
I understand that life is messed up for you right now and you're trying to sort through it. But whatever or whoever you're pissed off at, it's not here, and you might have come here trying to blow off steam like in your previous afterlife thread, but spending time here isn't going to make you feel better. None of the anger you express here is going to be pointed towards its actual target, which is whatever is bothering you, and consequently all of your posts are going to come off as exactly what they are: unproductive, directionless ranting.
You're right. So I'm going to take a deep breath and, for whatever it's worth on an anonymous internet forum, be "real" with you all. I'm going to expose the inner workings of my mind (in a hopefully non-gratuitous fashion), and hopefully prompt a more productive discussion, in keeping with the original theme of this thread, about why people might turn to God and why they might not. And maybe someone will be able to offer some insight or solace to me along the way.
My wife of five years is seriously messed up, both physically and mentally. She has cardiomyopathy, asthma, diabetes, recurrent severe depression and is possibly bipolar. I knew about the heart disease when we got married, but things have really gone downhill. A large part of the problem is that she does not take care of herself. When she is feeling down, she "self-medicates" her depression with chips and chocolate, which worsens her physical condition, which in turn breeds more depression: a classic vicious circle. I honestly do not expect her to survive another ten years. And she's only 34.
I try to help motivate her to be healthier, but it's difficult to do this without setting her off emotionally -- she does not respond at all to "tough love" -- and the job of taking care of her children (my stepchildren) falls largely on my shoulders. Granted they're now at ages (11 and 9) where they're a lot more self-sufficient than they used to be. And I really and deeply love them: I've raised them for about seven years as if they were my own. But if my wife should happen to die before they turn 18, they'll go back to the custody of their biological father. So my whole family could be taken away from me in one fell swoop.
And here is the crossroads I am at. Things are hard, so very hard; and I cannot help but think that I am wasting my life. I greatly envy my brother, with his healthy wife and no kids, who can just go to work and then come home and play XBox or go to concerts or festivals or whatever. And I just have this terrible dark suspicion that, if there is no God, there really is no reason for me to keep going. If I were to leave my family, sure, I'd be a major league A-hole. But really, if this life is all I've got, shouldn't I try my damnedest to be happy with it? Why indeed should any of us let ourselves be burdened with the troubles of others? Out of self-sacrificial love? But again, if there is no God, then what is love but a neuro-chemical ephemera in our squishy, ridiculous brains?
But I know that if I were to leave I would feel crushed by guilt (another stupid neuro-chemical ephemera); so I must stay and find a way to convince myself that it is actually worth it. So I have turned to God -- yes, yes, I admit: faith is a crutch for me! I am broken, and faith is propping me up! Is it not ridiculous?
And yet in the quiet darkness that abuts despair, I find myself brushing fleetingly against an ineffable presence, and I begin to suspect that God really is real. And that really would be my salvation. But maybe I am just fooling myself again on another level. There are so many people who would be content to tell me exactly that.
And I look at the back-and-forth between atheists and theists, and from my place of pain and doubt I am just fed up and angry with all of them. Angry at atheists who would assault and mock the psychic crutches of the crippled. Angry at theists for continuing to argue for a frankly ludicrous vision of God, which just makes it so much harder to pursue an authentic vision if there is one to be found.
But if anyone could answer me this question, I would be so very grateful: why, in the absence of God, should anyone choose to give up his/her life -- not in a single heroic and largely unreasoned blaze of glory, but in painful measured drops over years and years -- for the sake of another? If there's nothing transcendent about love, then by what right do we submit to suffering for love's sake?
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Love. Forgive. Trust. Be willing to be broken that you may be remade.
Well, I'm both scandinavian and christian and of course I have asked myself this question. And there really isn't one short answer. There's an common oppinion that science replaces God and that we in the north soon is ready to kick God out the door. (I find this quite arrogant as that thought at the same time says that people in less seqular countries is somewhat dumb or their society less developed). But this way of thinking definitely has something to do with it. But in spite of this there are a growing part of the people who seek new forms for spirtuality, so the answer isn't that straight forward.
Personally I think there is much wrong with the state church. It tries to make everyone happy and manages to appeal to very few. The places where the official church is a positive factor in the society is often in the same places that have the most conservative population. But the leadership of the church remains liberal. It's just one of the many small things that makes the church unattractive.
Here I get challenged often on why I believe. It's actually unbalanced. The same question is really relevant to atheists. Why don't you believe in a God. You see the common/leading oppinion isn't questioned much here. Some have claimed this is one of the social explanations to the massacre last summer. Some oppinions just won't be taken seriously. I think they might have a point.
Of course the christians isn't as open as christians other places. Faith is declared a private thing (by the leading oppinion) and as a result sharing your faith is beeing rude. This in addition to christians beeing satisfied with their comfortable lives make the faith teethless. You see, having money and a materialistic rich life is of course a good thing, but it corrupts people's minds. We have an expression that translated becomes "much wants more", meaning the more money you have the more you are obsessed about having it.
Thats my view of things as a christian. I'm sure other scandinavians will disagree with my characteristics of the society maybe also other christians, but I think the question was a good one. And I can see how it doesn't make sense to foreigners.
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I am petitioning for the removal of mythic rarity and boycotting overpriced singles. Sig this to join the cause for a more affordable Magic the Gathering.
But if anyone could answer me this question, I would be so very grateful: why, in the absence of God, should anyone choose to give up his/her life -- not in a single heroic and largely unreasoned blaze of glory, but in painful measured drops over years and years -- for the sake of another? If there's nothing transcendent about love, then by what right do we submit to suffering for love's sake?
Love isn't for love's sake. Love is what we describe when we care so much for someone that we would do anything for them. Love is for our lover's sake. It can be painful, even deathly so, but we go through with it because we want to be there for our lover and make his/her life as best as we can. I'm sorry if that doesn't help that much; this kind of devotional love isn't for everyone, but anyone that does practice such a love is a thoroughly good person. Just thinking of how they must feel to have someone there for them when they need it, they can truly feel blessed.
Love isn't for a reward, it's for the person you care for. It is a truly virtuous thing, and the only thing you could hope for is that they love you in return. It doesn't always work out like that, but you have that much.
I know I'm posting this on an anonymous forum for card games, but what can you do~
But if anyone could answer me this question, I would be so very grateful: why, in the absence of God, should anyone choose to give up his/her life -- not in a single heroic and largely unreasoned blaze of glory, but in painful measured drops over years and years -- for the sake of another? If there's nothing transcendent about love, then by what right do we submit to suffering for love's sake?
I think love is there for everyone, regardless of belief. The Athiests that I know live life to the fullest, and love those around them greatly. They believe that they get ONE SHOT in life, and because of this have to make good choices and make the best of every little thing. Every step you take may be your last... why waste it on hate, doubt, and negative enregy? If my lunch today is the last one I eat... I should recognize that idea is possible and embrace it. Makes lunch so very tasty.
Panda, I'm sorry you're going through such a rough go. We all agree to disagree in the end, but we are all a community of gamers who DO care about life, and care about each other. My opponent across from me is a living, breathing person with hopes, dreams, fears, and very real problems in life.
I'm going to preface this by saying that the two of you need a lot more help and support than random people on the internet can provide to you. I trust you already know this, but I'll say it anyway.
Love is first and foremost a human experience. Whatever explanation we come up with for the phenomenon is secondary to how it feels. It does not matter whether love is "transcendent" (whatever that means) or the product of complicated electrochemical interactions between neurons. It still fills us with exactly the same euphoria, gets our heart pounding exactly the same way, makes us want to do exactly the same crazy and wonderful things, and yes, causes us exactly the same soul-wrenching pain when those we love are suffering. Nothing a priest or a scientist says can change any of these experiences one single iota. When you hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, does it matter to you that the sounds are transmitted to your ears through the regular agitation of atmospheric molecules, produced by men and women manipulating bits of brass and ivory and catgut and wood? Must this thing of beauty and meaning be piped directly into your mind by God? Of course not. The beauty and meaning lie in the experience, wherever it comes from; and if it comes from the natural world, so much the better for the natural world. Why should it be unthinkable that natural things can be beautiful and meaningful?
And what does love mean? To give an articulation that, if woefully inadequate, is at least accurate: it means that you value above all else the well-being of the object of your love. You want them to be happy and healthy, even at the cost of your own happiness and health. Again, why this should be does not matter at all; what matters is just that this is what you want. And this being what you want, the question becomes: why not do it? Under what circumstances could you possibly conclude that your desire for someone else's well-being is somehow false or illusory, but that your desire for your own well-being is genuine? Even the blackest of nihilisms, if examined honestly, gives people exactly as little reason to be selfish bastards as to be saints. I do not recommend it, but if you must think that love is something cheap and tawdry and ultimately worthless, then you must also think that self-love is just as cheap and tawdry and ultimately worthless. Thus, you might as well act on your love, because it's what you want to do.
Shakespeare wrote:
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
He might as well have been writing an epistemology textbook. We can doubt everything else, but we cannot doubt our experiences. They are uniquely, indisputably real to us. Whatever the transcendental or biological truth, whether we be actual humans or bamboozled brains in jars, the fact that you love remains unchanged. The depth and passion of your feeling remain unchanged. Is that not amazing? Is that not something to treasure?
I greatly envy my brother, with his healthy wife and no kids, who can just go to work and then come home and play XBox or go to concerts or festivals or whatever.
Envy is a dangerous thing. There is always someone who has it better than you (no matter who you are). Envy will never help, it will only hurt. I don't think it's an easy thing to do, but if you focus on the positives (surely there are some positives in your life) it may help you get by. What positive things do you have in your life PRP2?
If I were to leave my family, sure, I'd be a major league A-hole. But really, if this life is all I've got, shouldn't I try my damnedest to be happy with it?
I don't know you beyond what you've posted here PRP2, but I don't think you'd really be happy if you left your family.
Sometimes life gives us a hard time. Sometimes it seems like life is never going to let up and quit bearing down on us. You know what you do in those situations? You find something to keep you going--some glimmer of hope and happiness to focus on during the worst of times and the toughest pains in life. Never let yourself lose sight of that hope. It sounds as though that hope and happiness for you is God. If that is the case, then run with it and don't hold back!
You seem frustrated by hearing atheists and theists bickering. I'd recommend avoiding conversations about the existence of God because I see those bringing nothing positive into your life. Why do you even get involved in such things?
Find your happiness in life, and wring as much joy and satisfaction out of it as you can!
So I have turned to God -- yes, yes, I admit: faith is a crutch for me!
There are times in life when a crutch is exactly what's needed. Don't fault yourself for using one.
Just like an actual, physical crutch though, it's probably best to avoid becoming dependent on the crutch if you can. Perhaps this cannot be done. If that is the case, then use the crutch to help you get along in life. That's what a crutch is for after all! Some of us are lucky enough to not need crutches in life, and we should consider ourselves truly fortunate. But there is no shame to be had in needing help getting through life.
And yet in the quiet darkness that abuts despair, I find myself brushing fleetingly against an ineffable presence, and I begin to suspect that God really is real.
And perhaps He is real. Maybe that really is what is going on. I don't know. None of us do.
And I look at the back-and-forth between atheists and theists, and from my place of pain and doubt I am just fed up and angry with all of them. Angry at atheists who would assault and mock the psychic crutches of the crippled.
That really is not anyone's motives I think. It'd probably be best for you to just avoid such discussions. It's not like you inevitably run into people in life talking about whether or not God is real.
Angry at theists for continuing to argue for a frankly ludicrous vision of God, which just makes it so much harder to pursue an authentic vision if there is one to be found.
It might help to find some Christians or other theists who share similar beliefs as you and talk with them. Maybe try going to local churches until you find one where you feel comfortable?
But if anyone could answer me this question, I would be so very grateful: why, in the absence of God, should anyone choose to give up his/her life -- not in a single heroic and largely unreasoned blaze of glory, but in painful measured drops over years and years -- for the sake of another?
Why? Because that is what the person desires to do.
In your specific case, you are in a very difficult situation. You choose to keep going because it seems to be the better of your two primary options: stay in a difficult situation, or escape it and be viewed by yourself and others as a jerk. If you stay, your situation sucks. If you leave, your situation sucks. There is no "good option" for you, so you choose what you perceive to be the best course of action all things considered.
If there's nothing transcendent about love, then by what right do we submit to suffering for love's sake?
I don't think we submit to suffering for love's sake. I think we submit to some suffering because, all things considered, we think the alternative is worse.
___________
PRP2, it sounds like you are in a very difficult situation, and I wish you the absolute best in getting through it. Talking to others about it can help relieve some of the stress. Maybe get a counselor to talk to. It couldn't hurt. Or if you don't want to go that route, find a friend to talk to that's willing to listen. Or if you don't have anyone like that, pm me and I'll listen. Just don't keep everything bottled up inside. That's never healthy.
Another thing that may help relieve the tension you're facing is to regularly make some time for your self. Once a week, or a couple times a month, or however often you can afford to, set aside some time for you. Whether it's playing magic at the LGS, or going to a buddy's house to drink some beers, or going hiking in the woods, or whatever... make some time for yourself. You really need this I think. The home should be able to keep itself together for an evening or a day every now and then. And you could use some time for yourself to just relax.
Best of luck with everything,
-IA
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"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." --Carl Sagan
In my country we have strong religious influences from missionary work. The Swedes in particular did a lot of work here. It is then to me quite a shame to read articles on how Sweden is rife with atheism and how Christianity is on such a downward spiral their.
My question to any person from Scandinavia is why is your nations so unhappy with God? You really could not claim it is because of a lack of blessings.
Stop using "Nordic" and "Scandinavian" as interchangeable terms. They are NOT the same.
I can't say much about why Scandinavians are less christian now than before. It was already that way when I was born. My own country (Kingdom of Norway) was really puritan during the 1700's, so changes have to have come since then. The 1800's had a lot of national romanticism (like most European countries did), during which people were increasingly fascinated by pre-Christian Norse culture. Perhaps people were annoyed that priests were preaching in Danish as well, I don't know. A lot of literature was writen during this century that started to challenge established notions, amongst them the religion of the land (protestant). I think the last thing here might be important, since it was probably a reflection of how a lot of people in society were thinking at the time. If it is being written about, someone must first have thought about it.
Norway, like Sweden and Denmark, is a Social Democracy. Under social democratic thinking, religion is seen as a personal matter. Perhaps more importantly, religion can be seen as a way of thinking that comes in the way of building a better society for all. Jesus Christ himself probably treated people equally, but in christian society people were not being treated equally. Since social democracy is a lot about equality, they might dislike how organized churches make a hierarchy where priests, generous money donors and rich people are viewed as better than people who don't go to church or are poor. That's the way it was in the past.
I don't know, I am rambling on. Just realize that "Scandinavian" and "Nordic" aren't the same.
Once again Infinity makes some good points. Having a "crutch" is NOT a bad thing. In fact, many Athiests are actually extremely aware how much good organized religion does for people who need them. It's something that's a part of our communities, and I would like to think that most non-believers are not beneath sending someone to a church soup kitchen or even volunteering for a religious organization in some cases.
I think there is this really bad stereotype that ALL Athiests are crabby people with trenchcoats who sit and rail constantly over how awful religious people are. That's really not the case, though unfortunately many of the most public of us tend to be real blowhards. For the most part we're just people who want to be left alone and be allowed to live our lives the way we see fit. We want a more secular government so EVERYONE can do what they want in the privacy of their own homes, even Christians. If an Athiest was president tomorrow, the last thing they'd do is ban anything. If anything, they'd open up more freedoms for people of ALL religions to do as they please. If a strongly conservative Christian became President, they'd force us all to live by what they believed. THAT'S when you get Atheists puffing steam about horrible Christians. I don't think anyone could fault it either! Who wants to be told what to do?
I want to thank you all for your thoughtful and heartfelt responses. Even if this is an anonymous forum, you are all real people at the heart of it; and your consideration means something.
Quote from Blinking Spirit »
Even the blackest of nihilisms, if examined honestly, gives people exactly as little reason to be selfish bastards as to be saints. I do not recommend it, but if you must think that love is something cheap and tawdry and ultimately worthless, then you must also think that self-love is just as cheap and tawdry and ultimately worthless. Thus, you might as well act on your love, because it's what you want to do.
Shakespeare wrote:
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
He might as well have been writing an epistemology textbook. We can doubt everything else, but we cannot doubt our experiences. They are uniquely, indisputably real to us. Whatever the transcendental or biological truth, whether we be actual humans or bamboozled brains in jars, the fact that you love remains unchanged. The depth and passion of your feeling remain unchanged. Is that not amazing? Is that not something to treasure?
Thank you for this. I feel that on some level this is exactly what I needed to hear. If in some formal or professional capacity you are not a teacher/professor/etc., you ought to be. You have great wisdom of a sort that is sorely needed in our educational system.
Quote from InfinityAlarm »
You seem frustrated by hearing atheists and theists bickering. I'd recommend avoiding conversations about the existence of God because I see those bringing nothing positive into your life. Why do you even get involved in such things?
You are right that it is foolish of me; but I think that I was hoping that if I could get a chance to ever see an atheist confess to being really rattled about the supposed non-existence of God, that would be some sort of vindication... maybe in my own confused and distraught state, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of someone else in the same boat. We all publicly project veneers of confidence -- I am going to go to work tonight and no one is going to suspect that anything is wrong...
I know that a debate forum is the exactly wrong place to look for such admissions; but I was just hoping, perversely, to get some sense (however veiled) that none of us have any idea what we are really talking about. That would be comforting in its own right.
Anyway, thanks again. I do not really think there is any chance of me bailing on my family... I am just going to keep pushing on because, while I can hypothesize about alternatives, that is the only thing I really know how to do. Of course some days are better than others. Hopefully I'll be able to come to a place of peace with all of this soon, regardless of the metaphysical questions.
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Love. Forgive. Trust. Be willing to be broken that you may be remade.
Funny that Scandinavia countries also record the highest levels of happines, eductation, health, wellbeing, soical mobility and some of the lowest levels of crime in the world. I'm sure there is no connection between the two.
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Given up magic because a)its a waste of money b)it sucks the joy out of life c)im doing more interesting things than tapping pieces of plastic that have no intrinsic value.
I encourage you to do the same. Instead of FNM try Friday Night Something Spontaneous. Instead of thousands of hours and dollars on plastic imagine it with a significant other or friends sharing something meaningful. I randomly typed a new password, so bon voyage itches i encourage you to follow suit! Cheers
Panda: So really, the thing that's frustrating you isn't the people who aren't seeking spiritual answers, but rather your inability to find them.
That's ok. You'll get to where you're headed in the end. But you need to deal with that frustration proactively.
I'm with Blinking Spirit, this is a problem that is FAR too complex and heavy for anyone on this message board to help you with, and you're clearly here searching for answers. I would suggest going to someone qualified to actually help you find them.
Hopefully I'll be able to come to a place of peace with all of this soon, regardless of the metaphysical questions.
Here's the thing: You don't care about the metaphysical questions. That's like throwing a bunch of rocks into your backpack. You don't need them, they're not useful, and it's a very good explanation for why you're having difficulty finding useful things like your map or your water canteen and why you're tiring yourself out trying to carry the thing.
The real question you're asking yourself is much simpler. "What do I do now?"
The answer to that is simple, "You continue onward."
That's all you need to know. All else flows from there.
Actually no, most of Europe is pretty secular. Spiritual conversation just doesn't happen in plain sight like it does in America. In fact after living in the UK and attending a school that was said to have a religious base... it wasn't until I returned home that I saw just how in your face and "out and proud" Christians were in the US. People complain that the US is becoming a more secular nation, but when you travel overseas and see that most churches are sort of traditional pieces rather than spiritual... you see that we're just following a similar course as the rest of the world.
Well you can say this however... When you are young and surrounded by what your parents raise you as, and what church is down the street... you usually have no idea of what else is out there based on what you have seen in an arguably small bubble. When one leaves for college or travels the world, it can make one lose sight of religiousness because they either learn things about other religions, meet people from other walks of life, or discover some things that make them question why they believe what they do. To be fair, this process can also make one MORE religious.
But really I think many Americans call themselves what they were raised to call themselves. Then when they are adults, they remain that label even though they may never walk into another church or touch a Bible... they may not even KNOW what they believe, but because granny took them to a Catholic Church... they are Catholic.
I think it has more to do with people telling someone "no." The more you hear "no" about something, the more tempting it can become. It could be argued that those with the weirdest sexual kinks are the ones who have been repressed from exploring more "normal" behaviors... So when something more diviant presents itself... temptation is far stronger for someone who is constantly kept from it. For an Athiest, the temptation just isn't there unless there is a deeper pshycological reaosn, like abuse. Not saying it couldn't be the case for the Priest... but it's more than likely because they aren't allowed to marry or have a "normal" and "healthy" relationship with other people.
The thing to note is that secular society has by and large made a "God" of science. This is quite different than to claim that science has become a "religion," and I do not claim that; secular people do not have set creeds, rituals, modes of worship, etc. But I do think that many educated people believe that science represents "the only way forward," or the "best hope for humanity," or some such; and there is a (frequently unspoken) confidence that any and all problems confronting us can be resolved if only scientific progress advances sufficiently. Eden was only ever a myth; but someday we shall be able to manifest a real Eden of our own devising.
But where is there any reason to have confidence in this assumption? Nearly every scientific discovery has opened up more paths of inquiry than it has closed off; new answers lead to new questions. Moreover, even the most moral applications of science have tended to create new moral crises.
Example 1: Industrial agriculture. The idea was to solve world hunger; but the practice proved unsustainable. Now arable topsoil is disappearing at record rates, deserts are expanding, fossil fuels are running out, and species are going extinct in droves as still-starving people desperately cling to survival.
Example 2: Modern medicine. Combating illness and prolonging life = unmitigated win, right? Wrong. Now painful questions about quality of life and euthanasia, or about who gets a life-saving organ transplant and who doesn't, are being asked which never were before. Societies are struggling to deal with burgeoning numbers of unproductive elderly people who are living decades longer than they used to. People with serious genetic defects, who earlier would've died in childhood, are surviving to reproductive age and passing on their defects to the next generation, reducing the overall fitness of the human race. Misuse and abuse of antibiotics has created drug-resistant "super bugs"; the matter of a global pandemic now seems to be a matter of when, not if.
The thing I wonder is whether most secular people have really considered the very significant shortcomings and problems with the scientific endeavor up til now; or whether they are simply entranced by the next iteration of the iPhone. Because, if it is acknowledged that science cannot "save us" (and I really see no reason to trust that it can), then perhaps a yawning void, reeking of nihilism and absurdism, will be felt to open in the souls of many -- a void traditionally filled by the religious quest.
Perhaps the real significance is not that irreligious countries have well-educated citizenry, but that those countries have overwhelmingly been peaceful and prosperous in recent history, which tends to breed (irrespective of scientific acumen) a sort of complacency or indifference to deep questions of purpose and meaning. It's one thing to ask, "Is there a God?" if you're sitting in a comfortable home and the biggest thing you have to worry about is whether to order out from Pizza Hut or Dominoes. It's quite another thing -- a more visceral, urgent thing -- to ask, "Is there a God?" when you're in daily danger of hunger, disease, assault, and death.
To the OP: This may answer some of your questions. Generally, as happiness, education, and general prosperity indexes increase, religiosity declines. My personal take on it is that a lot of the need for religion is a by-product of fear of other things; in essence, religion helps people cope when times are hard, or at least takes advantage of those who've fallen on hard times. When your basic needs are already taken care of by the state, there is less to fear and more time for critical thinking and leisure in general. America is the only real extreme outlier in terms of wealth, education and etc versus religiosity.
While nobody with any education on the subject claims that science can solve every problem, it is a truth of logic that the scientific method is the best for finding solutions. This is because the scientific method is nothing more or less than figuring out what works - any effective way of evaluating the reliability of a proposed solution to a problem is by definition science.
If you are seriously thinking of equating the moral dilemmas of modernity with the miseries which almost all of mankind historically has had to suffer and, outside the First World, continues to suffer, then you are ignorant and utterly lacking in perspective, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. What you're describing are, literally, First World problems.
Many of the claims you make have no factual basis, and those which have a factual basis are not instances of science making things worse, but simply of science not making things perfect... yet. Desertification? You know the Sahara and Arabian Deserts are manmade, right? Starvation? Look at all the people who aren't starving anymore. Limited organ donations? Better being on a transplant list than not being on a transplant list. Unproductive elderly? Better than unproductive child corpses courtesy of cholera. Genetic defects weakening the race? Not even going to touch that one. Super-bug pandemic? Easier for fearmongers to write about than to actually happen.
You're describing the existentialist movement that appeared after the end of the First World War.
The proper response to which is, "Get your **** together, you big baby. You don't like it, do something about it."
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
... I'm at a crossroads here, because I've got all of this societal conditioning that tells me that yelling in someone's face is wrong and impolite, but on the other hand I know that if I were truly a friend to someone speaking this, and if that person were in front of me, that I would be wrong for not smacking him upside the head, metaphorically or literally or both, for saying something like this.
There's an article in the recent National Geographic about a group who goes to see this nomadic tribe in New Guinea. The article starts out with a rescue mission to save a 15 year old woman and her baby from dying to pneumonia, which among other preventable diseases has caused many such nomadic tribesmen to become terminally ill. Later the woman is shown to have recovered through use of antibiotics when they take her to a village to get medical attention.
And the funny thing is when I read this and I actually thought to myself, "You know, the next time someone posts something on MTGSalvation about how much better life would be without modern technology, I'm going to remind them how much life sucked without antibiotics and surgery and the germ theory of disease."
The reason people never asked questions like who gets a transplant is because they didn't have transplants, most civilizations didn't have surgeons, and most people didn't live that long because they died to diseases that are entirely preventable now.
We've had global pandemics before. All of them are diseases that are extremely uncommon if not unheard of in modern day first world countries. This is including the fact that travel between countries is at a level unheard of even a matter of decades ago.
The fact that we don't have a global pandemic now is attributable to modern medicine. Or do you believe that with the Center for Disease Control and vaccinations and antibiotics we are somehow more susceptible to disease than in the 1940s when polio was still endemic to America?
We no longer live in the Enlightenment mindset that rational thinking and science will somehow solve all the human problems and bring the world into a Star Trek/Voltaire's El Dorado vision of the world, it's true.
Having said that, to deny the achievements of the Enlightenment and the coming of age that man and his endeavors to understand the world, to deny these accomplishments is to do a disservice not only to man, but also to God.
Consider the case of Benjamin Silliman, one of the first professors of Natural Philosophy at Yale and professor of the budding new field of science known as geology, who put American science on the map when he conducted one of the first scientific studies of a meteorite, and later received world fame in his lectures in which he taught people that meteorites were rocks that fell from space composed of various elements and not demons.
The fact that we don't believe in demons, witches, sprites, or that the planets rotate in perfect circles pushed along celestial spheres by angels is because of the Enlightenment and the lasting influence of the discoveries made during it.
Then you do what everyone else learns to do when they become spiritually lost: you stop trying to go back to what came before, and instead understand that you have learned a lesson and go onto the new place, whatever it is.
Look, let's be real here: It's absolutely true that human beings in affluence tend to be blinded by a delusion that they are immortal and indestructible.
But I will take that over cholera, or polio, or the bubonic plague, or starving to death, or freezing to death, or having to walk miles upon end for unsanitary drinking water any day. Recognize that if you're complaining of boredom and the fact that you're not exposed to death enough, you are enjoying a level of luxury the majority of the people in this era cannot claim.
And deeper questions are FAR easier in a society where college education is the norm than in a society where people move great distances to hunt migratory animals to survive and infant mortality is commonplace.
Oh my goodness, sigged times a thousand.
Crap, my high school years would have been so much less frustrating had I read this and your thoughts on Hegel.
Really? Really? Maybe I didn't go too far, but not far enough. And if I come off as a zealot Luddite who has no gratitude for the achievements of science -- I'm not, and I do. Hell, I'm sitting in a climate-controlled house typing this, and my wife would be dead twenty times over if not for modern medicine. Nevertheless, I am getting so sick of people claiming that science is the best thing that has ever happened to the human race; because frankly, it's inseparable from the people who practice it -- people who are, to use a despised religious term, "sinners."
Like I said, maybe I didn't go far enough.
People have always found excuses to kill one another. But why was the twentieth century the bloodiest in world history? It was science that made the Holocaust, the Soviet purges, and every other hyper-efficient, industrialized episode of genocide possible.
It was science, not divine revelation, that made nuclear weapons a reality: that brought us nearly, on more than one occasion in the Cold War, to the brink of utter annihilation.
I'm sorry, I thought that was my point.
According to starvation.net, more than 800 million people in the world are malnourished and more than 35,000 die daily of starvation. According to http://www.globalchange.umich.edu, the total population of the world at the time of Christ is estimated at around 300 million; and that number did not get much higher until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, finally hitting the 1 billion mark around the year 1800.
Look at the numbers. The raw number of malnourished people in the world today is 266% greater than the total number of people on the entire planet for the majority of the world's history. Is that not appalling? But that's what you get when you mix the science of industrial agriculture in with human fecklessness, irresponsibility and greed; and you can't ever un-mix it because, hey, it's only humans who do science.
"First-world problems?" Fine, fine; but they are problems, are they not? And they point, methinks, to an overarching, subtle and sinister problem: the inevitable devaluation of human life in a world where it's become almost too easy to stay alive. People start getting cynical and judgmental, you see...
"Why should he be eligible for a liver transplant? He ruined his liver by drinking too much; he doesn't deserve another chance."
"Why should I have to fork over so much of my paycheck to help pay S.S. benefits to some nonagenarians? They got to live long full lives, and here I'm struggling just to make ends meet."
"Why should the school district pay so much money for specialized teachers and individualized lesson plans just to help a handful of disabled kids perform up to some bare minimum standard, while they're cutting advanced placement courses and preventing the really smart kids -- the ones who might actually do something useful with their lives -- from achieving up to their full potential?"
Is it not telling that eugenics programs -- those designed to cull humans "unfit for life" -- achieved their greatest expression in the most technologically advanced and sophisticated societies of their day? And the attitudes that underlay those programs are still with us, perhaps to be expressed on a global rather than national scale, if the privileged people of the West start feeling too much of a pinch and start to ask themselves, "Why should we send any kind of aid at all to (for example) sub-Saharan Africa? They haven't been able to get their **** straight after all this time; they don't deserve any more help from us. Let nature take its course; let them starve."
And we've tried to do something about it, haven't we?
Except, have we really tried? A few people have, of course, both religious (like Mother Teresa) and irreligious (like Bill and Melinda Gates). But is it not true that most people in fact value science and technology, not for how it can help the least among us, or even for what it can tell us about the world, but just what it can do for them? Is this not simply old-fashioned, selfish human nature?
I submit that science has simply shown us for the sinners and lunatics we are. The greatest scientific strides were made in times of war; apparently humans are never so ingenious as when devising new ways to kill one another. And now we have invented and innovated ourselves to a place where, whether by nuclear war, widespread environmental collapse, or some "super bug" engineered by a yet unknown evil genius, we are perfectly poised to (more or less) wipe ourselves out.
I do not think this is a misanthropic or fatalistic view, but simply a realistic assessment of the facts. And I propose that we will best forestall any undesirable fate by ceasing to pretend that science is God's greatest gift to mankind since... well, since mankind jettisoned God. To take the blinders off, and to see science for the mere tool that it is, a tool which has perennially been a double-edged sword. To be more willing, therefore, to seek spiritual solutions to our problems and grievances: to consult with the wisdom of the past a little more and to appeal to our tireless inventors a little less.
You've defeated yourself.
Panda, I say this as a friend and colleague: you want to go to bed and get some rest before posting further. Whatever you're pissed off at, whatever vindication in your life you feel you need, it isn't in this thread, and your continued ranting is akin to digging yourself deeper into a hole.
How have I defeated myself? I have tried to see the self-contradiction in the two snippets you quoted, but I cannot. Also, I am perfectly awake; I work the night shift and my bed time isn't for a few more hours.
Moreover I fail to see how you can call my arguments a "rant." But I will try to make as simple and unemotional a synopsis as possible.
Without science: People reproducing roughly at the replacement rate with infant mortality factored in. Life for many is "nasty, brutish and short." But people are still capable of finding joy and fulfillment with their lot, as ancient love poetry shows. Human existence is potentially sustainable indefinitely, up to the point where the sun grows too hot (at least another eon down the road).
With science: People reproducing at explosive, exponential rates. Life for many is still "nasty, brutish and short," although for a privileged minority it's better than ever. But human existence has become certifiably unsustainable on its present trajectory, to the point where you have one of the brightest minds on the planet, Stephen Hawking, predicting that if we don't colonize outer space, within 1,000 years the human race will cease to exist.
And maybe we will be able to use science to invent our way out of the present crisis; but it's a crisis that science (in tandem with politics, from which it is inextricable) created in the first place. So respect for the scientific method is fine and well; but to adopt a reverential attitude towards the institution of science, as a number of secularists have done, is a terrible mistake.
Panda, your better than this, please sleep on it and try to see how your attacking strawman and that Highroller is looking out for you, he isn't saying you contradicted yourself, its more that you are saying really outlandish stuff that, once unpacked, looks like sensationalist anti-progress stuff.
Really? I'm getting sick of people claiming science is anything but an amazing success.
The twentieth century is not, contrary to popular belief, that much worse than previous centuries. Yes, more people died. As a percentage of population, however, roughly as many people died in the American civil war (of potential combatants) as did in world war 1 (around 2% in both cases). The second world war is worse, at 4%.
Of course, if you look back further, to the hundred years war, 2-3 million died (ballpark) - which is between 10 and *20%* of the total population of the UK and France at the end of those wars. Obviously lots of people were also *born* in those periods, but still - seems pretty bloody to me.
800 million people. Out of 7 Billion. The equivalent of less than 3 million in the time of christ.
Pretty sure we're winning that trade.
I'm not sure which of these debates are not worth the benefit. I'll happily discuss who should get organ transplants if it means my niece, age 1, had a shot at one rather than the technology not existing. I think it's reasonable to discuss how we pay for those in their 90s...on the grounds that it means I have a shot at another 60 years of life rather than maybe 15. And we should discuss how we split the funding for schools.
How are any of these 'cynical and judgemental' conversations? Surely they are better than conversations like '7 of my 9 children died before age 10. I'm so lucky to have done better than average'
People in America today have eugenics programs? Or in Australia, or the UK, or Germany?
Oh, you mean the Nazis. Yea, I think they have *other* problems than science.
Right - because taking spiritual solutions to scientific problems is always so helpful. Like the way that it means instead of having spent a decade using stem cell research to cure a variety of diseases we've nailed our feet to the floor and made it as difficult as possible.
And the 'wisdom of the past' tends to be some old garbage which has no value. There is a reason, nearly all the time, why the 'wisdom of the past' is 'of the past'; it's because it isn't, as it turns out, terribly wise.
You started by saying that science is inseparable from the people using it. You then proceed to blame science for all the ills of the modern world, ignoring what you just said: that the real problems of the modern world are people being people, and indeed, the reason why it is the problems of the modern world as opposed to the problems of the primitive world is because of scientific discoveries.
Panda, I'm going to repeat it: you need to get some rest. You're in no condition to post right now. You are smarter than what you're posting, and we all know it, including you.
I understand that life is messed up for you right now and you're trying to sort through it. But whatever or whoever you're pissed off at, it's not here, and you might have come here trying to blow off steam like in your previous afterlife thread, but spending time here isn't going to make you feel better. None of the anger you express here is going to be pointed towards its actual target, which is whatever is bothering you, and consequently all of your posts are going to come off as exactly what they are: unproductive, directionless ranting.
But yet, it's the religious folks who are all about "pumping out babies" because birth control is wrong, and because creating new Christians yourself is the best way to convert.
When science gives us an option for birth control... the religious folks are the ones telling us not to give it to our teenagers who will go out and shag in the woods regardless... making more babies and giving us more problems in our welfare system and lower class.
I'm certainly willing to say, science is not the be-all-end-all... and that science has given us some MIGHTY scary things. However, it's hard for me to think that all scientists are Athiest mongrels waiting to push a moonbase agenda.
The "science" that produces population booms is... boiling your drinking water.
No, really. Introduce that one piece of tech to a pre-industrial society, you produce a population explosion EVERY TIME.
The problem isn't science itself, though. The problem is that medical science improving lifespan and quality of life isn't matched by a shift in cultural mores. Notice that most of Europe is at or below replacement levels in population. The US would be, except a steady flow of immigrants props our population up (both by introducing more people directly, through immigration, and because immigrants have more children).
The population curve after gaining industrial medical technology isn't exponential growth, it's an 'S' curve - you get exponential population growth for a while, then your culture norms catch back up and your population growth flattens back out.
Sustainable high tech populations are definitely possible.
You're right. So I'm going to take a deep breath and, for whatever it's worth on an anonymous internet forum, be "real" with you all. I'm going to expose the inner workings of my mind (in a hopefully non-gratuitous fashion), and hopefully prompt a more productive discussion, in keeping with the original theme of this thread, about why people might turn to God and why they might not. And maybe someone will be able to offer some insight or solace to me along the way.
My wife of five years is seriously messed up, both physically and mentally. She has cardiomyopathy, asthma, diabetes, recurrent severe depression and is possibly bipolar. I knew about the heart disease when we got married, but things have really gone downhill. A large part of the problem is that she does not take care of herself. When she is feeling down, she "self-medicates" her depression with chips and chocolate, which worsens her physical condition, which in turn breeds more depression: a classic vicious circle. I honestly do not expect her to survive another ten years. And she's only 34.
I try to help motivate her to be healthier, but it's difficult to do this without setting her off emotionally -- she does not respond at all to "tough love" -- and the job of taking care of her children (my stepchildren) falls largely on my shoulders. Granted they're now at ages (11 and 9) where they're a lot more self-sufficient than they used to be. And I really and deeply love them: I've raised them for about seven years as if they were my own. But if my wife should happen to die before they turn 18, they'll go back to the custody of their biological father. So my whole family could be taken away from me in one fell swoop.
And here is the crossroads I am at. Things are hard, so very hard; and I cannot help but think that I am wasting my life. I greatly envy my brother, with his healthy wife and no kids, who can just go to work and then come home and play XBox or go to concerts or festivals or whatever. And I just have this terrible dark suspicion that, if there is no God, there really is no reason for me to keep going. If I were to leave my family, sure, I'd be a major league A-hole. But really, if this life is all I've got, shouldn't I try my damnedest to be happy with it? Why indeed should any of us let ourselves be burdened with the troubles of others? Out of self-sacrificial love? But again, if there is no God, then what is love but a neuro-chemical ephemera in our squishy, ridiculous brains?
But I know that if I were to leave I would feel crushed by guilt (another stupid neuro-chemical ephemera); so I must stay and find a way to convince myself that it is actually worth it. So I have turned to God -- yes, yes, I admit: faith is a crutch for me! I am broken, and faith is propping me up! Is it not ridiculous?
And yet in the quiet darkness that abuts despair, I find myself brushing fleetingly against an ineffable presence, and I begin to suspect that God really is real. And that really would be my salvation. But maybe I am just fooling myself again on another level. There are so many people who would be content to tell me exactly that.
And I look at the back-and-forth between atheists and theists, and from my place of pain and doubt I am just fed up and angry with all of them. Angry at atheists who would assault and mock the psychic crutches of the crippled. Angry at theists for continuing to argue for a frankly ludicrous vision of God, which just makes it so much harder to pursue an authentic vision if there is one to be found.
But if anyone could answer me this question, I would be so very grateful: why, in the absence of God, should anyone choose to give up his/her life -- not in a single heroic and largely unreasoned blaze of glory, but in painful measured drops over years and years -- for the sake of another? If there's nothing transcendent about love, then by what right do we submit to suffering for love's sake?
Personally I think there is much wrong with the state church. It tries to make everyone happy and manages to appeal to very few. The places where the official church is a positive factor in the society is often in the same places that have the most conservative population. But the leadership of the church remains liberal. It's just one of the many small things that makes the church unattractive.
Here I get challenged often on why I believe. It's actually unbalanced. The same question is really relevant to atheists. Why don't you believe in a God. You see the common/leading oppinion isn't questioned much here. Some have claimed this is one of the social explanations to the massacre last summer. Some oppinions just won't be taken seriously. I think they might have a point.
Of course the christians isn't as open as christians other places. Faith is declared a private thing (by the leading oppinion) and as a result sharing your faith is beeing rude. This in addition to christians beeing satisfied with their comfortable lives make the faith teethless. You see, having money and a materialistic rich life is of course a good thing, but it corrupts people's minds. We have an expression that translated becomes "much wants more", meaning the more money you have the more you are obsessed about having it.
Thats my view of things as a christian. I'm sure other scandinavians will disagree with my characteristics of the society maybe also other christians, but I think the question was a good one. And I can see how it doesn't make sense to foreigners.
Love isn't for love's sake. Love is what we describe when we care so much for someone that we would do anything for them. Love is for our lover's sake. It can be painful, even deathly so, but we go through with it because we want to be there for our lover and make his/her life as best as we can. I'm sorry if that doesn't help that much; this kind of devotional love isn't for everyone, but anyone that does practice such a love is a thoroughly good person. Just thinking of how they must feel to have someone there for them when they need it, they can truly feel blessed.
Love isn't for a reward, it's for the person you care for. It is a truly virtuous thing, and the only thing you could hope for is that they love you in return. It doesn't always work out like that, but you have that much.
I know I'm posting this on an anonymous forum for card games, but what can you do~
I think love is there for everyone, regardless of belief. The Athiests that I know live life to the fullest, and love those around them greatly. They believe that they get ONE SHOT in life, and because of this have to make good choices and make the best of every little thing. Every step you take may be your last... why waste it on hate, doubt, and negative enregy? If my lunch today is the last one I eat... I should recognize that idea is possible and embrace it. Makes lunch so very tasty.
Panda, I'm sorry you're going through such a rough go. We all agree to disagree in the end, but we are all a community of gamers who DO care about life, and care about each other. My opponent across from me is a living, breathing person with hopes, dreams, fears, and very real problems in life.
Love is first and foremost a human experience. Whatever explanation we come up with for the phenomenon is secondary to how it feels. It does not matter whether love is "transcendent" (whatever that means) or the product of complicated electrochemical interactions between neurons. It still fills us with exactly the same euphoria, gets our heart pounding exactly the same way, makes us want to do exactly the same crazy and wonderful things, and yes, causes us exactly the same soul-wrenching pain when those we love are suffering. Nothing a priest or a scientist says can change any of these experiences one single iota. When you hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, does it matter to you that the sounds are transmitted to your ears through the regular agitation of atmospheric molecules, produced by men and women manipulating bits of brass and ivory and catgut and wood? Must this thing of beauty and meaning be piped directly into your mind by God? Of course not. The beauty and meaning lie in the experience, wherever it comes from; and if it comes from the natural world, so much the better for the natural world. Why should it be unthinkable that natural things can be beautiful and meaningful?
And what does love mean? To give an articulation that, if woefully inadequate, is at least accurate: it means that you value above all else the well-being of the object of your love. You want them to be happy and healthy, even at the cost of your own happiness and health. Again, why this should be does not matter at all; what matters is just that this is what you want. And this being what you want, the question becomes: why not do it? Under what circumstances could you possibly conclude that your desire for someone else's well-being is somehow false or illusory, but that your desire for your own well-being is genuine? Even the blackest of nihilisms, if examined honestly, gives people exactly as little reason to be selfish bastards as to be saints. I do not recommend it, but if you must think that love is something cheap and tawdry and ultimately worthless, then you must also think that self-love is just as cheap and tawdry and ultimately worthless. Thus, you might as well act on your love, because it's what you want to do.
Shakespeare wrote: He might as well have been writing an epistemology textbook. We can doubt everything else, but we cannot doubt our experiences. They are uniquely, indisputably real to us. Whatever the transcendental or biological truth, whether we be actual humans or bamboozled brains in jars, the fact that you love remains unchanged. The depth and passion of your feeling remain unchanged. Is that not amazing? Is that not something to treasure?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I would imagine the kids you are taking care of will be grateful for how you're spending your life. If not now, as they get older they will.
Envy is a dangerous thing. There is always someone who has it better than you (no matter who you are). Envy will never help, it will only hurt. I don't think it's an easy thing to do, but if you focus on the positives (surely there are some positives in your life) it may help you get by. What positive things do you have in your life PRP2?
You may find reasons to keep going in the absence of God. If you have anything positive in your life, you have a reason to keep going!
I don't know you beyond what you've posted here PRP2, but I don't think you'd really be happy if you left your family.
Sometimes life gives us a hard time. Sometimes it seems like life is never going to let up and quit bearing down on us. You know what you do in those situations? You find something to keep you going--some glimmer of hope and happiness to focus on during the worst of times and the toughest pains in life. Never let yourself lose sight of that hope. It sounds as though that hope and happiness for you is God. If that is the case, then run with it and don't hold back!
You seem frustrated by hearing atheists and theists bickering. I'd recommend avoiding conversations about the existence of God because I see those bringing nothing positive into your life. Why do you even get involved in such things?
Find your happiness in life, and wring as much joy and satisfaction out of it as you can!
There are times in life when a crutch is exactly what's needed. Don't fault yourself for using one.
Just like an actual, physical crutch though, it's probably best to avoid becoming dependent on the crutch if you can. Perhaps this cannot be done. If that is the case, then use the crutch to help you get along in life. That's what a crutch is for after all! Some of us are lucky enough to not need crutches in life, and we should consider ourselves truly fortunate. But there is no shame to be had in needing help getting through life.
It is not ridiculous. It's exactly what you need right now.
And perhaps He is real. Maybe that really is what is going on. I don't know. None of us do.
We're not you and haven't experienced what you have. If it convinces you, then so be it.
That really is not anyone's motives I think. It'd probably be best for you to just avoid such discussions. It's not like you inevitably run into people in life talking about whether or not God is real.
It might help to find some Christians or other theists who share similar beliefs as you and talk with them. Maybe try going to local churches until you find one where you feel comfortable?
Why? Because that is what the person desires to do.
In your specific case, you are in a very difficult situation. You choose to keep going because it seems to be the better of your two primary options: stay in a difficult situation, or escape it and be viewed by yourself and others as a jerk. If you stay, your situation sucks. If you leave, your situation sucks. There is no "good option" for you, so you choose what you perceive to be the best course of action all things considered.
I don't think we submit to suffering for love's sake. I think we submit to some suffering because, all things considered, we think the alternative is worse.
PRP2, it sounds like you are in a very difficult situation, and I wish you the absolute best in getting through it. Talking to others about it can help relieve some of the stress. Maybe get a counselor to talk to. It couldn't hurt. Or if you don't want to go that route, find a friend to talk to that's willing to listen. Or if you don't have anyone like that, pm me and I'll listen. Just don't keep everything bottled up inside. That's never healthy.
Another thing that may help relieve the tension you're facing is to regularly make some time for your self. Once a week, or a couple times a month, or however often you can afford to, set aside some time for you. Whether it's playing magic at the LGS, or going to a buddy's house to drink some beers, or going hiking in the woods, or whatever... make some time for yourself. You really need this I think. The home should be able to keep itself together for an evening or a day every now and then. And you could use some time for yourself to just relax.
Best of luck with everything,
-IA
Stop using "Nordic" and "Scandinavian" as interchangeable terms. They are NOT the same.
I can't say much about why Scandinavians are less christian now than before. It was already that way when I was born. My own country (Kingdom of Norway) was really puritan during the 1700's, so changes have to have come since then. The 1800's had a lot of national romanticism (like most European countries did), during which people were increasingly fascinated by pre-Christian Norse culture. Perhaps people were annoyed that priests were preaching in Danish as well, I don't know. A lot of literature was writen during this century that started to challenge established notions, amongst them the religion of the land (protestant). I think the last thing here might be important, since it was probably a reflection of how a lot of people in society were thinking at the time. If it is being written about, someone must first have thought about it.
Norway, like Sweden and Denmark, is a Social Democracy. Under social democratic thinking, religion is seen as a personal matter. Perhaps more importantly, religion can be seen as a way of thinking that comes in the way of building a better society for all. Jesus Christ himself probably treated people equally, but in christian society people were not being treated equally. Since social democracy is a lot about equality, they might dislike how organized churches make a hierarchy where priests, generous money donors and rich people are viewed as better than people who don't go to church or are poor. That's the way it was in the past.
I don't know, I am rambling on. Just realize that "Scandinavian" and "Nordic" aren't the same.
I think there is this really bad stereotype that ALL Athiests are crabby people with trenchcoats who sit and rail constantly over how awful religious people are. That's really not the case, though unfortunately many of the most public of us tend to be real blowhards. For the most part we're just people who want to be left alone and be allowed to live our lives the way we see fit. We want a more secular government so EVERYONE can do what they want in the privacy of their own homes, even Christians. If an Athiest was president tomorrow, the last thing they'd do is ban anything. If anything, they'd open up more freedoms for people of ALL religions to do as they please. If a strongly conservative Christian became President, they'd force us all to live by what they believed. THAT'S when you get Atheists puffing steam about horrible Christians. I don't think anyone could fault it either! Who wants to be told what to do?
Thank you for this. I feel that on some level this is exactly what I needed to hear. If in some formal or professional capacity you are not a teacher/professor/etc., you ought to be. You have great wisdom of a sort that is sorely needed in our educational system.
You are right that it is foolish of me; but I think that I was hoping that if I could get a chance to ever see an atheist confess to being really rattled about the supposed non-existence of God, that would be some sort of vindication... maybe in my own confused and distraught state, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of someone else in the same boat. We all publicly project veneers of confidence -- I am going to go to work tonight and no one is going to suspect that anything is wrong...
I know that a debate forum is the exactly wrong place to look for such admissions; but I was just hoping, perversely, to get some sense (however veiled) that none of us have any idea what we are really talking about. That would be comforting in its own right.
Anyway, thanks again. I do not really think there is any chance of me bailing on my family... I am just going to keep pushing on because, while I can hypothesize about alternatives, that is the only thing I really know how to do. Of course some days are better than others. Hopefully I'll be able to come to a place of peace with all of this soon, regardless of the metaphysical questions.
I encourage you to do the same. Instead of FNM try Friday Night Something Spontaneous. Instead of thousands of hours and dollars on plastic imagine it with a significant other or friends sharing something meaningful. I randomly typed a new password, so bon voyage itches i encourage you to follow suit! Cheers
That's ok. You'll get to where you're headed in the end. But you need to deal with that frustration proactively.
I'm with Blinking Spirit, this is a problem that is FAR too complex and heavy for anyone on this message board to help you with, and you're clearly here searching for answers. I would suggest going to someone qualified to actually help you find them.
Here's the thing: You don't care about the metaphysical questions. That's like throwing a bunch of rocks into your backpack. You don't need them, they're not useful, and it's a very good explanation for why you're having difficulty finding useful things like your map or your water canteen and why you're tiring yourself out trying to carry the thing.
The real question you're asking yourself is much simpler. "What do I do now?"
The answer to that is simple, "You continue onward."
That's all you need to know. All else flows from there.