Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

Sure you can believe in reincarnation if you are an athiest, it just makes you a [censored] retarded one.

Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

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Sure you can believe in reincarnation if you are an athiest, it just makes you a [censored] retarded one.

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Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

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More specifically reincarnation, does it have to be synonymous with religion and believing in God? I ask because of a question I posed on another forum where I got told I couldnt believe in RC because I also claimed I was an atheist.

I happen to consider the two matters seperate and wondered what the general consensus was on 2p2?

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Well they're both superstitious nonsense but that doesn't make them connected. So no, you don't have to believe one to believe the other. That being said, the logic and reasoning behind atheism generally leads to not believing other nonsense.

Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

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If you go to wikipedia there's a huge list of variations on reincarnation. Down at the bottom is the scientific research then tons of article links in the footnotes.

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Actually by the very definition of "science" I can tell you that you are incorrect without even bothering to click the link.

This is because science must be testable and it is impossible to test is somebody has been re-incarnated without them giving us something like an object which has not yet been discovered or which has been locked in an unopened safe for many hundreds of years (and with proof that it has been unopened). This is the only kind of test which could be used for verification and the logistics of setting it up under controlled conditions are --- well, very difficult.

I have heard of only one account of a supernatural/metaphyscial thing from a rational person that was not entirely subjective or just plain stupid. That was in Michael Crichton's "Travels" and even there, there are many alternative explanations.

Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

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Sure you can believe in reincarnation if you are an athiest, it just makes you a [censored] retarded one.

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Damn, and for the first time in 2p2 history I thought we would get a douchebag free thread.

Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

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I guess the better question would be why?

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Why wouldn't he want to research as many angles as possible on this. He trying to find something that's not all that common. To locate it might take more indepth research and searching as many avenues as possible. Did you think SMP has the only authoritative answer on this question?

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Research != believe knowwhatimsayin?

Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

*sigh* i guess no one is familiar with the reincarnation research done by Dr. Ian Stevenson and is now contuining to be investigated by Dr. Jim Tucker. And concerning atheism, it is a belief ststem, one cannot prove nor disprove the existence of a supernatural realm using the current scientific methodology. I think it is important to remain agnostic and in the true spirit of science, not let our beliefs blind us from what might be the truth. Whether it means God exists or He doesn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation_research

Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

Human memory is fraught with detail. Is it not possible that racial memory would be just as detailed instead of considering reincarnation as an option?

I read the wiki. Interesting. But to rely on hypnotic methods and similarity of birthmarks is dubious at best, if only because the reliability of those methods aren't ironclad.

Now, if you had concrete physical proof instead of hearsay from individuals without relying on hypnotic regression... Maybe there would be merit to the idea.

Human memory is a strange and wonderful thing, and may just be more complex than we can think it to be. I'm more willing to think that our racial memory is quite complex and capable of retaining more than the ability to find food.

Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

-As an atheist, I could believe in "numbers", "infinite straight lines", "points" in "space", or that "for any given line and point not on the line, there is one parallel line through the point not intersecting the line"

-I could also, just not believe that last proposition: Intro on Lobachevsky

-Or go even further: "It is well known that geometry presupposes not only the concept of space but also the first fundamental notions for constructions in space as given in advance. It only gives nominal definitions for them, while the essential means of determining them appear in the form of axioms. The relationship of these presumptions is left in the dark; one sees neither whether and in how far their connection is necessary, nor a priori whether it is possible. From Euclid to Legendre, to name the most renowned of modern writers on geometry, this darkness has been lifted neither by the mathematicians nor the philosophers who have laboured upon it."
On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry (1854), by Bernhard Riemann



-I could believe that the planet Venus has a mass, and an acceleration (moves faster/slower towards or away from, say, "me"). In that case I could believe Venus has a Force F; it's entirely up to me to believe if that Force F is the way it's been described by the ancients, and whether or not there's a relation with constellations further away, like Lion. Maybe I'm a Lionheart too, like that medieval king.

-Then again, since we're speaking about larger distances, I may want to switch to general relativity. Because after all, that's what I've been told to do in these situations. In that case, Venus would have an Energy E equal to it's mass times c^2. Whether that Energy E is exactly..."rinse and repeat".



-I could believe in the validity of causal logic/deductive reasoning...But then I'd have to believe in certain axioms (a troll might call them superstitious beliefs or "dogma"): among others, there's "reflexivity", "transitivity", "monotonicity"... and "Ex falso quodlibet". The last one means that I can deduct anything I want from a contradiction (P&~P, "this sentence is a lie",...).

-I don't know about you, but "anything I want" is a whole lot; reincarnation, god and/or gods, Alice in Wonderland, a "Salvador Dali"-type reality where time is an illusion,... Even "Jesus is god's son and he called his audience brothers and sisters, therefore I'm god's son too".

-To put it in biblical terms: "In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god." (John 1,1). When I study the word (that's logos, in Greek, hence: "logic"), I study... These are some of the things I could believe in, as an atheist. But I don't.

Re: Can you believe in certain things without being religious?
 

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i guess no one is familiar with the reincarnation research done by Dr. Ian Stevenson

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have you actually read his 'research'? It's easier to read it as a parody on Saturday Night Live than being presented as a scientific study.
Really. A dog would drill a hole in the floor if he were as circular in the pursuit of his tail.

luckyme