If not, what do you trust?
If not, what would you replace that word with on our money, in our pledge of allegiance, as our nation's motto, as the motto of history's most powerful superpower, possessing the world's biggest, most deadly weapons of mass destruction?
We have "IN GOD WE TRUST" Emblazoned across the proscenium of the "Most Deliberative Body In The History of the World" where Mitt stood today and got all choked up about how he loves God, how its what compelled him to "follow the dictates of his conscience" (where have we heard that before?) To be the one person on the right of the aisle to yell out, "The Emperor has no clothes!"
Now if Mitt feels compelled by God to stand up to the bully behind the pulpit, who am I to tell him his God is evil, a God of hate and murder?
I can't tell him His God is imaginary.
His God compels him to stand up to this bully and take a hell of an ass whoopin, if need be, to speak truth.
Amen to Mitt believing God is good and just.
I believe god is good too.
I just no longer believe in the White Supremacist patriarchal God of Joseph's Myth, but I still admire some Mormons, like Mitt today.
Even though he might flip tomorrow and felate #IMPoTUS tomorrow for frog legs in his tower.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2020 08:59PM by schrodingerscat.

Thankyou for asking this important question. America is unique in that we have god on our money, in the halls of congress, in the oaths of office. Europe and it's European Union has mostly moved beyond thinking faith is relevant. They trust in their intellectuals and career bureaucrat politicians (many of whom don't ever face an election but are in appointed offices). For the common people it's affected there prosperity, their productivity, Douglas Murray calls it the "Strange Death of Europe."

As a civilization freedom was not certainly not the natural state of being, there was no guaranty of having it. It took generations of very smart articulate Christian men in England who were willing to fight, who were martyred, who were willing to flee Britain to come here. And then when they arrived there was insurmountable obstacles to overcome. Then there was the miracles of the revolutionary battles, The numerous times Washington's life was spared.

It's the christian Bible that brought literacy to England and Europe. It paved the way for Science and technology, and our present comfortable lives where we don't have to live with the pigs in huts, as white trash crackers (pre 1500). (Read the works by sociologist Thomas Sowell)

God and the bible brought us this prosperity, I certainly do trust in god.

This post brings tears to my eyes.

...doing something only a woman can do.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...doing something only a woman can do.

I know of only one thing "only a woman can do": giving birth.

Am I missing something?

Are you suggesting you were not deeply moved by the OP? A man with your intellect, your sense of history, your heart!

I'll be you are weeping even now.

I shall not be the pox in the men house.

It’s the onions on his sandwich.

Another bullshit copy and paste job. And yes, I've read Sowell. He's just another douchebag.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Another bullshit copy and paste job. And yes, I've
> read Sowell. He's just another douchebag.


Damn straight!

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's the christian Bible that brought literacy to
> England and Europe.


"The ability to read and write was not very common in the Frankish Kingdom during the late 8th century, and Charlemagne wanted to create an education system to provide training for future administrators in both sacred and secular realms."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_litteris_colendis

It has never been just about the Bible. A Bible, a Bible, all you got is a Bible. Sheesh.

I think the founders trusted God not to interfere with the "Nouvus Ordo Seclorum" as they tended to openly demonstrate their leanings for Deistic interpretations of "God".

I trust God to continue not existing outside the human psyche, or at least playing such a passive and invisible role in the lives of human beings as to make the distinction between existing and not existing pointless and entirely moot.

Now...about that whole notion of the Christian Bible being the great sophisticator of the piggy peasantry, I don't think that's how it went down. How we got to the point today of thinking that literacy is a fundamental human right was not due to the Good Book's existence, despite it being a popular read from the late Renaissance onward. It had already been around for quite a while in handcopy and nobody in the Vatican sponsored an "everyone should read this stuff!" initiative. Quite the opposite.

The Gutenberg press gadget started really working around 1450. Catholicism was the only version of Christianity available at the time. They conducted services in Latin and didn't permit the proles to read the Bible, You had to be on the clergy/law professional track to do that. You had to have the right patronage and demonstrate that you were to be trusted not to go around spouting any heretical notions like equality and basic rights for all before you got access to the Holy Tome.

The printing press and growing humanist inclinations developing during the Renaissance are what really prompted a rise in European literacy. The KJV, the first government sanctioned Bible print, wasn't issued until 1611, or 161 years after the advent of mass printing.

The Quran, by comparison, was first printed in 1537.

The social and political chaos of the Reformation didn't promote the spread and acceptance of general European literacy, it slowed it down as the Powers That Were tried to keep a handle on the spread of ideas that were contrary to their immediate interests and the accompanying sense of empowerment felt by the underclass as they came to understand that they had both a voice and a medium to make it heard en masse.

The Renaissance, and the great white-n'delightsome yet stinky and unwashed populace digging on humanistic concepts like "poor boys should maybe go to school too" was in full swing before the Bible could make it into wide distribution without some prince or another doing away with the printers due to perceived political and religious subversion. William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale tried, issuing an English translation in 1535. Tyndale was executed. Coverdale went through cycles of exile and return, and the Tyndale Bible did not achieve significant circulation. Many copies were destroyed.

Even in 1611 King James had a motive for printing the Bible, and that wasn't to get people reading, it was to stick it to the Puritans for the unbearable cheek shown to him by things like them offering to render him "particular" versus "absolute" obedience to him as Supreme Head of the Church of England. Calvinism was a thorn in James's side and an official Bible was part of his ecclesiastical policy in finding legal ways to make the Puritans shut the frick up.

I think that's enough rebuttal via history for one post. Nothing in our society is simple, and when it comes to trusting "God", trusting our common beliefs, trusting any given narrative...keep a skeptical mindset for the motives behind simple answers.

So not one person on RfM has an answer to the question,

"What do you trust, if not God?"

I can answer it, I trust god, which to me is short for, the laws of nature, or "Good" since the laws of nature are good, otherwise, we wouldn't exist and evolve and neither would any other life form, over the past 3.5 billion years, continuously.

I trust the following among other things...

My intuition.

My hindsight.

My approach/ technique to solving/ dealing with things in life.

People that have earned my trust (in various ways).

All of the above could fail me, but I still trust them overall.

I don't trust in god because I don't believe in god.

I don't trust in nature because nature doesn't require my trust to do what it does...and it does what it wants (figuratively speaking).

I don't trust anyone that doesn't like Led Zeppelin and the Beatles.

evidence

In God we trust. All others must pay cash.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So not one person on RfM has an answer to the
> question,

I thought it rhetorical.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So not one person on RfM has an answer to the
> question,
>
> "What do you trust, if not God?"


Myself. I trust myself. God is a nobody to me.

I trust that there are natural principles which work thoroughout our known universe (in cooperative ways with other, simultaneous and also true, modifying principles such as mutation).

I definitely do not, and have never in my life, believed in a Big Guy in the Sky.

I believe it is mostly irrelevant how we conceptualize "God." For those who believe in a Big Guy in the Sky, that is fine with me. From an overall, macro perspective, I think it is mostly irrelevant how any given person conceptualizes the idea of "God." (The exception would be ideations which introduce, or affirm, or support, or create what we conceptualize as evil. )

I think there are principles which are really important (tikkun olam, for example: "repairing"/"finishing" "the world" [as we are aware of it] to the best of our abilities and opportunities), and that our next lives (I believe in reincarnation) [usually] have a great deal to do with the lives we are living in whatever is "now."

I do not believe in heaven/hell, or heaven/purgatory/hell, but I do believe that the lives we will be living next, and then on down the road, have a great deal to do with the individual life we are living now--most importantly: HOW we lived this life, regardless of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

I believe it is really important--to the world and to us personally--to be, in our own ways and in our own lives, a mensch.

beautifully said.
I agree 100%



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2020 09:02PM by schrodingerscat.

Why would I trust in God. Would you trust in a rabbit's foot? The dependability rate is the same.

Do I have a choice? then no.

EXON46 Wrote:
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> Do I have a choice? then no.

So you trust in no thing?

I can't trust that I don't trust anything

"Git it behind me, Satan!"

elderolddog Wrote:
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> "Git it behind me, Satan!"


hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahaha.

Trusting no one got me this far*.

Having faith in no one got me this far*.

Not expecting anything from anybody made me more self sufficient and aware of my surroundings. Not trusting someone to make my life better let me give my own life meaning.

Not trusting someone or some unknown--like God, gave me the opportunity to assess "what is" correctly and make judgements from there on how to proceed to achieve my goals.

Faith. Trust. Fancy words, aren't they. Nice when somebody does the right thing ----just because they trust themselves.







*Damn great place to be.

Or jeans of fortune?

What about dice of destiny?

Or the key ring of bling?

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If not, what do you trust?
> If not, what would you replace that word with on
> our money, in our pledge of allegiance, as our
> nation's motto, as the motto of history's most
> powerful superpower, possessing the world's
> biggest, most deadly weapons of mass destruction?

Not Mitt Romney. He is a wolf in white horse clothing.

As to what I would replace in words on money? Let it stay. Words are like money for the mind. They reduce human mental space to quantities and qualifications. They are the mental commerce in the monetary commerce. Money and words are twins of Promethean progress of humanity. If some power want to emblazon "In Trump we trust" I could care less.

In many cases I don't trust myself let alone my doctor, my government, and many people in my life. The ones I do I do because I feel safe with them. It might be illusory but it feels good.

"Trust In God"... What does that even mean? Trust in God for what exactly? Do such people make a decision and then trust in God that they are right? If so, that's not trust in God, that looking to God for confirmation.

As far as anyone has been able to tell, no one has woken up with sudden accurate knowledge of something that they didn't get from another source. People form their own opinions and judgments based on information they have gained over time from any number of sources, none of it magically appeared one day.

Even Romney here admits that he is following "...the dictates of HIS conscience" (emphasis mine). He didn't go slack and let God take over his body to vote one way or the other, HE made the decision based one his motivations and the information he had at the time. God didn't appear to him at night and told him to vote that way.

Many people on both sides have the trial claim that God swayed their decision, they can't all be right since God seems to have "told" them to make different choices. It's just a way to avoid responsibility. It's "I have to make this decision because God demands it" not "I have to make this decision because based on the information in-front of me and all of my life experiences to this point suggests that's it's the right answer."

If people truly trusted in "God" they wouldn't pray. If you trust God why would you attempt to sway him from his plan for you? Praying shows a distinct lack of trust in God. Imagine living a life ignoring all the factual information presented to you and "trusting only in God". No one does this, and those who do, are usually considered to have real mental health issues. One need look no further than the actual cases where people thought "Jesus take the wheel" was a literal means of getting from point A to B. It never goes well.

Another way to look at is that if someone truly "trusted in God" they would take a backseat in their own life. They would take no active involvement in making decisions. After all, if you trust in God for everything, then let him do all the deciding... It's the old joke about the person on the roof during a flood, praying to be saved. Boats go by, and they refuse rescue because they are trusting in God to save them, soon they drown and ask God why he didn't save them... Because he sent the boats, but they refused them. This is what "trusting in God" would actually look like. Sitting around waiting for things to happen to you.

We don't "Trust in God". Everyone, whether they admit it or not, trusts years of experience and learning to get us though the day and to make decisions. "God" is just the excuse some give to do what they want, but lack the confidence to take responsibility for those choices.

Also to answer the question, "If not, what would you replace that word with on our money, in our pledge of allegiance, as our nation's motto, as the motto of history's most powerful superpower, possessing the world's biggest, most deadly weapons of mass destruction?"

I think you need to look at the history of our motto. It was not always, "In God we Trust". Nor was God mentioned as part of the original Pledge. I would very much prefer it if the government actually obeyed the First Amendment and left God out of it.

There was nothing wrong with how the pledge was written before the line about God was added. There was nothing wrong with "E Pluribus Unum", it summed up what our nation is supposed to be, a boiling pot of many that is greater than the sum of it's parts. I'd be very much in favor of going back to those. It suggests democracy and being of the people far more than trusting in God, especially since no one agrees on which God to trust, and it's illegal for the Government to decide the answer to that.

After all, history has shown that having people who hear voices in charge of things hasn't worked out well, even when they believe it's God talking to them. If that person is in charge of the "most powerful superpower" who has control over "the world's biggest, most deadly weapons of mass destruction", that should terrify you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2020 04:54PM by Finally Free!.

It was adopted as the national motto by the U.S. Congress in 1956, just in time for H-bomb testing. Before that, the Bible was used by both sides in the Civil War in addition to every war since the colonial insurgency, er, revolutionary war. Strange God you have there.

And yet, no soul ever lived that the divine didn’t love. God is a mystery beyond human understanding. But we have stories of God, some of them quite beautiful. Are they true? Maybe they are true enough.

Mormonism brings magical thinking to the table. I struggled with the Mormon paradox until I figured out the magic is real. Miracles happen to believers because they believe, not because they have the one true religion. I understand confirmation bias, but I also understand downright impossible. When something happens that plain shouldn’t have happened, it means something. Trust in a transcendent other bringing a special meaning to life. Mormonism fools you into stopping seeking. But you can never stop seeking because you are the one you are waiting for. Christ is the story of you, for you are love. It may as historically accurate as Luke Skywalker. Doesn’t matter. The synthesis of this divine archetype is a miracle unto itself.

Life is the divine gift. You aren’t feeling it because our world is in a lower vibration. But religion is an attempt to counteract that. Do they get it wrong? Of course. Maybe religion has had its run, but I don’t think it will ever go away. If anything, as the mystery is revealed by science going forward, it will become more prevalent.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2020 06:49PM by babyloncansuckit.

  

I trust in me..most of the time...and my immediate family...I have never trusted some make believe dude in the sky

Lethbridge Reprobate Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I trust in me..most of the time...and my immediate
> family...I have never trusted some make believe
> dude in the sky
That wasn't the question.
Nobody does ultimately, or they wouldnt look both ways before they crossed a road.

Short answers: No and whatever.

There is no god so its a moot point.

saucie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There is no god so its a moot point.
" An atheist would have to know a lot more than me about the cosmos."Sagan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2020 08:16PM by schrodingerscat.

Sagan's statement assumes certain things about god that would possibly be proven/disproven by further understanding. As there is no preliminary evidence for those assumptions, it also is a false statement. A throw away sound bite that sounds good but lacks substance on deeper consideration.

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." Carl Sagan

Tell that to Asians, since that's the god they worship, and have since long before Jews invented the patriarchal Santa in the sky God

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "The idea that God is an oversized white male with
> a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies
> the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by
> God one means the set of physical laws that govern
> the universe, then clearly there is such a God.
> This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does
> not make much sense to pray to the law of
> gravity." Carl Sagan
>
> Tell that to Asians, since that's the god they
> worship, and have since long before Jews invented
> the patriarchal Santa in the sky God


Asians do not belive in god. Have you ever heard of Buddah? You don't actually know any Asians do you?

I an Asian, and a Zen Buddhist.
We believe in the Tao, the way of nature, which is what Sagan was talking about when he said, "surely such a god exists."
I just take issue with him saying that worshipping such an impersonal god is emotionally unsatisfying. Who the fuck is he to tell the world's pantheists that they're emotionally unsatisfied?

You are not an Asian. And you do not understand Asian religions which, among other things, cannot possibly be treated as a single entity.

But hey, don't let facts stand in your way.

Facts!

What are they good for?

Absolutely nothing!

Huuhh!!!



It sounds good set to music, but I'll concede that sometimes facts are good for something, but only if they don't get in the way of you and your Truth.

You have to give Kori/SC some credit for being able to ignore the facts that are not useful.

Just spill the wine already, won't you Eric? Sometimes you are such a burden!

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You are not an Asian. And you do not understand
> Asian religions which, among other things, cannot
> possibly be treated as a single entity.
>
> But hey, don't let facts stand in your way.

You know my DNA test results better than me?
Does that really sound to you like you are tethered to reality?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2020 04:59PM by schrodingerscat.

You have told us your DNA results and now you are asking if I know them?

Does that really sound to you like you are tethered to reality?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2020 10:45AM by Lot's Wife.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You have told us your DNA results and now you are
> asking if I know them?
>
> Does that really sound to you like you are
> tethered to reality?


I'm part Asian, according to my DNA results, so yeah, I get to claim that. What would you know about it?

And I'm Zen Buddhist. You denied I was either.

Does that seem tethered to reality or fucking delusional?

So, your son claims to be black and now you're claiming to be Asian. Are there any other cultures you'd like to appropriate?

You're contradicting yourself anyway...

>"...and 4% Asian or Native American, they couldn't tell which at the time, but have since informed me that it's mainly Native American."
https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2284449,2284754#msg-2284754

So, per your own post on Feb 4, 2020, 4% of you is "mainly Native American" with maybe a hint of Asian. But you're claiming that you are "Asian" with no qualifiers or other context and you're wondering why people are questioning you? You're not Asian, and if you can't figure out why it's offensive to claim a race that isn't yours, I can't help you.

Also, it's been brought up before that these tests are horribly inaccurate and the same DNA sent into the same place can have wildly different results.

The disposable soundbite nature of the quotes of Sagan you use are demonstrated by their self-contradiction. They cannot both hold true.

If one must know more of the Cosmos than Sagan does to be an atheist, then how can Sagan assert he knows God as defined as as the laws of nature? The first asserts that God or not god is not knowable. The second asserts God is known.

Pick a position. It contradicts the other one. You can't have both.

dogbloggernli Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The disposable soundbite nature of the quotes of
> Sagan you use are demonstrated by their
> self-contradiction. They cannot both hold true.
>
> If one must know more of the Cosmos than Sagan
> does to be an atheist, then how can Sagan assert
> he knows God as defined as as the laws of nature?
> The first asserts that God or not god is not
> knowable. The second asserts God is known.
>
> Pick a position. It contradicts the other one. You
> can't have both.

"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things." Laozi:

Fail.

He asks you about Sagan and you reply with the first chapter of a book written by an anti-intellectual over two thousand years ago?

"Does that really sound to you like you are tethered to reality?"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2020 10:49AM by Lot's Wife.

I trust in Google

It doesn't matter if 4 generations of your family before you were duped by Joseph's Myth, they didn't have Google.
It wasn't their fault.
They were lied to.
Thank Google for truth!

The US got along fine without "under God" and "In God We Trust" until the mid-20th century.

"under God" wasn't added to the pledge until 1954. The pledge itself wasn't composed until the late 19th century.

"In God We Trust" wasn't added to currency until 1956.

Yet there are people who say the country has gone downhill since then. I guess that what happens when you bring God into national affairs.

It was clearly a reaction to the Stalinism and the Red Scare. America's still scared of communism.
A faaar bigger percentage of Americans is religious than other Western prosperous democracies.

All gods are equally real. Which god do you want me to trust in ?

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> All gods are equally real. Which god do you want
> me to trust in ?
Ask the old, white, rich dudes who put that on every dollar bill you have ever given anybody or received, the same old, white, rich dudes who made it our national motto and had it carved into the marble proscenium of the most Deliberative body in the history of the world, with the most power of any body in the history of the world.
Where lil Mitt the flip flopper, chose to flip on the Emperor with no clothes.

They aren't the one's asking your question.

I will answer your question directly. - NO.

I believe in the gullibility of the human race.
I believe that people are only as "good" as they are required to be to maintain the social contract.
I believe societies structure is governed by the need of the many to be led and protected, and the need of the few to lead.
I believe guilt, shame, fear, and revenge are learned behaviors.
I believe truth, in all its many forms, is malleable.
I believe we are NOT the peak of universal evolution, and we may be a footnote.

The need for god is real, the existence of god is laughable.

I believe in the adaptability of the human race.
I believe that people are only as altruistic as they are required to be to maintain instinctual social contact.
I believe societies structure is governed by the instinctual programing of the many to be led.
I believe guilt, shame, fear, and revenge aren't learned behaviors.
I believe truth, in all its many forms, is mostly untenable.
I believe we are NOT the peak of universal evolution because it has none, and we may be its most adaptable creature here on earth.

The breeding for gods is real, the persistence of gods is understandable.

God is the height of both hypocrisy in humans and their need for hierarchies.

What's the final verdict???