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Talon
Déesse
Zoe
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salmonax/George
sfida/Nick
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minachang/Haesung
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Mitsu
Einherjar/tomato/ Joey/ ...
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Tim

20040920

To be or not believe... rant rant rant 


I was replying to a post in Zoe's blog and kind of fell into ranting mode, so I decided to move most of the reply here instead. Some other stuff has also been tacked on.
Personally I'm somewhere in the grey zone between believing, not believing and not caring much. If I happen to be in a church I'll light a candle and spend a minute in thought/prayer... but I'll do the same thing (exchange the candle for the appropriate equivalent) at a synagogue, shinto shrine or buddhist temple so I couldn't call myself christian or, in all honesty, even religious since my prayers don't tend to be directed at any diety in particular. I don't have to be spiritual to wish somebody good luck, do I?
However some of the smartest and/or coolest people I know are believing christians (living in a (formerly) christian country I don't have all that much contact with serious believers of other faiths).
With all the uncertainty inherent in something untestable that has to be taken on faith (just how many religions and variants are there?) I never felt a need to formalize my beliefs. The'll stay something vague and formless that I can change when and as I wish. I'll also gladly argue for or against just about anything (usually against, since people with strong opinions are so fun to argue with) without any real ground for my standpoint. Not that I'm entirely uninformed (though far from knowledgeable), I've read most of the Bible, parts of the Buddhist Promoting Foundation's The Teaching of Buddha (a nice compilation with material from many texts, of which I have in a very nice Japanese-English bilingual edition :) ), bits and pieces of the Koran and various hindu texts as well as quite a bit of greek, roman and norse mythology... mostly because they contain a great many interesting (and really a whole lot of not so interesting ideas, but everything has to be read in context of course).
I always thought the supposed science-religion conflict was an odd invention. The whole thing with religion is, in my opinion at least, that it deals with those things that are impossible to answer (even in theory I'd say) through scientific study (*). This is why I've some trouble with people who insist on applying religion where science should be consulted or the other way around. No disrespect to literal creationists, but I think they're wrong.
Ooops, I'm ranting... ranting is fun. Or maybe it's even just rambling at this point.
Tomorrow I've agreed to talk for ten minutes about being an exchange student. I don't know how many will come to listen so I'm a little nervous... but I'll improvise anyway. I mean, after a year I should be able to fill ten minutes, right?

(*): There is a piece of text here from The Teaching of Buddha which I think describes the religious approach: In the search for truth there are certain questions that are unimportant. Of what material is the universe constructed? Is the universe eternal? Are there limits or not to the universe? In what way is this human society put together? What is the ideal form of organization for human society? If a man were to postpone his searching and practicing for Enlightenment until such questions were solved, he would die before he found the path.
Note that many of those questions are ones being studied in science.
It works the other way around too. In science there is not much reason to ask why there is a wave-particle duality. If the calculations give good predictions that is enough (To me science is more or less synonymous with natural science and natural science should be predictive rather than merely descriptive, feel free to disagree).

Listening to: A Camp - Algebra

Comments:
Ahhh... You'd be what my English 101 prof called a spiritual tourist. Quite a few people in my class follow the same routine.

Interesting that I could spend my entire childhood instinctually hating religious people on the grounds that most of Thorhild and half of my family is Jehovah's Witness or something close to it, while my part of the family follows nothing in particular. Scorn happened, although I got it from classmates more than anything. >_< Now that I'm older, I keep finding friends whose beliefs and methods of spirituality actually make me feel very comfortable. It's very reassuring, really. I love both the way you think and the way Zoe thinks.
 
I, despite being a literal creationist (qualifying that with that I know I definitely don't have all the answers), believe that science and religion are not mutually exclusive, despite that scientists and religious officials of many different religions will tell you otherwise, one way or another.

I'll formulate my thoughts more clearly at some other juncture. Bleh.

Nikuman
 
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