NIBIRU Are you ready? The earth as we know it will change

Well, eso, now there's a point. We, the unwashed masses, have to, in our minds, believe that the scientists know what they are talking about.
We question things like black holes and black matter, because they seem so extremely bizarre, but we have agreed to believe other claims by scientists, even though there's no way we can personally prove it true or untrue.
Much of what we personally know, is because we have made the decision, 'yes, I will believe that, whatever that is, is true.'
Takes 8 minutes for sunlight to get to earth? Well, ok, if you say so.

 

That is exactly true! Peoples' personal view of the world is a result of their own beliefs, the thickness of their glasses they are looking through.
One mans right is another mans wrong.

 

Well, that's poor excuse.
Maybe other people are confortable, that they don't know how tv, computer, mobil, photosynthesis, water-supply or car works, but not me!

Well you do not have to believe! I'm offering you my way!
Join me! DON'T BELIEVE!!!

What's wrong on Well, it could be true, maybe, or maybe not !?

There is nothing wrong to be unsure!

 

Well I has in mind more like: Your every gain is someone's loss

 

Let' s start the 'Skeptics; don't believe anything because it's all just a pack of lies' club.
or maybe the
'Don't believe it, it's not true' club.
You will be the president.

 

Wow, there was a lot of conversation here since I last viewed the topic. About the 100 Christian's saying... Eso, do you know how many different people claim to be Christian? There are so many from different backgrounds, education, cultures, etc. There are bound to be some people with some very strange beliefs. However, to look at those beliefs as a representation of Christianity is ignorant. One must only turn to the Bible and Jesus Christ as a representation of Christianity. I could claim to be a scientist and spout off a bunch of garbage and claim its science. If one believed that I was a representation of scientists, they would be ignorant. The same concept applies to looking at those quotes as a representation of Christianity.

In my belief, it's an honorable trait to refuse to be comfortable in not knowing these things. I hope you have the time in life to research all of these things in order to live your life comfortably. However, there are those who choose to spend their one and only life on this earth learning and investing time into other things and are comfortable with not knowing how a TV or computer or car runs. The key is to refrain from a belief of superiority over those who choose to spend their time in other ways. After all, we all only have ONE life on this earth and we should spend it in the way the each of us feels best (within legal limits of course and with respect to other's rights).

In my belief again, this is also an honorable trait. Why is it suddenly wrong to truly believe in something? After all, doesn’t, by its own definition, a belief in something mean that you think its true? If you think "well it may be true or it may not" you don't truly believe in it. I find it admirable that there are people who through faith whole heartedly believe in something. As long as they are not demanding that you wholeheartedly believe in it is well (which one can NEVER force someone to believe in something), why can’t they stand firm that what they believe is the truth. Why would I say “I believe in something” if I didn't believe it were truth. I would say, like eso, “it's probable but I don't know for sure”.

There is this new cultural ideation that it's wrong to claim that your belief is true. In the words of Bill O'Riely "It seems evident lately in our culture that the only true sin is to say something is sin." In other words, no one is allowed to make a moral judgment or state that something is fact. This is the decline in our society. To have faith and believe in something brings hope and contentment. Are those bad to have as well? Should we all choose to live our one and only life on earth without contentment? I hope not.

 

By the way, dzurisova, I was in no way referring to peoples belief in a religion with my joking comments about starting a club.
I have my beliefs, that I am comfortable with, and I do not believe in deriding someone elses beliefs. I was referring to mine and esos earlier remarks about political stands and science.
Believe me, I well know, that atheists can be just as intolerant as the most strident christian. If everybody thinks I'm right, and everybody else is wrong. That is not a good formula for peaceful co-existence.

 

But it doesn't have to be that way. I can think I'm right (more that Christianity is the absolute truth) and a Jew can think that he has the ultimate truth in that Christ is not the son of God. As long as we agree to disagree and respect each other’s right to opposite opinions, we can have a very peaceful co-existence.

That's the message I tried to give in the above post. That it is good for people to hold to their beliefs and even truly believe that what they believe is truth. However, culture today inflicts the message that it's wrong to believe something is true. We must all say "well you could be right and I could be wrong". However, it doesn't have to be that way. We can say "I'm right you are wrong, but you have a right to be wrong and I will respect that right and treat you with respect." Regardless that the above sentence is "politically incorrect", as long as both sides hold to that, peace will flourish.

 

Wow, long reaction, dzurisova. Did i touch a raw nerve?

Yes. i know. I think you are protestant, am I right? It seems you are minority in group of people, who mark ourselves as Christians.
If you are somehow offended, then if you want,when I talk about believers, I talk only about these "bad" Christians, not about you, ok?

There is many "scientists" with ridiculous teaching. Unfortunately, some great discoverers and inventors in past were ridiculed, so isn's so easy tell them apart.

I'm ok with Christians making judgment if I can do judgments about them.
They have right to consider some acts as sins and I have right to consider some their actions as sin (or just bad thing) and talk about it.

Of course, problem is when any group try to bring their believes (whatever ideology) enforce to all society with law or even with violence. Then is end of fun. Czechs have bad experience with it.

Only a few next things I don't agree with you:

- This isn't new cultural ideation, scepticism is older that New testament.
- I think theat our sociaty isn't on decline, on the contrary, I think it's better then ever was

To some people yes and to some no.

 

Probably still raw from my liberal college when every absolute was attacked. I hate the philosphy that no one can believe in anything. :x

I wasn't offended at all. I just wanted to explain my viewpoint. I don't get easily offended. Come on, I married a Czech guy. One can't possibly wear their feelings on their shoulders have a successful marriage to a Czech! :twisted:

Wonderful, we agree on something! :wink: Talking about it is the big thing. I don't know about CR, but here, the politically correct thing to do is keep your disagreements unspoken which is ridiculous.

What I mean by new is the recent trend (the last 40 years or so) that it's wrong to claim something is absolute. It's wrong to say that something is a sin or that something is true. The ideation is that everything is ok as long as you like it and if I say "no it's not ok" then I'm the one that is not ok. I should have a right to say "Fornication is wrong". I have a friend (one of my best friends by the way and happens to be Catholic and a lesbian) who says "No, it's fine, there is nothing wrong with it". We respect each other’s opinion and agree to disagree. She also knows that I believe homosexuality is a sin. She doesn't. But we are still very close friends who simply think that each other beliefs are wrong. We can put aside are opposing beliefs and love and respect each other for our other qualities. I simply wish that most of society could understand this and live as such. But in this country, there is a strong persuasion that to respect another's belief, one must deny the truth in an opposing belief.

In looking at CR society and comparing it to communism, your statement is probably true. But American society is on the decline. There was a time when chewing gum was the largest problem in public schools. Now it's rape and murder. There was a time when children could play outside and parents could trust that they were safe. Now there is a strong fear and great possibility of the child being kidnapped or violated in some way. Divorce rate and single parenthood is higher than ever. More children are on anti-depressant medication than ever. The obesity rate is exploding. The American society is on the decline and MUCH of it has to do with society no longer being able to know right from wrong. A statement of judgment is not allowed and it is killing our children.

Yes I guess you hit a nerve that was bigger than I even knew. :cry:

Please explain this further. I'm curious to know how having faith in anything (not just God) or believing in something can not bring hope and contentment. I understand that it will not bring ultimate contentment; one will still be discontented in other aspects of life. But to believe in something, brings contentment to what ever that belief addresses. For example, if I believe that my faucet works, I'm content in the belief that I will have water. I am hopeful that I will be able to wash my dishes after dinner. I don't sit around worrying that when I turn on the faucet it won't work, because I believe it will.

 

And I believe you, when you say you don't understandt.
Because I can understandt how mind of believers works.

But I cannot just believe without proof. If I did this, I would have to suppress foundation of my value system and I would have to force myself to constantly supress thoughts, that I deceiving myself.

And you now think it's pity and you want to say "I'm sorry for you..." (I already met some believers before, you know ) - but don't.
This is point, when YOU cannot understandt (or I think so anyway - based on past experiences with another believers)

It's interesting, thought - so similar, but opposite...

I hope I was able to express my thoughts right. Believe me, in Czech I would be much more eloquent

 

I’m sure it must be difficult to discuss deep topics in a foreign language. I know I couldn’t do it in Czech. However, I see that you believe me that I don’t understand but I’m still not gathering an explanation to how a belief in something does not bring contentment. Perhaps you could use a concrete example (i.e. water faucet) to help explain.

Actually, I did not think its a pity. You might find this hard to believe, (since you are such a skeptic :twisted: ) but I believe I understand what you are saying in this sentence. You appear (from previous conversations) to be driven by logic. Your logic over clouds your measure of faith. The bible states that when God created each person, he gave each one a measure of faith. You have that measure of faith but you chose to overshadow it with the tremendous amount of logic that the very same God created you with. I don't deny that it takes faith to believe in God and your faith is simply overshadowed. It doesn't have to be a pity. Actually, God blessed you with logic which is a wonderful thing. And I pray that someday your logic will be able to combine with your faith rather than overshadow it.

Eso, one of the reasons I enjoy talking with you so much is because you, in many ways, remind me of my husband. He is also a very logical person (and witty as well) and he explained his past difficulties in accepting a belief in God in the same ways. However, he came to see logically that God is the only way the world could have been created and that Christianity is the only religion that logically makes sense (he came to this conclusion about 10 years before I met him). I'm not aware of all the logical arguments he gives to defend his belief. He has only explained his logical decision in Czech because the only atheists we know are all Czech. :wink:

I will share this with you though. Once he came to believe in God logically. He still refused salvation. He stated "I didn't defect communism to simply give my life to someone else. I live for myself". It took him a while to decide to live for Christ. (this is what he told me since I didn't know him at the time.)

Anyway, that's just a side note. I trust that in your logic you will find a way (even in English :wink: ) to explain to me your comment if you so choose to.

 

Yes, it’s difficult to discuss such topics in a foreign language. It’s more time consuming to find the right words and you can never be sure you get over the language barrier. In Czech we clearly differenciate “víra” (~ faith), “důvěra” (~ confidence/trust) and “přesvědčení” (~ conviction/certitude). I got a feeling you can use “belief” for all of these meanings in English. For me (and I guess for eso as well), the problem of water faucet is question of confidence. And yes, the confidence brings some kind of contentment, but the promotion of this confidence to faith brings doubts “what if?”. My stance is it is better to live in uncertainty than in untruth.

This is something I can never understand, if only because of the vagueness in definitons (God, faith…) which impedes me even to start to use the logic.

 

Sorry, please delete this... (duplicate post)

 

I'm not sure I'm understandt.

If faucet works (ergo water flow from it) then water flow from it.

It seems to me like lingual definition problem only.
What means "I believe that faucet works"?

Faucet works or not and you can only test it by experiment.
Only because faucet worked before doesn't mean it will work now.

If faucet don't work (it's broken, there is cut in water supply and the like) then my believe don't fix it up.

Maybe you think - if I see faucet work, then I can get water from it, because I see water.

And now - If you are real sceptic, you will accept possibility, there is (maybe only very small) chance you don't get water - maybe because it is only dream, or you have hallucination. Of course, in most cases is more probable that you really get water, but that doesn't mean you should take it for sure.
This don't stop you drom drinking, of course, because in real life you are going with most probably theory.

By the way - whole ten years in environment of constant Christian influence of you and whole American society, before your husband was broken? Not bad

 

Wow! It looks like I have some serious catching up to do.

I think wer has come to the crux of it. The words belief and faith in English are not used exclusively in the context of religion.

The way I see it, a person learns largely through 3 separate methods:

1) Through one's senses/experiences/observation.
Ex.: I know it's true, because I saw/heard it.

2) Through one's logic.
Ex.:The last 100 times I dropped the ball, it fell to the ground, so it should do the same the next time I drop it.

3) Through someone's else, whom we trust, believe, or have faith/confidence in
This, I would argue is the root of 99.99% (if not more) of any person's knowledge, since most of one's knowledge can not be verified on an individual basis solely through one's senses and/or logic. This is not to say that one can't or doesn't use logic and sensory experience in the process of judging whom to trust, because that certainly is the case.

The root of scepticism, perhaps, lies in the fact that all three of these channels of learning are fallible. The senses may at times deceive (or the mind may misinterpret sensory data), logic may err, and the people we trust are only human as well--their logic and senses may also have flaws.

In the end, however, sceptic or not, one must trust (say "believe" or "have faith" if you will, since in English it is the same) in one's fallible knowledge, not having a 100% surety (no matter what some Christians will tell you) in order to accomplish virtually anything in our lives. Call it playing probabilities, playing the odds, whatever--it's still the same. In the end, you have to trust that the probabilities you set in your mind of achieving a desired outcome will more often than not be validated and result in your desire/expectation being fulfilled.

 

Actually, the cartoonist is a Mechanical Engineer, but a lot of the wisdom/experience of the graduate student that presented in the comic strips is typical, not exclusively of the science/engineering student, but particularly so.

 

Actually, it's the astrophysicists who are trying to convince everyone else--I'm not among their number, and have my doubts about dark-anything myself.

 

More precisely you have no choice, if you don't want to become catatonic.

I still see difference between "you have to trust" and "you choose most probable way."

 

Amen, Katka!