Metal Reviews

I actually haven't posted anything in the Pictures thread for quite a while. May be I'll post some old Facebook photos from when I was on my MR hiatus someday.

And for the record, I wouldn't want to see myself in The Puffy Shirt either.

i think i'm an atheist because even though i'm really interested in religion, i've always looked at religious texts and stuff in the same way i view Greek mythology. it's hard for me to understand how people genuinely believe it. at the same time i don't think any of the arguments against god are very decisive, partially because i don't understand how people believe in god in the first place. (also maybe because my standards are high; i feel like a good argument for atheism would have to dispel any religious person's faith when they're exposed to it.) i also don't think that science will explain everything in a satisfactory way.

Gah. I got here too late. I don't want to start a new debate, and I'm gonna be too busy with papers and stuff to check back here.

I don't think God can be explained away using empirical science because I don't think it's necessary that He only be used as a placeholder for what we don't know. In fact, I think empirical science could in theory explain almost (see next paragraph) everything in existence. But just because something makes sense doesn't mean God can't be found in it. The watch analogy is a little tired but I can't think of another one: if I take apart a watch and see that its gears and springs are what's causing it to keep time, I am not disproving the watchmaker. In fact, if God created the laws of physics... why would He make them so that He would have to break them?

Also it's (I think...) universally accepted that we can never know what there was "before" the Big Bang, and I even have to use quotes for that "before" since we know there was no time as we experience it.

When I read this it was way over my head, so by all means, whoever can, tell everyone else why the following is wrong. Many quantum physicists believe that quantum physics confirms and requires a practically infinite number of alternate, parallel universes. The difference between our universe and the next one over is something like the rotation of a single electron, so it's basically the same as ours, but as you get further and further away, they become much more different until you get universes where atoms never bothered to form. What's the point? If God is all-powerful and all-loving, He must love everything that could possibly exist. This was Frank J. Tipler's argument for the problem of evil - there is evil because evil is possible, and God must necessarily love everything that is possible.

The same guy submitted the following argument as well. The singularity, the thing that, in the Big Bang, became all of existence, is God, and that He created all of the universes of the "multiverse" already knowing everything that would happen (because the infinite omnicient power of God would have no problem calculating what I will simplify by calling a formula that determinism refers to) so that He pretty much could tweak things enough that He could "speak" to people by having an almost impossible set of vibrations in the air just happen to happen or something like that.

But that seems to me in conflict with the previous paragraph. I forget if Tipler resolved that or not.

noodles - ever read about Jung's archetypes and collective unconscious? Something doesn't have to be literal to have profound meaning. Some people look at all of the hero archetypes in ancient civilizations and see such staggering similarities between Jesus, Dionysus, Osiris, Mithra, etc (hell, most superheroes follow the same thing) that it MUST disprove each one individually... but to me it's confirmation of something much more important. I just have no idea what it is. I also believe that there are athiests and agnostics and anything else who believe in what I choose to call God due to my own background, but call Him/him/Her/her/It/Whatever things like "existence" or "logic" or maybe even "Platonic form of good," though our relationships with our own beliefs would differ drastically.

At the end of the day I basically take a phenomenological approach. I believe there are certain profound truths that we all experience different ways, and although the experiences may conflict with each other, none can be said to be less valid. For the record I'm some kind of Buddhist/Christian Gnostic sort of thing. I don't really know what I am. Seinfeld didn't say much I disagreed with, and if there was anything I did I can't remember what it was and I don't feel like checking.

Hah. I'm procrastinating from writing a paper on the subtle body of eastern traditions (chakras and kundalini awakening and shit like that) by debating religion. Maybe now I'll be warmed up for it. Hope you enjoyed my shpiel.

You're a deist

Anyway, to quote Richard Feynman: "If you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics." I'd leave it out of a debate as an example. Jes' sayin'.

i haven't read much Jung but i watched some interviews with Joseph Campbell and he talked a lot about the heroes thing. i think that's where my interest in religion and whatever stems from. i really like learning about what earlier people believed about the world and what that says about them/humanity as a whole, and how it influenced their actions and so forth.

My thoughts exactly. No offense to emmerder but I didn't see any validity in that argument.

Actually, I think Emmerder made some solid points (although there were some I personally disagreed with - which is to be expected when it comes to religious discussion or any philosophical discussion for that matter). I don't think he was really trying to make a decisive argument for God's existence. But rather, state his personal thoughts/ideas on the issue. Just like what we've all been doing in this thread!

For the record, Emmerder's views sound a bit New Agey/New Thoughty to me. A lot of New Thought (or "Unity") Christians hold similar views/ideas to what he described. I know this because I occasionally go to a Unity Christian church (mostly because my Mom actively goes there).

There's one particular comment Emmerder made, however, that I'd like to address somewhat (not to stir up debate or even really disagree with him, but to just give some food for thought):



This, I think, brings the topic of "miracles" into question. As we all know, a miracle, by definition, defies natural law as we accept it. It's true that if God created the laws of physics, He created them in such a way that they wouldn't need to be broken. But then we get into the topic of "miracles", where God would deliberately bend the laws of nature (usually for somebody's well-being). So while natural laws have probably been the same since the beginning of time, belief in miracles would imply that they have been occasionally "bended" over the course of history. Which, if you believe in God (as Emmerder and I do), would be totally valid. If God established natural laws, it's only logical that He could defy them if He wanted to.

Interestingly, however, Albert Einstein (according to a Newsweek article I read on him about a month ago) believed that a lack of miracles would be evidence for God's existence, since this would show an unchanging natural order/harmony. I'm not sure I'd personally agree with him, but it's definitely a fascinating idea to ponder.

Anyway, I have to admit that I'm also procrastinating right now (Metalreviews seems to have become the ultimate source of procrastination for me these last couple days). I have two big Finals to prepare for and I have to prepare to present my Senior Project to the Computer Science department at my university on Friday. I'll probably still sporadically check this board while studying, though (I usually like to check boards like this while taking a break from schoolwork).

I just want to interject here (I'm procrastinating here too, goddammit) on the topic of Einstein. He was a deist, and wrote letters that openly denounce personal theistic religion. For him God was a metaphor for the wonder and "perfection" of the universe and its physical laws. The man was a rationalist to the bone.

I think "supreme being" or "supreme intelligence" would probably be better terms to describe what Einstein believed in than "God." While Einstein certainly believed in some kind of greater power/intelligence, he did not believe in one that interfered with personal lives, answered prayers, or even gave us an afterlife (in fact, he vehemently objected to belief in an afterlife). Although, personally, I don't think his view of God was quite as simple as "the sum of all natural laws" (as Carl Sagan once put it). Rather, I think he believed more in a transcendent spiritual intelligence that instigated natural laws rather than acted as a product of them. So, as you mentioned, he was more-or-less a very minimalistic deist/pantheist (one might even say somewhat of a dualist) who publically denounced theistic belief. Although he did openly support Buddhism, which may be a big part of the reason why that "religion" has become rather popular among academics.

It should probably be noted, however, the Einstein's denouncing of theistic belief was probably one of the key reasons why he was so reluctant to accept Big Bang. This may seem surprising now, but when it was first proposed, Big Bang came under a lot of fire for supposedly blurring the line between science and religion too much. Mainly because of the way it suggested that the universe did, in fact, have a beginning (the fact that the theory was originally proposed by a Catholic priest probably didn't help matters much). Before then, most scientists (including Einstein) believed in the Static Universe Theory. Meaning they believed the universe to be a static entity with no beginning or end. Even when Big Bang hit the mainstream, Einstein vehemently defended Static Universe and often ridiculed this "hot new theory." But he gradually became more accepting of Big Bang when it became clear that it would become the accepted account on the origins of the universe. Unfortunately, however, it isn't really known whether or not Einstein ever fully accepted the theory.

That was a fucking great documentary, Maher is really sarcastic and at the end he gives that conclusion that contrasts with the humour of the previous scenes.

I've watched it five times already and I think I'll watch it again this weekend.

"What are your orders?"
"Death 2 Bill Maher lol"


"So what were these miracles that made you convert to Christianity?"
"Well, there were a lot of them, small miracles, that convinced me of Christ's divinity"
"What's an example?"
"Well, there were so many of them, and I can't really remember..."
"Wait, so these miracles were so miraculous that you converted, yet you can't remember them?"
XD When the guy tells him what miracle it was his reaction is priceless: "I gotta tell you man, you've got a pretty low bar on what counts as a miracle."

You forgot killing people who work on Saturday. Then you'll get Christians laughing at Muslims and Scientologists when they believe in a virgin birth, raising the dead, attaching ears and bread/fish magic multiplication. Agonizing.

Anyone else find it ironic that someone with a hammer and sickle for his avatar somehow feels that he has a right to condemn someone else's value system?
Especially whilst enjoying all the fruits a capitalistic, free society has to offer?

I am more interested in his sig. Now there's a value system that has always been smothered at birth in "free capitalist" societies by the law, the media, corporate thuggery, and in extreme circumstances, the army.

Oh, but they thrive under communism?
Or am I misunderstanding you?

"Liberty. Equality. Fraternity" being the slogan of the abortive French Revolution and by extension left wing working class movements that have taken it as inspiration. Those movements which historically where taken down by violence and coercion but which nowadays have been beaten to such a bloody pulp that little remains.

They certainly didn't thrive under the State Capitalism usually referred to as Communism, but many of the groups that fought those dictatorships certainly were/are inspired by them (Solidarnosc, Prague Spring, Hungarian Uprising, the Chinese pro-democracy movement, etc.).

I've spent the last few minutes wondering what you two were on about, thinking that Dead Machine still had his Dying Fetus sloganizer signature. Still, isn't Communism all about condemning the value systems of others whilst presenting a utopian ideal?

*ducks*

Don't go there, girlfriend!

More irony, I guess..
Anyways, I have zero interest in politics at this time, I was merely pointing out the fact that sporting a flag that many associate with oppresion, subjugation, Gulags and the Holodomor while calling somebody a disgusting person is horribly ironic.