1 quote a day

Friday, July 07, 2006

"I'd Rather live my life as if there's God, and die to find out there isn't, than to live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is."


  • At 7/10/2006 11:17 PM, Blogger eyad said…

    join my voice to yours

  • At 7/14/2006 2:33 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Would you also go and blow up people, because there might be a god that might want a jihad?

    Then you must be one opportunist or gambler to try to maximize your profit.

    Instead of this opportunism, you should seek the truth by accepting only something that has EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE and REASON behind it.

    Sorry, but I have no sympathy for such declasse life.

  • At 7/14/2006 2:52 AM, Blogger girl witta attitude said…

    Anonymous, i hope you don't get me wrong...I wasn't stating my belief, i was just quoting a sentence i found and thought was interesting.
    I agree you gotta search and look 4 evidence, but until you reach the step of finding evidence, this is an interesting thing 2 believe in.
    & what's that thing about jihad?

  • At 7/14/2006 4:10 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    As you know, there is no evidence for God. Even Prophet Mohammad could not produce any evidence. So your search will never produce results, even after 150 years of life spending 24x7 searching for this.

    The sentence may appear interesting, but does not make sense. Before it can be of true interest, it must be meaningful.

    There are at least 70,000 religions that have been classified on the globe. Each has some element of metaphysics and mysticism to it. Each has one or more deities, and concludes from that how a "believer" should behave.

    How is it that only one of these 70,000 deities are to be betted on? Why not some other non-Abrahamic system? Why not polytheism? Why not Buddha? As long as none of these gods and angels and spirits can produce any, even the most tiniest of evidence backing them up, then which one do I choose to bet my life on?

    Do you see the inconsistency of this quotation? It first assumes that if there is a metaphysics (a huge if, with no evidence whatsoever), then it must be that one god! None of the other systems, such as Yazidi, Zoroastrians, Shintoism, Jainism, Hinduism, are allowed!

    So not only this kind of personal ethics is that of an opportunist or a gambler, but also it requires a narrow mind to eliminate thousands of gods in favor of one, without any evidence, but at the same time it wants you to be doubtful about it, not in action, but in thought.

    There are to many contradictions to make this meaningful.


  • At 7/14/2006 4:29 AM, Blogger girl witta attitude said…

    y assume that the thousands of times we pray from all our hearts and get what we want ARE ALL QUENCIDENCES , and when NOT that THERE IS NO GOD??
    we sure have our doubts sometimes, but believing in something that actually gives you inner peace is definitely better than believing in nothing & being confused the whole time. you got nthn 2 lose.

  • At 7/14/2006 4:52 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I doubt you are getting all what you want. Just the laws of chance will give you some of the things that you want, and you don't have to pray for that.

    Conduct a scientific experiment, with great clarity and precision. Things that you want, for some of them pray, and for some don't pray. See if it makes a difference. You have to do this fairly. Like difficult things that have low probability of happening should not be the ones that are not prayed.

    What will happen are: 1- either you notice no difference in the outcomes, in which case you have arrived at the truth, and you are that much wiser. 2- You can scientifically prove that prayers made a difference somehow. Then you will receive a Noble prize as the first person in 11 million years of human history who has found evidence between prayers and outcomes.

    Either way, you are a winner.

    Only believe in things that are shown to be true through evidence and reasoning. So yes, you can have belief in the truth. So you will get your inner piece when you know for sure that what you have accepted is reasonable. But simply "believing" in things, blindly, without evidence, without reason, is not worth a dime. Even if it makes you feel better inside, it is a hoax and a fake. You are just kidding yourself. You may as well take some feel-good drugs and it will give you the same effect.

    If you have difficulty understanding why we exist and what will happen to us on death, it is because you are not studying philosophy and science. It is very well explained here, and there is nothing to be afraid of. What one should be afraid of are irrational memes and ideas that are passed on from our culture and traditions to us, like drugs, that makes us feel-good in a superficial way - but because these memes are fake and not true, deep inside we are full of doubt which we will never overcome, and which will torment us (unless you become truly blind like a fanatic extremist).

    So it is better not to accept anything, unless there is evidence and reason behind it.


  • At 7/14/2006 5:39 AM, Blogger girl witta attitude said…

    Well that's your opinion & i respect it..
    I'll make time to think about it a lil bit more, but i guess what i am affraid of the most, is the unknown tomorrow.

  • At 7/14/2006 6:46 AM, Blogger Rania said…

    I must say I agree with Hamid.

    To me, living in doubt is better than lying to yourself and living in imaginary "peace". Hamid, I loved the way described it, the "feel-good" drugs, the antihuman methods full of promises of immortality, which touch on our sensitive fears.

    Openness to other religions makes you realize that this is what they are- religions. Including your own. Systems of beliefs. Different stories that attempt to explain what humans have always been trying to understand. And if you look deeper into them, you'll find that each story reflects the mind, the life, the hopes, the fears and the culture of the people that created and adopted it.
    We should never underestimate the power of our own reason. One surely can't explain everything, but it is our duty to try and to never stop trying, to trust reason rather than what makes us feel better or what appeals to our senses, to question every truth, objectively, openly. And only when we free ourselves from the myths and the comforts of the supernatural will we be worthy of facing Truth, if there is one. And Truth is always harsh. "One must decide how much truth he or she can stand".

    Regarding prayer, what about the things we pray for and that don't come true? Why do we always take those that do happen as evidence? Compare the numbers, and you will find that yes, they are coincidential. It's like knowing that something will have two or more outcomes, and deciding to think hard of one by "wanting", praying, for it to happen. Definitely, it has its chance of occurring.

  • At 7/14/2006 2:30 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    GWA - we are all afraid of tomorrow. We all have to take risks in our lives and have courage to face what comes our way. There is no ideology or faith in the world that can tell you what will happen tomorrow or bring you certainty. The only guarantee you have is through learning and improvement, hard work, positive attitude, and being creative. These 2500 year old religious nonsense will never bring you happiness. They are designed by small minds to keep other minds in bondage, only so that society could function back in the days of barbarianism. Their time is past.

  • At 7/14/2006 2:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Rania - what a beautiful name

    Yes we have many "sensitive fears" as you say. Foremost is "existential fear": (where am I going, and where do I come from). This is a very natural fear of an intelligent mind.

    Consciousness theory has explained this very well - that is, why we have consciousness, and why we have a sense of existence, and why we have such fears. Although the mind is still a mystery, every day, new layers of this onion is being peeled off, and we are understanding human emotions, feelings, thoughs, and their underlying processes much better.

    In some university laboratories, they have even managed to artificially control the amount of Serotonin in the brain, and induce mystical experience and spiritual experience in the subject. Imagine it - you can make a person religious by playing with his neurochemistry. Some subjects even have declared themselves prophets, because (they think) they can see god(s). Needless to say, these are all subjective experiences due to the way the mind is constructed, that results in such subjective illusions and emotions.

    Lets put it this way: If you did not have "existential fear", then you would have no desire to live, and your species would have become extinct a long time ago, and you would not be around to ask this question. Therefore, the law of natural selection favors those creatures who have a fear of death.

    We have to understand this, before we let others exploit our fears, to their own benefit, or to the benefit of their community.

  • At 7/14/2006 3:07 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Rania, what you say about the Truth is so beautifully written, that I cannot add anything to that, without looking like a fool.

    Just one thing - there are valid and meaningful logical questions, that have no answers, and we will never find out if they are true or false. This was shown by Kurt Godel - that certain valid questions are "undecidable" - meaning there is a 3rd category besides "true" and "false" - there is also "undecidable" i.e. logically they can NEVER be dediced - and this has been mathematically proven.

    Therefore, I think, there is no such thing as absolute and universal truth. Many truths are just social constructs, and their validity depends on norms and conventions and value systems. Thus they can become false if the norms change. Other truths are undecidable.

    This just goes to show that there is no absolute or universal truth - only facts. That is why I don't think we should write truth with capitalization - "Truth".

  • At 7/15/2006 8:52 AM, Blogger girl witta attitude said…

    Hamid, what you wrote is so true... i always have my doubts and start thinking that any man could use his creativity to make up some rules and some illusions and say i've been sent from high above...well, it really puts borders to the human mind.
    well a lot of things that i wrote before, i don't really believe in them but i think i should; that's why i keep sayin em over n over again, until it becomes a part of me
    wow that's really pathetic 2 cum n think of it

  • At 7/16/2006 3:40 PM, Blogger Devil's Mind said…

    I myself at some point of time considered this "just in case" argument as a smart one... But that was way too long time ago, at about 13 yrs old i dumped this argument!! I still view the argument as viable but an uninformed one...

    I think that anyone who really looks at the ways of life would realize clearly that no anthropomorphic god exists.... Enough said i guess!!

  • At 12/31/2006 6:19 AM, Anonymous The Legend said…

    I think it says it all when the post comes from "Anonymous"! Was looking for the quote - it is attributed to Albert Camus - and read some of this stuff. Just watched Robert Schuler's Crystal Cathedral with Andy Griffith and Randy Travis. Much more uplifting and believable...


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