Is belief in a creator a sign of weakness?

…and what about that reference has caught your eye, Tom?

Is hypocrisy a weakness? Not necessarily. But it often is.

Hypocrisy entails duplicity. In the case of views, it entails having two sets of views: one set of views which represents everything one truly believes in and one set of views which represents what one does not really believe in but is useful to pretend to believe in. The former is usually kept private and hidden obviously because this is what is necessary in order to make the second useful.

Now, the problem with duplicity is that it consumes a whole lot of energy . . . it almost requires two separate brains in order to make it a powerful strategy that can work in the long-term. So in theory, duplicity can be strength, but in practice, it isn’t.

Sooner or later the person ends up confusing the two sets. One starts believing one’s own lies. And to make it worse, this isn’t achieved by eliminating the first set altogether and then replacing it with second set. No, this is achieved by suppressing the first set, which consumes a lot of energy, though a lot less than maintaining the two sets does.

Can you now see how weak this approach is?
It’s an energy drain.

I would say this is the problem Christians suffer from. They have two traditions within themselves: the original one, which they suppress because they fear anarchy; and the pragmatic one, which they express because it alleviates their fear of anarchy.

What is the original one?

I don’t know. That would require precise knowledge regarding what sort of actions are initiated by their brain. Nonetheless, we can assume that most people by their nature are more inclined to be scientific than to lie. So you can expect the presence of scientific instincts, rebelling against practices such as prayer, that are suppressed, and thus stunted in their expression, by personal interests such as fear.

Maybe fear was created by God as a mercy upon you as it motivates you back towards God himself?

First some background for those readers who have not followed the thought exchanges Manni and I engaged in recently.

1. Manni … and many other ILP members, yourself included … have had a significant/beneficial impact on both the reservoir of my thoughts and my thought processes. If nothing else … brought old thoughts to the surface again … and subjected them to regurgitation.

2. I’ve enjoyed not only her concrete expression … her metaphors as well. The one that comes to mind at the moment is … “you don’t seem too badly infected by the virus”. First time I heard/read the word “virus” in a spiritual context … fascinating … explosive…

3. Manni is a self professed Pagan … Pagans prefer a “Nature” based world view. I’m a Catholic who believes Catholicism is also a “Nature” based world view … though much more esoteric and abstract in it’s expression of “Nature”. Admittedly, this last comment may be a personal attempt to defend clinging to my faith.

4. I chose to defer any comment to Humunculus … since his post triggered Manni’s comments. Seems he is either too busy or too pragmatic to respond.

On with what caught my eye … will only cite one example … wanting to leave some for other interested readers:

the individual consciousness is bursting at the seems with data … memory … instinct(s) and so on … ergo … information overload. Though the capacity of the individual consciousness is likely unlimited … most of the capacity resides in the subconscious.

our readily accessible consciousness is a terribly muddled mess … the “diamonds” residing among the clutter … the waste … the superfluous and so on.

the escape into the wilderness … what an attractive thought … escape from all the clutter, waste, confusion and so in our individual consciousness. The result being … hopefully … discover the true basics concerning human life.

Manni’s thought reminds me of everything I know about the abundant empirical evidence involving the hermit … the reclus … the ascetic … the flowering of monasteries, convents, temples, Guru/devotee relationships and so on.

Are the above comments clear as mud?

If believing in a creator is a strength and not believing in one is a strength, then what weakness is there when to achieve strength, they had to fight?

Is that simple enough to follow?

awesome

So… A final time before I really pull my dick out of things: Either ban me outright and get it done and over with, or I will rip you all to shreds. This is the last time you moderate me for bullshit reasons.

You all really should have listened the first time I said things; the first time I taught you all. But to drag it to this extent? Inexcusable.

Magsj, your tenure is up.

I’m tellin’ ya, when they falsely moderate me when I’m in the midst of throwing down, or in the midst of making a point… When they falsely persecute me, some times I really wish they would just kill me already.

Is belief in a creator a sign of weakness?

Not necessarily. That belief can simply be based on what one has seen, despite what one has not seen and despite what cannot be seen. Faith.
It’s not actually illogical to believe in a creator since there is creation if it’s based on a mature belief which has been questioned and gone through the fire, so to speak.
But perhaps what you’re actually asking is the belief in a personal loving god who is going to do it all for you, always be there for you, like a surrogate father.

Belief only becomes weakness when it is used as a crutch - when that belief or a god becomes a crutch out of fear because one has no sense of self, no sense of self-determination or autonomy.

Belief in a creator can either work for one or against one.

One can also turn that around, I think, and say that “disbelief” in some kind of creator can be seen under certain circumstances insofar as particular individuals are concerned as some kind of weakness also ~ when it comes down to having a fear of sensing some kind of connectedness with something larger than ourselves.

It all just depends…

That’s nice, descending one; but I’m ascending and I’m not letting this go.

That jackass Mannikin had my posts removed that were pertinent responses to his Original Post. He fiddled with Magsj’s emotional responders under the guise of their actions being perfect all-the-way-around objective lessons, but they forgot the emotionality of stepping between a predator and his prey, for one, getting caught up in someone elses fight, for two; and I guess, falsely persecuting and abusing power becomes the distant third here. That the little bitch coward had to run and cry for help and actually got it.

Hey, can I get some help here with this, too? I need help because I’m getting my ass kicked by overwhelming odds. I’m outnumbered, bullied and kept down and just because some pissy little pussy got it in his head while his head was up his ass, I’m faulted by the faulty moderation in faulty methodology?

And my posts get erased? That were vital and pertinent parts of the conversation?

You had to have known I wasn’t going to let that be and get away free, what double-standard are you all trying to pull, anyway?

You said this wasn’t my blog, and you are correct, but you did call me to take part in this thread and anything to do with a creator in the sense of God is my business and I do take over.

This is mine. I owned it. I killed it. I answered your stupidity question. I dominated.

Punkbitch motherfucker.

And, fuck the mods and fuck Magsj in particular. Fuck only humean and fuck the fixed cross and felix da kat whether theyre mods or not, cause fuck’em anyway and fuck Carleas who, if he had a pair and a brain in his head might actually be dangerous.

Fuckin’ weak-willed pansies.

interesting views

mannikin

Paul Tillich said that: "The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears (namely, one’s self)when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”
― Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be

The so-called God who appears is namely one’s self. It’s possible, to me, that when one is ready to give up the notion of a god (disbelief) or at least the infantile notion of a personal loving one who is available at all times, one is finding strength or becomes strong in standing outside of a god and becoming his/her own person, his/her own god.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone who decides not to believe in God are strong.

That would depend on who they are. There is nothing egotistical about wanting to grow up even if one has to put god aside or destroy that god.

You need to take the suggestion of your own signature.
Shhhhhh

Excerpt from the Spectator

Atheism may be fashionable, but most intelligent people believe in God
22 December 2015

Have we ever needed Christianity more than we do today? It’s a rhetorical question, for sure, because the loss of our faith and the inability to confront Islam have never been greater. When I was a little boy during the war, my mother assured me that if I believed in Jesus everything would be OK. This was during the Allied bombing on Tatoi, the military airfield near our country house where the Germans concentrated their anti-aircraft guns. My Fräulein, the Prussian lady who brought me up, was more practical. She handed me a beautiful carved knife that made me feel safer than my prayers ever did.

Today, of course, 74 years later, my prayers are far more likely to give me peace of mind than a knife in my pocket. That’s the difference between being five and 79 years of age. Mind you, now I pray only for the safety and welfare of my children and their mother. My soul I sold to the devil long ago. No prayers will save that loser. At times, during Christmas and Easter, when I go to church, light a candle and sit alone in a pew, all these memories come flooding back, especially my fear of the noisy Anglo-American bombs that rained down around us, and how only the steel in my pocket gave me courage.

Atheists seem to be le goût du jour. Our celebrity culture has no room for faithful people, especially Christians; only Islam enjoys that privilege. In 1966 Time magazine shocked its readers with a cover that asked whether God was dead. I remember it well because Henry Luce died soon after. Was there a hidden message somewhere, I wondered? But Luce was a devout Christian and a great believer in the Almighty, unlike Christopher Hitchens, whose favourite targets were priests, Mother Teresa and God, a Christian God whose followers turned the other cheek. The Hitch had very little to say against Allah because he knew the latter’s followers did not take kindly to cheap remarks against him. Hitchens deplored Christmas, ‘the collectivisation of gaiety’ and ‘compulsory bad taste’, as well he should have, being an opportunist. Atheism gets you in through the front door, Christianity is reserved for the trade entrance. He hated the ‘confessional drool’ that families mailed to each other, especially simple people who believe in love and forgiveness.

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is an atheist hard to dislike. He’s charming, learned and intelligent, and never a bully. Ditto some ancients — here I rely on the ancient Athenian Taki and his epigrams — such as Socrates and his ilk. Also Voltaire and Mill, and so on. The first modern to go atheist and announce that God had had it was Nietzsche, who predictably went bonkers. Terrific shits like Freud and Picasso were atheists, as were French fries like Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan, and our very own H.G. Wells. And James Joyce and Philip Roth. One thing all these talented writers and thinkers have in common, apart from their disbelief in the Almighty, is great physical ugliness. That alone should explain it.

The great 20th-century theologian Paul Tillich wrote that to believe that God is active at all times, being out there somewhere, dwelling in a special place and being affected by events, is a shallow supposition: ‘Literalism deprives God of his ultimacy.’ That’s where ‘there is no God’, the cry from the heart of those who have lost a loved one, comes from. Ditto the old saw that you need God in order to be good. God is what makes us understand the difference between good and evil, take it from Taki.

The ultimate irony, needless to say, is that Charles Darwin said he believed in God. Let’s face it: most intelligent people believe in God, as did most world leaders in the past. My uncle, a war hero in the Albanian campaign when we wiped out the Italians, once told me that he had never seen courage like that shown by priests and medical orderlies in the thick of battle. Unarmed and without helmets, they would give the last rites to the dying and tend to the wounded. While soldiers dived into their foxholes, they would go out in the open field and make the sign of the cross over the fallen. God, in most cases, protected them. Go figure, you non-believers.

This is my 38th Christmas column, and of course it seems like yesterday that I wrote the first one. It was in my father’s London office in Albemarle Street. I used clichés galore and didn’t mention God once, just Christmas parties. I have probably come full circle. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that ‘all men are created equal’ he called the proposition self-evident. It was a very Christian thing to say because not all men are created equal. They have equal rights under God, and it is only a Christian God that ensures the latter. Just look at what Islam is doing to its adherents, how it has cheapened life to the extent that people volunteer to blow themselves up in order to get some rice and some virgins, and compare that to Christianity. The idea of the preciousness and equal worth of every human being is largely rooted in Christianity. Have a very happy Christmas and defend our faith. And, if need be, carry a knife.

HA! He has got all bases covered.

Did you watch The Giver? Or read it? That wasn’t in the pamphlet I received. Maybe it was in your instructions, but it wasn’t in mine. Mine said to tell the truth no matter who said what, that I could lie, and above all costs and detriments, keep running my mouth and know when to shut it. I’m already on it.

Yes, it is undoubtedly a sign of some form of mental weakness. For example: gullibility, lack of reasoning ability, cowardice etc.