Is belief in the supernatural an intelligent person’s game?

I do not understand why you have to compartmentalize biblical sayings into Christian or Gnostic Christian.

But I do not see it in that way and I did not see it in that way when I believed that God’s kingdom was…
I do not think that it is living in poverty to see a “real” world out there, the way that it actually is. But you do have the right to see it your way and I suppose that it is not such a bad way to see it, that is, if you actively help the world in some ways in its ongoing evolution.

I do not think that I see either of those. The first seems to me to be an excuse ~ in other words, what choice do we have but to see things your way as things are as they are, (we cannot go back and change things) and as for the second, I do not see an ugly world but I do at times see extremely ugly people - man’s inhumanity to man - It is also a beautiful magnificent world but it is an imperfect world.
The fact that someone believes in God and believes that God is in the world and in people does not change that.

This is a poem which I wrote quite awhile back. It will give you an idea of what I see and how I see when I look around.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=172245

Obviously this statement is true though things might have been otherwise than what they are if we had made other or better choices or had been there when it would have been a good thing. But then again, who is to say. Too many so-called random things get in the way. But I do not believe that we are pre-destined.

I suppose that I can go along with the first part here but as for the second part, I think that that is kind of looking at life through rose-colored glasses although I do realize that we need to live with hope.
But WHY must they necessarily be created for the best end? Do you think that God has it already all planned out? Would that make us puppets?

In other words, we are to accept our fate. We have no other choice. I wonder if we really take this as our philosophy, what part it might play in our sitting back and not doing much at all as far as a future goes. But I may be wrong here.

Just to be sure, the “supernatural” here pertains to God?
Are you speaking of any evidence besides the Universe itself and its workings?
That may speak to the possibility of God but not necessarily to the actual reality of a God.
As for myself, I cannot be forced to take that leap from wondering and questioning and seeing possibility of ~~ to knowing or knowing definitively.

I suppose that I am just a disgrace to the human race. I can accept that. :evilfun:
[/quote]
If you believe in the supernatural, it goes against your describing yourself as an agnostic.

As to the word god only being used to denote the supernatural, I guess you are not familiar with the many Emperors who named themselves god and their sons, sons of god.

In early days, god could not even be defined as anything other than a mystery. We should have stuck with that.

Stay in the real world. The supernatural one is for fools.

Regards
DL

Is the doctor a psychiatrist? then sure.

Has the witch doctor worked with herbs in a tradition of using them through generations, well, it probably depends on the health problem.

Bullet wounds and much of the stuff that gets you into emergency rooms - if you have other options - Western doctors are the experts.

Chronic illnesses, systemic illnesses - like cancer - and often you are better off going to people poo pooed by the AMA.

Good points.

Belief is a great risk, and one that an intelligent being will prefer not to take.

“Supernatural” reeks of contradiction.

Unnatural is bad enough.

Some alt media, medicine and so on can prove they’re more well researched, reasoned and affective than other alt and mainstream media, medicine and so forth to their consumers.

Today’s alt media, medicine and so on often becomes tomorrow’s mainstream, and todays mainstream tomorrow’s alt.

It all depends on how much the public has confidence in it.

Sometimes the public’s confidence in something is greater than big business, mainstream science and/or the state’s confidence in it, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, unless you’re an elitist and you think lowly of the public and highly of big business, mainstream science and/or the state, which’re fallible, often collude and conspire to maximize their profits, power and prestige at the expense of the truth, health and safety.

Greatest I Am,

I would suggest that if you are not going to respond to certain parts of the posts that someone sends you, that you simply highlight and press the delete button. It is not necessary to drag everything along with it into another post. The landscape remains more pristine that way.

Yes, this is true as the statement goes but if you are referring to me as the “you” then I do not think that you have taken the time to read what I wrote. Either that, or you enjoy playing games. You may take your games elsewhere.

Labels I suppose are really not that important except to clarify some things but as I do not BELIEVE in the so-called supernatural realm, which includes ghosts, angels, devils, fairies, vampires, witches, warlocks, whoever, (did I leave anything out?) nor BELIEVE in God, I am more than comfortable in labeling myself as an agnostic. An agnostic holds back belief and judgment and insofar as the above list goes, the only reality is within one’s imagination and creativity. It is far too easy within the fertile mind of the human being to have a seed planted, take root and voila these entities are born…but not into actual reality.

[b]Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable.[1][2][3] Another definition provided is the view that “human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist.”[2]

The English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word agnostic in 1869, and said “It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe.” Earlier thinkers, however, had written works that promoted agnostic points of view, such as Sanjaya Belatthaputta, a 5th-century BCE Indian philosopher who expressed agnosticism about any afterlife;[4][5][6] and Protagoras, a 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher who expressed agnosticism about the existence of “the gods”.[7][8][9][10]

Agnosticism is the doctrine or tenet of agnostics with regard to the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena or to knowledge of a First Cause or God,[11] and is not a religion.[/b]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

Yes, I am familiar. Many human beings love to proclaim their selves as this or that. It is called narcissism perhaps in the case of some pathological narcissism.

At this point in time though we were discussing the matter of GOD, the God who people believe created the universe, the one which people believe is a personal loving entity, the one which people believe will always be available to protect and save them from the world, despite what evidence they see to the contrary, the one who will have to take the blame in their eyes because who else could they blame for nature’s devastation.
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing but so can no knowledge at all.

That is the part of the supernatural that I was basically referring to. The one seen as First Cause.

I can actually agree with the above and THAT is why I am agnostic. Too much mystery, too many unsolved answers to questions. No matter what we think we know we still cannot fathom that question because we cannot know everything and possibly what we think we know is in actuality some different kind of reality.

The supernatural world is not the only one to watch out for and we all march to a different drummer, do we not?
Many of us live in our own fantasy (non supernatural) worlds which are not real. Those are also the ones we have to watch out for and take stock in.

Naturopathy, Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine have their own colleges, universities and in some countries the state recognizes their legitimacy and collaborates with them.

Allopathy isn’t good and alt medicine bad, they’re competitors, naturally they talk smack about each other like competitors do.

The same goes with mainstream and alt media or anything mainstream and alt, mainstream doesn’t necessarily mean good.

The supernatural is a normally imperceptible higher plane or realm of being and its inhabitants.

The preternatural is a normally imperceptible parallel plane or realm of being and its inhabitants.

There’s no internal contradiction here, the only question is, do higher or parallel worlds exist, or are they merely products of our imagination?

I tend to think there’s some truth to them, but my approach to them is experimental and speculative rather than dogmatic.

The unnatural is something manmade or the product of a sentient mind.

Contradictions, lies, fraud and hypocrisy.

Regards
DL

“the one which people believe is a personal loving entity,”
[/quote]
Yes, a genocidal god that they want to get closer to.

That shows the full immorality of Christian thinking.

Regards
DL

No one or institution including mainstream academia has a monopoly on reason, research and publicly reviewing each others work.
We can all publicly review each others work as individuals, or members of an (alt) discipline.
There is no absolute authority if any.
For me, individual authority comes first, followed closely by the authority of the people.
We as individuals, and a democracy decide who the experts are, if there are any, experts aren’t self-appointed.
This is what I call epistemic populism, and it stands in stark contrast to academicism, rigid ideologues, scientism and religionism.

And it should be added that ‘witch doctor’ in contrast to some Western expert, in this case a doctor, is a colonialist cliche. It started as a smug contrast between cultures, where one had the power to eradicate the other.

Greatest’s main beef is with the Abrahamists. I doubt he intended to slight third world cultures however much he might judge religions and spiritual and health practices in these other cultures.

But one interesting thing for me is a certain kind of male hatred, in Western cultures, aimed at anything that seems to have to do with the supernatural, alternative health, organic food, spirituality, and alternative takes on current events. And it’s here the Abrahamists and the technocrats have long been allies.

Any individual who comes at these things differently than the sanctioned by authority - AMA, Pope, mainstream media take - is evil: a quack, some who fools dying people out of money, an anti-semite, an irrational nutjob.

Of course many men are on the other side of this and many women have a lot of bile against alternatives. But I seem to encounter the rage primarily in men.

In the religious/spiritual world, if you claim to have some insight into entities and processes not yet verified by science or via a process not yet verified by science, then it must be bullshit. And the various churches tend to want you out of the business also. God is transcendent, there are no regular human bridges to anything special.

Be small, you bags of chemicals and do what you are told.

We are too busy making our children into our image through indoctrination to teach them the type of critical thinking you want.

In fact, today, we seem to want to dumb down our population.

The dim are a lot easier to control and manipulate than the bright.

Regards
DL

Right over your head.

Regards
DL

Facile.

Greatest I am

No, not really. I do, for the most part, believe that people who actually do “see” a personal loving God want to get close to that God and wish no harm to anyone. That is not immorality.

It only becomes immorality when a particular creature, for instance, decides to bomb a city in the name of God. There is a distinction.

What I think that it is though insofar as the former is concerned is not taking the time to think things out, to think clearly and slowly, and to look at everything which surrounds them, including contradictions, in order to come up with a better judgment call.

We all do that and you yourself are not innocent of it. We are all biased in our thinking or many of us are at different times.

I agree with your last.

The Christian bias of idol worshiping a genocidal god while proclaiming he is good shows how immoral their ideology has made them.

Regards
DL

GIA

Who is it who proclaimed God a genocidal one?

The victims and the bible.

Have you read of all the times god kills en mass?

Regards
DL

GIA

So, what are you saying here? That you actually believe this garbage? Do you believe in a genocidal God? I sometimes get the sense that you do believe in some kind of a God. You seem to be so angry and you seem to feed that anger.

If you do not believe in God though, what do you say to people who do and who believe that their God is responsible for all of the misery in the world?

I would like you to show me how this is true, how they have become immoral because of this. Give me an example. The way I look at it, immoral IS as immoral does.