/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.2519127]

Be honest, did you at one point in your youth believe in god and/or pseudoscience? Did you used to lack critical thinking?

I was pretty ignorant at one point, reading horoscopes and praying for things to happen (although not to god). It's only after I discovered the internet that I was set straight. Now I'm studying science and approach lots of things with skepticism, completely different from my old self.

I don't know if it's just mental maturing or if being online played a large role.

[Anonymous No.2519151]

> It's only after I discovered the internet that I was set straight

[Anonymous No.2519159]

After watching Zeitgeist for the first time, I was severely depressed for a few days because it made me believe that the world was much more evil than I thought.

Also, Derren Brown

[Anonymous No.2519162]

I started praying when I was 12 because everyone did. It instantly triggered some questions, hopefully. After some months I was a convict atheist.
Now I'm just agnostic after all follow skepticism

[Anonymous No.2519164]

I was raised an atheist

I've always been a skeptic and question things extensively, requiring proper sources, before believing them.

feelsgoodman

[Anonymous No.2519186]

Eeh, I was pretty neutral religion wise when I was young.

My parents told me about god and all that, but they always said that one of the worst things in men is ignorance, and that believing just about everything you see/read is stupid.

Must be one of the reasons they don't care about me being an atheist. When I told my father I didn't believe in god, he just said that perhaps proof of his existance would appear to me later in life, as it happened to him(or so he says).

so, in short, my parents always told me to think critically.

[Anonymous No.2519217]

I don't remember how old I was, but the first time I realized something was terribly wrong with religion was when I realized that "god" decided who would go to heaven/hell based on whether they followed the 10 commandments. Well, what about people born in non-Christian countries? Are they just going to go to hell because they were born in the wrong place and nobody told them about the rules? That seemed incredibly stupid and I don't think I ever took religion seriously after that

[Anonymous No.2519240]

I used to believe places could be haunted, crop circles were fascinating, time-traveling, Bermuda triangle

[Anonymous No.2519257]

I think everyone is born ignorant. We're natural pattern-recognizers so it's natural to try to interpret patterns that appear randomly.

[Anonymous No.2519258]

I was raised without any belief system. Needless to say I defaulted to atheism.

[Anonymous No.2519260]

I was Christian up until 19. Not vehemently Christian mind you, just "I'm spiritual, not religious" Christian. I started questioning things in high school but it was only once I got to college that I actually began seriously questioning things. The difference there being that in high school I was approaching the issue with the mindset of "Christianity is true, I just have to prove it" whereas in college I went in with zero bias. It took me about 4-5 months to turn atheist after that. Then I started taking chemistry and that finalized everything once I saw not only were seemingly impossible natural occurrences easily explained, but the explanations necessitated those occurrences happening.

[Anonymous No.2519268]

I was raised as a Christian, and remained steadily so up until I was around the age of twelve or so. There were always little questions itching in the back of my mind regarding the contradictory nature of the religion, such as the jealous and irrational God that for some reason makes a complete 180 partway through the texts; contradicting ideas of what happened to those that did not "know God," and such and so forth. This later led me to agnosticism, and now atheism.

[Anonymous No.2519315]

I think we are all irrational as children, we believe in absolute truths and do not rigorously test are own beliefs, I think we just lack the ability to think rationally.
I was raised religiously neutral (I can think of no other term) my parents believed I had the right to make my own choice later in life. I always thought they meant that I should be sceptical of all beliefs, and for the large part of my childhood I considered myself anti-theist (although I incorrectly used the term atheist) because I was under this childlike view that if I can't see something, it's not there.
It wasn't until a few years ago when I was 17 that I actually began to question my own beliefs for the first time, and subject myself to the rigour I proclaimed. I quickly realised that in actuality, something I had held as a core truth most of my life had no more evidence than those I decried as false. Over time my opinion changed until I would today consider myself a deist. However I don't particularly see this as having replaced my core belief. My loyalty today, more than anything, is with rational thought, and I hope that when presented with contrary valid propositions to my own beliefs I will change and redefine them. I do hope however that I always retain as rational and sceptical as I am today.
tl;dr raised neutral, used to be an anti-theist for irrational reasons, now follow rationality before all things.

[Transmutation !QXk/bZJq8A No.2519325]

I was Christian up until about a year ago.
Mind you, I wasn't really Christian in the traditional sense, I followed the rules, tried to be the best I could be, but never went on mission trips, got "on fire" for God, etc. I was very, very skeptical of what others would claim (one churchgoer claimed that at summer camp, during worship, powdered gold rained onto the worshippers and, upon being analyzed, was found to be extremely pure.)
Needless to say, after experiencing NOTHING supernatural or outside of my own mind, I started having doubts.
The tipping point came when I looked up science videos online. I was curious about the theory of evolution, all that I was taught was that it was complete garbage and that Darwin was an agent of Satan, etc. So I saw videos from the fucking man himself, Carl Sagan, which took away my mental image of the selfish, twisted, unfeeling atheist.
I became more and more interested in science, a huge event was when I watched "A Universe From Nothing," a lecture by Lawrence Krauss. It kind of blew my mind, and suddenly, in my mind, the possibility opened up of a universe that came into being without a God! It was such a freeing moment, when I realized that a God was NOT NECESSARY! For a few months, I tried ignoring God. completely ignoring him.
I noticed ABSOLUTELY no change in my quality of life.

I've never looked back. I never want to go back to that constant fear of hell and sin and punishment. I've learned that life should be lived for its own sake, not treated like a desolate waiting room.

[Anonymous No.2519340]

ITT: rebellious teens rejecting the God that gave them life.

[Anonymous No.2519365]

>>2519340
0/10
At least make a attempt to properly troll.

[Anonymous No.2519361]

>>2519340
OH GOD RAGE 129383948937838472374853/10 FUCKING FUCK

let's move on.

[Anonymous No.2519373]

>>2519365
>>2519361
Note the iconoclastic nature of the responses.

[Anonymous No.2519387]

I was never religious. I didn't help that we went to mass in Spanish and I didn't (still don't) know it. I only sat through mass waiting for the music that I liked.

[Anonymous No.2519395]

What the Bleep Do We Know!?

I wish I was kidding

[Anonymous No.2519418]

>>2519373
Man stop it. You are just terrible at this.

[Anonymous No.2519426]

>>2519325
Couldn't've said it better myself.

>I've never looked back. I never want to go back to that constant fear of hell and sin and punishment. I've learned that life should be lived for its own sake, not treated like a desolate waiting room.

[Anonymous No.2519441]

>>2519340
ITP: Weak troll.

I was not raised religious, although I was exposed to Jehova Witnesses for a brief period of time (at which time I accepted their god) and believed in him. However, religion, as I said, was only important for a couple of months and from that point on I was simply a deist. I then slowly started forgetting about it (but still believing) until the age of 14 when--after particular circumstances--it came under more serious consideration. From there on the Judeo-Christian conception of a god dissappeared from view as a serious belief system (and by this, I don't mean I "redifined" a god, but rather it all came under a single umbrella term) and ultimately it became a question unrelated to its philosophy, but of culture and its political repercussions.

Not much has changed today.

[Anonymous No.2519453]

ALL children lack critical thinking. In fact, it would be dangerous if they DIDN'T.

[Anonymous No.2519474]

>>2519426
Thanks brah :)

[Anonymous No.2519498]

>>2519453
Why dangerous?

[Anonymous No.2519523]

>>2519498

"Timmy, don't play near the river, a crocodile might eat you."
"Fuck you, mom, you don't know that for sure: Imma gonna do some investigation!"

And then Timmy fell in the river and drowned.

[Anonymous No.2519624]

>>2519186
Your parents sound awesome. Do they have a newsletter?

I was athiest until about a year and half ago, then I converted and I feel like I'm fairly devoted and happier because of it. I grew up always wondering about death and the end of the universe and shit and thought poorly of and hated the Abrahamic religions. I am a science major: biochemistry and neuroscience.

[Anonymous No.2519993]

>>2519624
>I was athiest until about a year and half ago, then I converted
What to, may I ask?

[Anonymous No.2520017]

>>2519993
Christianity, non-denominational.

[Anonymous No.2520035]

I remember I stopped believing in god when I was 7 when I learned that the human body doesn't require an omnipotent being to place a soul into to function, and that human beings are naturally created and autonomous.

[Anonymous No.2520067]

>Born in an Atheist family
>Now an Agnostic Theist (Not Religious, just believe that there is some God out there. Don't adhere to any codes or pray).

[Anonymous No.2520205]

I've always used critical thinking. I've always questioned everything. I never believed in God in my youth, but I have ever since I was about 20. I've never given credence to any kind of pseudoscience.

[Anonymous No.2520886]

Weird how smart believers can either say ignore religion but believe in God, because God is really some embodiment of faith and dedication, but others might say practice religion but you don't have to believe it because religion can develop discipline, morals, empathy, etc.

I mean, if you can get all that from anywhere at all, it''s all good in the end.

[Scientist No.2520911]

>>2520205
>I have ever since I was about 20.
May I ask why?

[Anonymous No.2520912]

Raised Catholic, but to be honest never gave it thought; it was like this is church they tell me stuff, this is sunday school they tell me the same stuff. I didn't believe nor disbelieve. As I left Catholic school and attended public school I was introduced to science. But I still never disbelieved religion, and I began to believe that science never really disproved the existence of a god at a basic level. Of course, I always took the stories in the bible as just that; stories. right now, I'm not sure what to believe and sort of take an apatheistic view of the situation. It doesn't matter to me either way, I'll just live my life the way i believe is right regardless of retribution from a supposed higher power.

[Anonymous No.2520914]

>>2520067
This is the most logical path and I agree with it.

[Scientist No.2520917]

>>2520067
>Now an Agnostic Theist (Not Religious, just believe that there is some God out there. Don't adhere to any codes or pray).
So, a deist?

[Anonymous No.2520942]

>>2519127
I was raised by a scientist and an engineer who had no interest in religion, so the thought never occurred to me that there might be an invisible man in the sky watching me all the time. The thought of believing in what little I had read of the bible always seem utterly ridiculous

[Anonymous No.2520953]

In the early teens I half-did in the sense that I hadn't cared enough to question the notion one way or the other.

After I thought about it a little I went with "nope".

[Anonymous No.2522289]

I used to think poltergeists/hauntings and spoon-bending psychic stuff were real, but mostly because I thought they were cool after reading a book about them(ironically, the book's history of poltergeists contained details of several famous claims, including the eventual discovery that they were universally hoaxes). Then I turned eight. I grew up in a Buddhist household, so I was never indoctrinated with belief in Jesus and Santa Claus, andy parents' religion also never took hold in me. Basically I believed in things that I could see in the way that experiencing a new phenomenon would add it to my list of Stuff that Is Real.

I was certainly in a place of ignorance when I was younger, as we all are, but generally I wouldn't take easy explanations for things I didn't understand. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I sat down and tried to wrap my head around evolutionary theory(Layman's Edition). My parent's used to be involved with wooby-jooby naturopathic medicine, which I took for a while, reluctantly, but never trusted for a lack of studies/sense. I've also had acupuncture done on me, again at my parents' request, but I mostly let that happen because I loved the heat lamp the ancient Taiwanese dude would put over my stomach. Reading studies debunking pseudoscience is a minor passtime of mine these days.

Oh, for a while when I was around 13, suicidal, self-harming, and drowning my thoughts with handfuls of pills, I seriously entertained notions of solipsism. Solipsism and jumping out the window. Also in high school I was incredibly paranoid and while I rationally understood that it was impossible, I was afraid people were reading my thoughts. Thoughts which primarily consisted of harming those around me and gay sex.

[Anonymous No.2522327]

I used to believe crop circles were all hoaxes before I actually looked into them and found there are a plethora of unexplainable things such as lasting effects or the bending of brittle plants without causing damage
http://www.bltresearch.com/index.php

[Anonymous No.2522353]

>>2522289
>I used to think poltergeists...were real
http://www.spr.ac.uk/main/news/colvin-acoustic-properties-poltergeist-rapping

[Anonymous No.2522369]

>>2522353
>Society for Psychical Research
>Psychical

what is this even

[Anonymous No.2522375]

sure OP, then you'll grow old, illogical and obsolete and fall into the same methods of prayer in search of meaning to your useless life as you inch ever closer to death

In fact, your post seems to indicate a need for validation of your facade of critical thinking for yourself.

[Anonymous No.2522386]

I was raised in a strict conservative Christian home. Hardcore Creationists - I went to lots of creationist conferences, met Ken Hamm, Kent Hovind, and all the others; read loads of creationist books. Biblical literalist, etc.

Now I have 2 degrees in science, working on my PhD, researching evolutionary speciation and adaptation. Feelsgoodman.

Started questioning young earth creationism around 18/19. Started questioning Biblical literalism around 20/21. Started feeling skeptical, but agnostic about evolution around 22. Didn't really fully accept evolution until I was about 24 (when I got my first Biology degree). I'm 29 now.

It was a slow transition to get out from the indoctrination of my childhood. But looking back, I feel good about the transition, and I understand why it took so long to undo the brainwashing. I can tell you from first hand experience, it is a long, slow, confusing process from one end of the spectrum to the other. The way religion is conducted (at least in America), is so damaging to young minds and their ability to think for themselves. But more than anything I have great sympathy for creationists and Bible thumpers.

[Anonymous No.2522393]

>>2522369
It's a word that's been around for about 100 years. Poor attempt to deflect away from the actual data

[Anonymous No.2522398]

>>2522386
To clarify: I have great sympathy because I understand they are brainwashed and genuinely believe what they are doing is good, and God's will, but they have no clue how lost they really are.

[Anonymous No.2522410]

This thread!

I feel sorry for you Americans. I recently looked up the weird data about beliefs in your country and was astonished.

[Anonymous No.2522455]

>>2522393
>data
>implying one biased source proves anything

[Anonymous No.2522488]

When I was a kid, I believed in god, because that's what my parents told me. Why would I think they were lying?

For a while I also kind of thought I had magic powers, but it was more like a game than actually believing it.

I'm proud to say that I never believed in Santa Claus, though. My parents didn't really sell it that well, and my older brother was clearly skeptical also.

[Anonymous No.2522514]

Growing up in a religious family, I used to be a scholarly Orthodox Christian. I was fighting the good fight, trying to love everyone, and set them straight by my example. When I sinned, I would cry. I would only confess once a year, because I saw confession as a more direct communication with god than daily prayers.

What happened was at some point my teacher at the Sunday school told me to break up with my girlfriend (obviously because we were sinning, and to protect me and her from any unwanted pregnancies). After she begged and pleaded, I just couldn't see how my behaviour was helping her at all. So I distanced myself from religion, and even though I still believed in God, I chose eternal death, if it meant I would see her smile. A few years later, she fucked a dude and left me heart-broken. I haven't had a relationship since then.

After she left, I was alone, but in the mean-time I matured enough to be able to dismiss the most absurd of my beliefs. Some of those beliefs, like epistemological positivism, still remain with me.

Even though I'm a gnostic atheist, I still have my two copies of the bible that sometimes study for historical or linguistic insight.

>But why are you a gnostic?
Being as I am not of divine nature, I cannot discern between an all-perfect god, and an impostor that has all perfections except for one: the perfection of having all perfections. This means that believing in god is something only a god would do without doubt. The moment I believe in god is the moment I consider and proclaim myself one.

/rant

[Anonymous No.2522563]

>>2522514
>can't know god without being god...hurrr...
>can't understand that there's nothing to understand about god, hence why everyone's agnostic
>I must be a gnostic atheist

dude, you can say anything and mean nothing, you can take positions about the divine, you can never actually believe
you can't be a gnostic atheist, you either accept the notion of no deities or you don't.
you can never know the truth about anything, so why pretend?

[Anonymous No.2522606]

>>2522563
I do accept it, but only by merit of it being beyond my flimsy human logic.

[Anonymous No.2522663]

I was hyper-religious when I was younger, but I have a tendency to be rather zealous about everything I believe. But school was higher in my authority rankings than church, so when we learned in 6th grade "science" the the earth was several billion years old, it undermined what I'd learned in church from my creationist pastor (Baptists are particularly stupid). It started slipping slowly after that. If my church had been more moderate I probably would have been able to reconcile my faith with science, but they weren't and in a way I'm glad. I'm not a huge fan of moderate or liberal christians. They're better than fundamentalists, but barely.

Also, I was an arrogant little shit (still am, but I'm bigger now) and got annoyed when people attributed everything I did to god. He didn't do my homework or take my tests. Why should he take all the glory instead of me?

[Anonymous No.2522668]

i still believe in GOD but not in the way most people understand the concept.

we went through the idea of god as a clock maker a diest belief of god will return to sort all things out.

but eventually i just came to realise that GOD being man made and anything i wanted it to be could be anything i wanted it to be and so I made a GOD for me that is the best and most awesome god of all time and basically thats it.

the only thing that can limit meis my imagination and through a combination of self realisation and conversation with others my imagination flys as free as GOD in whatever capacity i chose it to at the moment i feel like whatever i want it to be

so poop on you

[Anonymous No.2522678]

>>2522563
oh dear you cant know truth huh

i feel sad for you.

truth is beauty and beauty truth

beauty is in the eye of the beholder

the only truth you ever need to know.

[Anonymous No.2522707]

>>2522455
>Implying we should ignore the 'data' from the voyager probes since they come from a biased source

[Anonymous No.2522745]

>>2519127
When i was little. I learned that i was supposed to fear of god or something. After that i realized i was retarded.

[Anonymous No.2522803]

>>2522707

Oh lawd!

Please, please, elaborate how the Voyager spaceship data is biased. As far as I know, the people in NASA made sure Voyager didn't have any pro-Gas-giants or pro-natural-satellite stance that might have conflicted with the data being shown in a more positive, in comparison to, a more negative point of view. When Voyager was <span class="math">elected[/spoiler] for the mission, his personal record had nothing to do with his professional capability, and as a result, there is no doubt that they could count fully with Voyager's work.

[AcidFrippFag (Manifestation of Lord Vish/mu/) !!aA0GbTMNLDz No.2522822]

Being an Anti-Gnostic Deist Christian, I do think there is a God.
In the days of my youth I, as most people, sort-of believed in pseudoscientific things, but never REALLY.

Now I don't believe in any pseudoscience. At all. EVER.

[Anonymous No.2522823]

I was once Christian.

I tried polyphasic sleep.

I flirted with anti establishment radical leftist politics.

[Anonymous No.2522848]

>>2522803
It comes from nasa
Nasa is a government organisation
In order to justify the funding it receives it must produce advances and new data
It is more biased than someone investigating on their own funding

[Anonymous No.2522879]

Atheists are boring know-it-all teenagers.

[Anonymous No.2522885]

>>2522879
Blacks steal bikes

[Anonymous No.2522887]

My parents tried to raise me Jewish even though my mom's family was Christian.
They took me to hebrew school, told me all about how I was named after the son of Abraham and filled me with religious drivel. My mom's family was surprisingly cool about my and my mom's Jewishness and never tried to convince me otherwise until I was about six and I finally turned to my parents one day before hebrew school and said: "God is not real. That's just stupid..... And neither is Santa Claus."
My mom said that I was right about Santa Clause and my dad said that I hurt his feelings and that he still wanted me to go to hebrew school. I said "no. I'm not going. I want to go study space."
They didn't make me after that but my dad tried to get me to pray every night and engage in other religious activities.
Then he lost his job as a doctor due to drug use and then 9/11 happened.
He became an agnostic atheist.
Myself, I'm pretty much an atheist.. A humanist if you count that. Also a bit of deist but a completely non-spiritual one, I just believe that the laws of physics are tantamount to God.

[Anonymous No.2522904]

My mum always used to take me to see this homeopathist/massager/physiotherapist person when I was much younger, and I thought that she knew everything.

I realise that homeopathy with serial concentrations of water is complete horse shit but she was also able to do a lot of other strange things that I can't so easily dismiss.
She's have me lie on a hospital-style bed, then put small containers of various chemicals on my chest and have me push against her hand with one of my arms. For some of the jars I could put up considerable resistance with my arm, with others my arm felt as weak as a little infant's. From that she was able to test what I was allergic to. It was strange.

[Anonymous No.2522915]

>>2522848

4chan won't let me post this.

[Anonymous No.2522925]

>>2522887

After that, my mom's family decided that I was fair game for a conversion and started to work away.
I retaliated with science.
Mainly with Sagan.
At around age 14 I destroyed my two of my cousins' belief in God and turned them onto biology.
They stopped fucking with me after that though never forgave me.

[Anonymous No.2522932]

>>2522904
That's called applied kinesiology and it's bullshit. I have had a few try it on me and you can tell they are varying the force they use to try and trick you. Maybe as a kid you didn't notice.

[Anonymous No.2522998]

>>2522932
Possibly. I mean I really remember my arm actually feeling weaker, as though I wasn't able to push with any where near as much force as before, rather than her pushing down harder with her hand. But she was holding my arm and shoulder in place so she could have changed her grip on the shoulder slightly or something so that I wasn't able to use my arm as well as before. Also I seem to remember she determined my allergies correctly. Then again between different chemicals she'd do weird hand-symbol type things and press my chest and shoulder with them. It sounds increibly hokey looking back now, like something alsmot from Naruto.

But meh. If it was circus bullshit it was certainly more impressive circus bullshit than most of it.
I'm not going to staunchly defend it as valid, physiologically significant action, I don't really care that much.

[Anonymous No.2523008]

>>2519159
>After watching Zeitgeist for the first time...
>watching Zeitgeist
>Zeitgeist

LOL. Sorry to break it to you but that movie is about as factual as a Sunday sermon.

[Anonymous No.2523102]

>>2519127

I was a "Christian" in the very worst sense as a kid, as the type who condemned all of reality to hell. Imagine what virulent poison at the age of 7!

And then I just grew out. Didn't have much faith in God but still prayed to God for the wisdom of solomon at age 10. Around 14 realized that the same lack of knowledge and consideration of possibility that still allowed me to postulate the magician in the sky would also allow for the infinite plurality of worlds, gods, and forces as imagined in, no joke, the D&D cosmology. Yes, D&D got me started into the path to that grand cruelty and pleasure of critique and systemization.

Spinoza's The Ethics was both the apothesis of my contemplation of God and the final nail in any of the VULGAR STUPIDITY with which the majority of the population even begins to attach the word "God" to.

[Anonymous No.2523124]

>>2522915
It wont let you post because even the site knows how much shit is in that.
Do you have any evidence that the data are not genuine? You are resorting to ad hominem attacks because your beliefs have been challenged.
Your problem seems to be that the data were gathered by someone who works for a society that investigates the paranormal, who would you have conduct the research and gather the data? Since physicists have a history of doctoring results to fit hypothesis perhaps we should have original research done by biologists? After all if the theories are sound then even a child should be able to conduct the experiments. Should we also send mathematicians to look for new species, if they find something that does not fit descriptions then it is clearly something undiscovered

[Anonymous No.2523378]

>>2523124
>implying paranormal investigation is anything close to a science

[Anonymous No.2523506]

>>2523378
>Implying it isn't
>Still can't find a fault in the research or data

[Anonymous No.2523537]

>>2523506
>implying you're not a megatroll

[Anonymous No.2523549]

>>2523537
Still waiting for you to refute the analysis

[Multivac No.2523558]

INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER

[Anonymous No.2523636]

I was raised without any mention of religion - I can't even remember seriously considering it or the concept of God until I was in my mid-teens. I'm sure it had crossed my mind at some point, since it is an unavoidable obstacle in the navigation of concensus reality, but my first real marked consideration of it was during my teens. At that point I had nothing but vitriol for any kind of organized worship or rigid religious belief system, and identified myself as an atheist, although I would have been more appropriately labeled as an anti-theist - Hitchens was one of my favourite intellectuals, and perhaps still is, if for nothing other than his eloquence and wit, and I would regularly quote him in discussion and had a number of t-shirts that made clear my atheism to others (yeah, I was -that- kind of atheist. I suppose I can forgive myself now considering I was young and ignorant, but I can't help but cringe looking back. I still think my 'God Hates Figs' shirt was kind of clever, though.)

When I got out of high school I started to smoke a lot of weed and eventually began to experiment with psilocybin mushrooms - both of these really opened me up to new ways of thinking, especially the latter, and it would be a lie to say that they haven't had a profound influence my beliefs about the nature of reality - mushrooms were probably the final nail in the coffin of my atheism after an experience of ego dissolution leading me to a belief system more akin to pantheism or panentheism than anything else, although still distinct and unqie from either of those. I've begun to have a great deal of interest in eastern philosophy and I've only recently cut back on my smoking after being a daily user for approximately a year. I have a pound of powdered mimosa hostilis root bark that just arrived in the mail which I plan to use for my first (hopefully successful) DMT extraction.

[Anonymous No.2523644]

>>2523636

So I suppose it's fair to say I went in the opposite direction - I still have a great love for science, but hardly have the mind for it - I tend to gravitate towards literature and philosophy moreso than science and math simply because the abstract nature of the former two is easier for my mind to wrap itself around than the formulas and rigor of the latter two.

I have a very firm belief that what we are able to observe is only a very small portion of the ineffable, grand and intricate majesty of the universe. I think religions are all an attempt to grasp this ungraspable quality that manifests itself as the unscratchable itch - the bigger questions about who we are and why we're here - and find it really saddening that people cling so tightly to such limited and unmalleable views about the world.

[Anonymous No.2523651]

>>2523549
still waiting for a valid analysis

[Anonymous No.2523669]

>>2523651
>Pretending it hasn't already been linked

Typical creationist ignoring data that goes against their beliefs

[Anonymous No.2523705]

>>2523669
oh babe

[Anonymous No.2523700]

>>2522678
>>truth is beauty and beauty truth

But the truth can be disturbing. How can that be considered beautiful?

[Anonymous No.2523710]

>>2523705

[Anonymous No.2523726]

I was never very religious but I used to be more so than I am now.
Most of the stuff I believed in as a kid were things like bigfoot,ufos, the loch ness monster stuff like that.
I used to pride myself in being open to believing in just about anything.
I consider myself a atheist these days but I pride myself in not being a jerk about it.
I still have a soft spot for things like cryptozoology and aliens but I'm a lot more critical about it.
I'm willing to believe in anything if can prove itself
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence after all.

[Anonymous No.2523742]

>>2523726
What constitutes extraordinary evidence is arbitrary and therefore flawed

[Anonymous No.2523754]

definition of spiritual: you believe their is a lot more to reality than the sum of present day observations and science

if you don't believe this then your not a scientist, maybe an engineer or mathematician, but definitely not a scientist

if you're religious then you're definitely not intelligent, and this is 100% true for mainstream religions

[Anonymous No.2523771]

>>2523742
Extraordinary evidence is subjective but it has to be sufficient enough to convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt.
That's what I meant.

[Anonymous No.2523782]

>>2519127
i went through a serious rationalist, critical thinking phase, about 7 years

then i realised i was happier believing in all kinds of silly shit. so i read a whole load of post modern stuff that told me it was okay to do all that

[Anonymous No.2523788]

>>2523754
Sects are better than the "mainstream"?

[Anonymous No.2523806]

>>2523788

I wasn't really referring to sects, more to personal religions, of which some famous scientists have dabbled

[Anonymous No.2523808]

>>2523771
Precisely why it's flawed.

[Anonymous No.2523829]

>>2519127
"did you at one point in your youth believe in god and/or pseudoscience"
Yes for a long period.