[MD] Are theists irrational?

[MarshaV]

Greetings,

The common definition of God , the associated connotations, the dogmas, all the stories, the history and etc., make it an unacceptable word/concept/pattern for me.  I agree with the MoQ's atheistic/anti-theistic attitude because I find god or gods (or other supernatural beings) are man-made constructs, myths and legends or who believe that these concepts are not meaningful, in other words: low value.   

In this Tom Robbins quote I find high value:

I believe in nothing,
Everything is sacred.
I believe in everything,
Nothing is sacred.
     (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)  

 
Marsha   



 



On Jan 21, 2010, at 8:48 PM, markhsmit wrote:

> Hi Marsha,
> I think we have a difference in the definition of God, same
> with Arlo.  I was never brought up with a God, so I could
> create my own without any baggage, so to speak.
> 
> Is Quality as posed by MoQ a man-made construct?  If
> so, this would make it not meaningful.  Perhaps in 
> a thousand years, it will also become a myth or legend.
> Everything that we think could be considered to be man-
> made.
> 
> So, the definition you propose for atheist does not work
> for me.  If you are against certain gods as proposed by
> other people, that would make more sense.  In this case
> you would be suggesting that other peoples thoughts
> are not meaningful.  I do not think that kind of attitude
> is of high quality at all.  
> 
> We find meaning in many things such as a sunset or
> a book of fiction.  What is it that makes these things
> meaningful?
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark
> 
> Mark (Bruce mentioned),
> 
> 
> It seems for you, Mark, that the loss of God is low value, although I might 
> question how much discomfort is 'some discomfort'. My definition of an 
> atheist is: Atheists are people who believe that god or gods (or other 
> supernatural beings) are man-made constructs, myths and legends or 
> who believe that these concepts are not meaningful. I do not find the 
> disappointment that Bruce suggested was mandatory for atheists. 
> 
> 
> Marsha
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:35 PM, markhsmit wrote:
> 
>> For me Quality equals God, so I can't drop the term without some discomfort.
>>  
>> Mark
>>  
>> "The MOQ would add a fourth stage where the term "God" is completely dropped as a relic of an evil social suppression of intellectual and Dynamic freedom. The MOQ is not just atheistic in this regard. It is anti-theistic."
>> (Pirsig, Copleston Annotations)
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:35 AM, Bruce Underwood wrote:
>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Hello all, I hope that you don't mind me jumping in on this thread, but here it goes.
>>>  
>>> Science: Science, in my opinion, ask a separate question than religion. Science asks,"how" and religion asks "why". However,one thing that folks want to do is to make science into a belief. IMO, science in merely a method devised at the intellectual level to ask "how" things are made, work, operate, etc. Science is not something to believe in, but a set of tool to explore. That said,it has become the "church of science",as Pirsig puts it, and has become something that people worship.
>>>  
>>> Religion: Religion, on the other hand, firstly, attempts to look beyond the now into unknown world of "why", but where its rudderless obsessions of control, combined with ignorance, along with the thought "that man can know the mind of God" has placed it in categories of distrust and hypocrisy. Regardless of the fairy tales that have been created over the millennium, there exists the unknown that moves and organize things against the laws of nature. In MoQ we call it Dynamic Quality. The thing is, MoQ, at least, provides the possibilty, with argument, for "God" to exist by whatever name you want to give it. The purpose of religion should be to move life forward and to give man hope. Where faith comes in is in the hope that there is more to life than existance; I believe MoQ does that. 
>>>  
>>> The section below is from chapter 11 of Lila.
>>>  
>>> "Thermodynamics states that all energy systems "run down" like a clock and
>>> never rewind themselves. But life not only "runs up," converting low
>>> energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy chemicals, it keeps
>>> multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep "running up"
>>> faster and faster.
>>> Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon,
>>> hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize
>>> themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive?...
>>>  
>>> The question is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on earth
>>> causes the inorganic compounds to go the other way? It isn't the sun's
>>> energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to be something
>>> else. What is it?... Dynamic Quality"
>>>  
>>> Theist, Agnostic, Atheist: IMO, the only person without faith is the agnostic that does not search for the "truth". However, the one who searches for truth will always be disappointed as a theist or atheist unless he accepts the lies in either camp. The truth is somewhere in the middle and is found in the journey itself. MoQ is the closet thing that points to the truth that I have found.
>>>  
>>> My graphical representation of this found on slide 20 of the ppt deck that I provided a couple of weeks back. Here is the link: 
>>> http://www.thinnerself.com/files/MoQ/lila-6a.ppt
>>>  
>>> Thanks, 
>>>  
>>> Bruce
>>>  
> 

  
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