Manupilator...

[DÛke]

...

Here I am planning to ask 2 fundamental questions: the first being merely a facade which serves to set the stage for the second question - which is, to be honest, the fundamental question which I thought I should ask...

...but I figured many of you to have some really prosperous and nourished prejudices, injected into your heads ever since you first happened to fall into this world as if by an accident, so I thought I should avoid such prejudices by setting up the let's-get-this-straight-once-and for-all question. And I found such a question almost immediately.

Do you believe in God? And God here can stand for the essential element of the universe, be it physical, psychical, spiritual, mere energy, mere omnipotence...

Let's face it: you have 3 intelligible answers: Yes, No, and Not Sure for a lack of evidence, or because you don't have the time to think it through, or you don't care about it, or for simply a fashionable scientific skepticism and doubt. If you feel like there is just something you simply have to say to clarify your position, or if you happen to stumble upon the 4th missing option (and there is a 4th option), then be sure to tell me...but don't say it out loud because it destroys the entire purpose of this poll, my questions, and...

...

...

...

Like other polls I create, I will not participate in the voting so as to not slant the results in any manner, however indiscernibly.

The other question will be asked in different threads, through different polls.

This is the first thread...a masquerade.

Not that I need to say this, but please be kind enough to answer honestly.

And...

Thank you.

 

[Master Shake]

Blah, I misvoted. Subtract one form No and Add it to yes.

I am not used to having the negative answer on top, must reflect the poller.

 

[Mr_Pestilence]

I answered no, but allow me to explain.

I am a non-believer, but not a disbeliever.

As I see it, there is no evidence for the existence of God (or Allah, or Buddha, etc., etc. ad infinitum). Unfortunately, I also see no proof that God does not exist. All evidence given for either belief is anecdotal, not empirical.

While I am not qualified to say, "God does not exist!", because I do not know that to be true, I can say I do not possess the belief that God exists.

I have asked this question before, and it seems appropriate to revisit here - How many wars have been started by atheists? This is not intended to be a rhetorical question - I am really interested in your responses.

Let me anticipate some resonses:

Hitler was Catholic (an altarboy in fact), mixed in with some bizarre mystical beliefs.

The USSR officially recognized no god or religion (then again, neither did the US, in the original constitution).

 

[Svenmonkey]

Sometimes religion plays a part in wars, and sometimes it doesn't. In Hitler's case, I think his Catholocism was purely coincidental.

Wars involving first world countries recently have been purely political and defensive, with a "god is on our side" part thrown in, whereas the wars of less modernized cultures are generally more religion-centered.

 

[Mazzak]

Not even, Sven. The religion is only ever an excuse, not a cause.
They say "The (insert religion here) have taken our (insert thing here)! Let us kill them all in the name of (insert deity here)!" sometimes, or they say, "We can't have THAT going on, let's kill them all because (insert deity here) wouldn't stand for it either!"
and so on and so forth. Wars aren't ever actually started in the name of religion. That's just what they put on paper to distract you from the greed.

 

[TomB]

And voted on. Interesting, I think, that you chose to post this on Christmas night, DÛke. Wasn't Santa good to you?

 

[DÛke]

...

TomB: I honestly, honestly forgot that it was Christmas that night and...my!...coincidence. Yes. It's a coincidence.

Mr. Pestilence: whether we like to see that religious beliefs do play their roles in wars, that's completely up to us - but we need not forget that if people were faithful to declare an entire war on the basis of mere "good" and "evil" and not, say, as a facade which hides perhaps envy, hatred, and inferiority, then - wow! How great the world be if there existed, or still existed, such people who fight on the basis of principles! and not wealth, not greed, not...to nourish the ever-hungry monstrosity of capitalism.

Recent wars, including those supposedly played out by Osama Bin Ladin, for example, have no religious basis whatsoever. What do they have? Perhaps a deeply ingrained lust for power. Perhaps a deeply ingrained envy. Who knows? I am sure there is some part, a small and unobservable part, that fights "out of principle," but the dominating impulses are not so noble - I'm almost too sure. The same applies for the United States, and...to - who knows - perhaps all wars "in the name of God" that ever existed. One can easily, to the point of embarrassment, observe that wars "in the name of God" also hide many misfortunes, an array of bad feelings, bitterness, and want of power, in those who declare such "divine" wars. And especially today, a war on the basis of "having principles" cannot exist any longer - it's not conventional, not popular with the masses (the masses, after all, have and desire no principles - they like to be "free" or "liberated."), not practical, and let's face it, a war on the basis of principles and only on such basis means one needs to be dignified to the point which hardly can exist these days, to the extent that one is willing to sacrifice himself merely for the basis of such beliefs, and here alone we have said and demanded too much when we utter "sacrifice." People, more than ever before, and due to a bad sense of morality or lack of morality even (even Nietzsche, the "great philosopher," was 'beyond good and evil' and thus had to warn against "dying for one's 'truth'"), and so they are bound to think that death and dying derides principles and values and not, contrarily, makes them. And so the psychological war against aging, against unpleasant physical appearances - only appearances! - and in short, against death in general, have reached their height today and still ascending - why? Out of having no regards whatsoever to life, so empty, so ugly, so alone, that preoccupation with the body is the only thing left for them to do. And every war, every recent war, has been a great preoccupation with the body - materialism! for the sake of the body, its wants, its pleasures...etc...and so, at the end, let’s not confuse ourselves and try to see some “principle” in our wars – our wars, today, well, we shouldn’t even call them wars! They are mere obedience to urges, mere instincts, impulses, and of course, only the most basic and bottommost impulses that, to be honest, every other animal posses. Conclusion? Today, people are animals - and not in any form superior to, for example, the pigs they eat.

But all this is off topic.

 

[Nightstalkers]

I'll believe him when I see him.

—Nightstalker Habuki