An headache that passes with concentration, meditation, relaxation, etc, it's not a real headache. For real headaches or migraine, only chemicals can relieve suffering.
"Dawkins scale" I'm out of scale, probably minus 5. God can be known beyond knowledge, rational thinking is not the limit of human beings. Why does the scale stops at "I know"?
Gentlemen, this is "The Problem with Religion" thread. Discussing God is relegated to "The Problem with Atheism" thread. Slightly blasphemous from my part, but He will understand.
The Catholics are waiting for the Protestants... do they appear or may I go to the next Whisky bar?
Buddhists discussing with Shintoists, Islam discussing with... well.. I don't know... with me?
Speaking seriously, theists are not, in any way, alike. And I'm sure that theists have much more to discuss between themselves than against atheists. Keep on discussing atheist matters is to give them an importance they don't have.
In the first place, who did these rules? I mean, who is the Forum Administration?
Something that always has irritated me in Opera Forums was the lack of transparency. I suggest a thread, locked, meant to inform posters in a concise way about who are the people behind decisions. That will make an huge difference from MyOpera, where everything was obscure and non- transparent to posters.
And, please. First, the content, then the form. Grammatical hallucinated will have their time to post.
In consequence of the vile attack that Southern European countries are suffering, my position, contrarily to what I defended at the D&D version of this same thread, is that all citizens have the right to be armed.
Probably, more than a right, it's a duty. These are not times of peace.
Not really in command, no. I observe tension between individual willpower and destiny. On one hand, it's wisely ordained that ignorant will, no matter how powerful, must always eventually subside in the waves of destiny. On the other, each such wave is a manifestation (or an aftermath) of a particular instance of willpower of some individual. So, the best way I can put it is that there's tension. The purpose of religion is to help cope with this tension between one's own will and other wills, and make life meaningful, whatever the particular configuration of destiny may be.
Exactly. Tension is a very good definition, tension between layers. The layer of free will and rational thinking and a deeper, non rational, layer that only can be perceived indirectly and, yet, it's constantly present.
I have understood that the purpose is not to be in total command of destiny, but to find a preferably effortless way to make destiny feel and seem natural. Be friends with your own destiny, a good recommendation, right?
What else can we do... Yes, things changes a lot when people realize this.
Bah... Theism/Atheism is not a matter of "investigation" but about how we were born. Destiny it's what counts.
You mean to say that conversion doesn't happen?
Somehow, even though born in the Soviet Union, I resisted to be identified as a Soviet since very early age. Soon enough it turned out that the country itself was destined for destruction. In the light of this, what is destiny?
I would say that conversion was your destiny. It was mine also, but I'm a fatalist so it doesn't bothers me at all, I just accept it. You probably aren't and you believe you command your life.
I'm noticing there's a ton of geeks on here who are much more knowledgeable than I am. (And geek is not a bad word in my vocabulary, btw) I'm trying to stay where I can hold my own because a ton of discussion is way over my head
Ask them. That's what I do. That's the biggest advantage of D&D, you make part of a group of people that no matter how much we discuss, we are always ready to help each others.
Imagine that those "geeks" are helping me to make my first steps into Linux. That's great
Blasphemy is proper of irrelevant people. Being a strict religious concept, none of erudite religions refers to it these days. It's certainly at the level of atheists and agnostics.
New members blá bá blá.... New members have to demonstrate they deserve DnD.
Always has been like that and I'm in no mood for opening "my legs".
New members start posting, new members are massacred, insulted and ignored, and if, and only if, they resist, then they become new members. Always has been like that and always will be like that.
That's the D&D I, and many more, had, that's the DnD new members will have.
@Frenzie Nice, I'll pay close attention at those links you provided. Thanks.
@Ersi Currently I need nothing specific for professional needs. Decided that profession must adapt to me, not me to the profession. Besides what you mentioned, I just need an image editing software, but I'm sure that exists.
There is more to discuss, but opening a new topic for everything might be a bit much. Here's a quick overview of what exists already:
And where's the beginning? I mean, for us, mere mortals that don't have a clue about what are you saying? Why should I install Linux operative system in the first place? How is it done? What are the benefits over windows? Why do you use mysterious terms no one uses? Doesn't Linux gives you much more work and much less available software? Etc...
Course the Americans that travels here aren't surely the average American...
Hint: there's no such thing, Large and diverse country and all that. Attitudes differ greatly, often depending the region or sub-region of the country. America also has an image problem of a lot of people with open mouths and closed minds, often in the South East that give the rest of us a bad name.
I know that (well, except the South East part...).
I meant what I said. For the minority that by cultural, artistic, historic, gastronomic, you-name-it reasons of Americans are interested in visiting Europe, just a small minority amongst that minority wants expressly to visit Portugal. Those are not ordinary, mass tourism people. American crème de la crème.
Increasing every year, by the way. It must be for my posts...
D&D hadn't too much active posters more than we have already here. Of course we love audience, we are Stars after all...
Instead of a list of members that every single lousy forum has, we should have an entry page saying Starring... Names should appear scrolling by alphabetical order
Ok, I'll start doing my daily post at D&D while it lasts. The last day, I'll have my revenge... By the way, I feel very comfortable here. Frenzie is an excellent host.
It's nice of you to uphold the transcendental view of God, but for us mere mortals the relative view is more accessible. Particularly when talking to atheists, the relative view is the only view that is likely to be given some thought by them.
Atheists will never give any attention to anything that shocks the illusion that they are in domain. That's why they reject any idea of God, they consider God to be some sort of feudal master idea and atheism something alike democracy, equality, non discrimination, gay rights, that kind of trendy illusions they like so much. Curiously, they forget that many sinister and bloody regimes were exactly atheists.
The above introduction it's meant to remember that religion is not only the philosophical quest. In fact, for the majority of people all over the world, religion has nothing of philosophical. What atheists pretends to fight is the culture, tradition, rituals, organization and practices associated with any religion. Philosophy, they have no clue about what it is and regarding spiritual aspects, they see it as pre-historic mambo jambo, an obstacle to modernity.
It's at the sociological, cultural and political field that theism and atheism clashes. In philosophy, I never saw any consistent defense of atheism.
I keep on using Opera 12. What seems to be happening with browsers, less options, less personalization, less choice, also seems to be happening with other different software.
In my opinion that's not a mere trend or a matter of consumer's options, that's a deliberate strategy by the software industry that increasingly produces software as if people were retarded children. The software "knows" what we want so we don't need to make choices anymore... All the way up towards the brave new world.
I've been using more and more the Tor bundle that uses a Firefox version tweaked for privacy aspects. I suppose I could use Opera 12 with the Tor network but I don't know how to do it.
Nevertheless, it seems clear now that your subject ("always conscious and alive") is just a synonym for God.
It seems in no way clear to me.
Regarding God, I see two possibilities, God as the definitive overcome of the logical cleavage subject/object or God as the demonstration of the non existence of object, everything being Subject. Both would sustain the completeness and perfection of God but by two different ways.
