Hi, I am new here and writing this post to say hello to the community. My journey to this platform is built on my deep suspicion of organized religion. All organized religions are closed off i.e. all that is worth knowing is explained by the religion and everything else is worthless or even meaningless. To some, it is a great comfort that all important questions are answered by their religion or the interpreters thereof. To others, like us, we find that boundary inconsistent with our desire for freedom and also with what we perceive to be unanswered questions. So I end up here. But I am ready to cut religion some slack since it is an old concept and has helped some people. Here's my wager to religion:. if religion can answer one of my questions without using circular logic or without arrogating to itself infallibility, then I will happily give it another shot. Do you guys think that it is a fair wager?
Welcome to the site. As for a wager, I believe you would be wasting your time. The religious folks don’t work with a full deck and believe just because they have “faith” it makes them infallible.
Hints of Blaise Pascal, perhaps?
@anglophone Pascal got in trouble because he tried to multiply zero with infinity. Audacious and cunning.
You are correct. All religions and many political ideologies are "total system ideologies." That is they all purport to include and explain everything. They are all built on myths and many false assumptions. They may all include some correct assertions and observations, but too many are deeply flawed. It is not worth one's time going through the entire ideology to sort the wheat from the huge volumes of chaff.
First off, thanks for the warm welcome. What a great community. To be clear, I am starting from the viewpoint that there is no such thing as a rational argument for religion. This is my roundabout way of telling them that they can give me their best shot and my logic will still prevail.
No need to challenge rapists their belief alleged gawds forgive their rape of children or adults
you will lose, they don't care about logic
Yeah, it'called faith not logic or rational.
Just....why? Wasting your precious ONE life on silly conjecture?
Welcome, but beware. They let everyone in here, even unedumicated smartasses like me
No discrimination.
I wouldn't bother with such a wager. I would rather ask them about why they exhibit such willful ignorance. I wouldn't give that a shot.
The only thing that anybody ever gets from such people is equivocation. It goes against their religion to give a straight answer, you see.
Welcome to this community.
I commend to you all nine comments below.
For me, your wager is wasted. Moreover, it begs the question of "Which religion?", with the follow up question of "Which god or gods?".
Something for you to ponder: nobody has ever demonstrated the existence of any god or gods in the last 5,000 years. As such, all such gods must be regarded as fictional, and all claims based on their (non-)existence must be regarded as absurd.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that your religious background is Hindu, maybe your caste is even Brahmin and I can understand why you would want to give religion a chance, even a second, third, fourth and fifth chance. You have a lot riding on cutting religion some slack if I am correct in my assumption - family, religion, caste, it's all riding on going along and playing the game, so it's a valid wager in that light.
The flip side to that bet is that you have already seen through enough of the game to know that the game is rigged, the table is tilted and the deck is stacked because the casino is as crooked as it comes. Truth is expensive because it has real value, imaginary things are cheap because they have little to no value. In the end we all have to decide just what it is we want in our lives, cheap trinkets or real gold and gems.
Well your limb is slightly secure but I understand where you are coming from. I want to give religion another chance only because I love a good debate and I already know that I will prevail.
@shivasregal My best buddy in university was a Brahmin but he was in the science program the same as I was, it lead to a lot of conflict in his family and it didn't help that his best friend was an Atheist. We played field hockey together on a team with one white guy, one Hindu and a whole lot of Sikhs, this was around the time of the assassination of Indira Ghandi and the attack on the Golden Temple by the army. One day I saw my friend and the next he quit the team and did not return my calls, that was the last I ever saw of Bawa.
We often feel very certain about our positions or beliefs and that we will prevail in maintaining them but if they must be supported in order to stand then they are not strong positions at all. I wish you the best.
The beauty of agnostic.com is where people find the opportunity to be inclusive and have a healthy discussion with people of all levels of educational background and life experiences.
Welcome!
What came 1st, the chicken, or the egg? That would depend on if you are a creationist or an evolutionist.
If you are the former then the chicken was created as a chicken and that`s that.
If the latter then at some point it was a pre-chicken species. The point where a chicken became a chicken must have therefore happened in the egg.
Then, of course, you could just say that the rooster came 1st coz he was male.
I am finding Agnostic to be an excellent tool for people looking to find a sense of community with like minded people, many of whom have been struggling to get out of religion. Heck it's why a national atheist organization Recovering from Religion is moving to Agnostic for its "patients" to interact with other open nonbelievers. If you're interested in joining their Agnostic group the link is here: [agnostic.com]