God

[picklemonkey]

Re: God

i actually had a 'God' conversation over lunch. same story, different person... "where do you think we go when we die? really? well i'll pray that you go to heaven at your funeral if you die"

[threehills]

Re: God

"proof" is not all around me. you telling me it's my choice to submit myself to an unseen force is your cult's way of saying that there is no proof but I should still believe in it. I would never submit myself to anybody... especially someone who I can't see, talk to, or have any proof of even existing

Bingo.

I am fulling willing to believe in God. I just want him to meet me half way. Stop by and say hi once in a while, I mean, he never calls, he never writes, its like he doesn't exits.

[picklemonkey]

Re: God

I respect your right to your opinions, but it seems that what you say is 100% emotive and has zero basis as even an attempted logical argument-based discussion. As such, there isn't really anything to...discuss

"Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

[picklemonkey]

Re: God

Its not scaring its more rewarding, its more of knowing that you have a connection to your creator, I mean no matter what you say or believe you cant deny that u were created by someone else, it takes lots of power to come to this believe and submit to your creator with out seeing him, its the unseen but felt truth, I mean signs are all around us, look at the skies and sea and even the music you hear, we came to find this. I believe in Him because He is there and great, how would I not believe in the One who everything in my past present and future is in his hands, I believe in judgement day I dont think we were created to just live and die, its more than this, and I'd rather meet Him while I know Him, and not just another human that lived his life in this world enjoying its goods, without even a small appreciation to the Provider, I mean would you like that if u had a guest in your house?

"proof" is not all around me. you telling me it's my choice to submit myself to an unseen force is your cult's way of saying that there is no proof but I should still believe in it. I would never submit myself to anybody... especially someone who I can't see, talk to, or have any proof of even existing

[floridaorange]

Re: God

Look guys it's simple.

No God = No after-life = NON-EXISTENCE when we die (or are killed)= Why am I living now??? = To propogate my DNA??? = That's a pathetic reason = might as well kill myself now to prevent further suffering when I get old and get an enlarged prostate OR might as well kill myself now before I turn into a raving schizo and start killing people = SUICIDE = DEATH.

See it's simple.

Though provoking, well said and thanks for sharing your thoughts, that goes for miroslav as well, because he always brings a lot to the table on these topics!

[88Mariner]

Re: God

^ to paraphrase Miroslav, citing my conversational terrorism handbook, "if you're feeling rather than thinking, then there's no room for rational discussion"

[Miroslav]

Re: God

Its not scaring its more rewarding, its more of knowing that you have a connection to your creator, I mean no matter what you say or believe you cant deny that u were created by someone else, it takes lots of power to come to this believe and submit to your creator with out seeing him, its the unseen but felt truth, I mean signs are all around us, look at the skies and sea and even the music you hear, we came to find this. I believe in Him because He is there and great, how would I not believe in the One who everything in my past present and future is in his hands, I believe in judgement day I dont think we were created to just live and die, its more than this, and I'd rather meet Him while I know Him, and not just another human that lived his life in this world enjoying its goods, without even a small appreciation to the Provider, I mean would you like that if u had a guest in your house?

I respect your right to your opinions, but it seems that what you say is 100% emotive and has zero basis as even an attempted logical argument-based discussion. As such, there isn't really anything to...discuss

[Kat]

Re: God

Its not scaring its more rewarding, its more of knowing that you have a connection to your creator, I mean no matter what you say or believe you cant deny that u were created by someone else, it takes lots of power to come to this believe and submit to your creator with out seeing him, its the unseen but felt truth, I mean signs are all around us, look at the skies and sea and even the music you hear, we came to find this. I believe in Him because He is there and great, how would I not believe in the One who everything in my past present and future is in his hands, I believe in judgement day I dont think we were created to just live and die, its more than this, and I'd rather meet Him while I know Him, and not just another human that lived his life in this world enjoying its goods, without even a small appreciation to the Provider, I mean would you like that if u had a guest in your house?

man you need to broaden your horizon and add some different information in your head and then decide what you believe,... seriously there so many things you havent even thought of.
start with anthropology then go to quantum physics - THINK independetly

[trick12]

Re: God

please don't try to scare me into believing in God because of the consequences. tell me why you believe in him, minus the obvious fact that you don't want to face the consequences

Its not scaring its more rewarding, its more of knowing that you have a connection to your creator, I mean no matter what you say or believe you cant deny that u were created by someone else, it takes lots of power to come to this believe and submit to your creator with out seeing him, its the unseen but felt truth, I mean signs are all around us, look at the skies and sea and even the music you hear, we came to find this. I believe in Him because He is there and great, how would I not believe in the One who everything in my past present and future is in his hands, I believe in judgement day I dont think we were created to just live and die, its more than this, and I'd rather meet Him while I know Him, and not just another human that lived his life in this world enjoying its goods, without even a small appreciation to the Provider, I mean would you like that if u had a guest in your house?

[sammwalk]

Re: God

Look guys it's simple.

No God = No after-life = NON-EXISTENCE when we die (or are killed)= Why am I living now??? = To propogate my DNA??? = That's a pathetic reason = might as well kill myself now to prevent further suffering when I get old and get an enlarged prostate OR might as well kill myself now before I turn into a raving schizo and start killing people = SUICIDE = DEATH.

See it's simple.

The reason we don't do this is because we know that we'll get in trouble and run into a lot of pain. This is very simple and obvious. Morality is more of a formality of our own personal ways to devise systems to avoid getting hurt while simultaneously permitting as much freedom as possible for as many different types of people as possible.

[sammwalk]

Re: God

I've often struggled with this one... On one hand, I see what you're saying...but to me it always comes back to this:

How do you attribute "meaning" to something that is purely the result of an inanimate, deterministic scientific process?

First, determinism is not entirely scientifically proven- there are experiments which cast doubt on this idea. But let's not let that get in the way...

As we established earlier, science can't even establish me as a free being; the best science can do is to show me as a finely programmed machine.

True- instead, one's free will is determined by their own perception of it. If you think that you have free will, then you do (and by "think" I mean, "feel", as opposed to one's rational belief which may say otherwise-as you're doing here). There might be problems with this too, but we must reconcile the free-will problem with external influence which escapes our determinism/non-determinism problem above, which is why we can't get hung up on it.

And then there's the fact that we don't even know why there is any science in the first place; why there should be this elaborate deterministic network of cause and effect, probabilities, etc. rather than nothing at all.

We shouldn't get carried away with this at this point- we do exist in some form or another. Let's not get side-tracked with skepticism

So, we're here for ultimately no reason and you could well conclude that all of existence itself is irrational and absurd (this all kicks in somewhere before the big bang).

Again, I don't want to get off on the rationality of the existence of the universe. However, indeed you are correct that we are here for no reason- if we grant that this reason is to fulfill some purpose other than plain cause and effect.

And now you're going to talk to me about introducing some "meaning" and "hope for hope's sake" into this picture?

Yes- human endeavors.

Well, I guess you can personally make whatever attributions of meaning you want to the circumstances of your existence...but it seems to me like your attribution of meaning is nothing more than a hallucination or a personal delusion. There is nothing significant about it beyond how it happened to tickle your whim or fancy. The truth is that we're expendable, utilitarian, insignificant. I don't see why we should be "good" to one another or why we should have "hope for hope's sake" beyond maybe some utilitarian/Darwinian premise that maybe we all buy into.

Don't equivocate the word "meaning" with "purpose". Things do have meaning to us; however, we have no greater purpose than simple existence (and that hinges on determinism...unlikely as well).

In short, it just seems highly irrational and borderline ridiculous to talk about embracing the notion of existence based purely on cold science and then in the same breath to start making personal statements in relation to one's existence about "meaning", "beautiful", "hope", "love", etc. If it's a godless world, there really is nothing meaningful about you at all.

Again, "purposeful" not "meaningful". I just don't see where value judgments like beauty and emotions like hope and love have anything to do with embracing god and rejecting reductionism. Like what I said before about our free will being true because we feel like we have it- this is also sufficient for emotion and symbolic attribution.

[sammwalk]

Re: God

Life is a beautiful thing, and many things will never be answered or understood. Faith has a great role in answering those blank spots. I would not want to live a life that is full of nothing, void, space. I choose to believe my purpose is for a reason and there is another "life" beyond this one. It is not what I have heard, it is what I have witnessed with my own eyes. I believe the beautiful thing about any religion is that you have to choose to believe, and in doing so you are awarded. Some people will believe when they see it, I believe because I feel it and there could be no other answer for me.


here is my premise. someone that does not have faith has one less option in life. There have been countless times in my life where I have took a knee and prayed. It is like meditation. I am able to express myself and ask for help. Someone without faith does not have that. They have their physical world and that is it. I am not saying one is right or one is wrong. That is my Lord's job, not mine. It works for me, it makes me the person I am, and it makes me wake up every morning. If I were stripped of everything physical, there is one thing no one could ever take for me ... my faith.

This is the best argument for god I've seen on here so far- admitting that it is a personal choice (I would say delusion, and I mean that in the most respectful way possible). But I will say that there is as much spirituality in godlessness as there is in faith- the difference is only where you point your attention.

I will conclude with this ... the big bang theory ... sure the universe and everything we know was created, but what force pushed the button? Science will never tell you that answer. Is it possible a higher power pushed the button and said " here is the universe "? Absolutely, I have made my choice and my answer. I will always respect the opposite view or challenge it only strengthens my faith.

I don't not believe that we can count science out of this one. True, every time we open one door, we are confronted with several others, but this is no reason to doubt the search.

The paradoxical idea of the creation of the universe is most likely bound up in the subtle relationships between time, space, matter, energy, and our still very limited understanding of it. Much like the difficulty in describing and imagining the scientifically proven fact that time is not constant between reference frames, conceptualizing the universe as being infinite in some way (be it by size, age, or dimension) is necessarily going to conflict with our black-and-white view of existence/non-existence. Our ideas of something having size or shape or existence in a particular place at a particular time break down on the sub-atomic level. When we dig even deeper things become very strange and our notions of physical and non-physical begin to break down. Eventually the idea that the universe was "created" will probably be replaced by a much more complicated theory that allows for either "something from nothing" (as we would improperly call it) or else necessary infinite self-justified existence.

When people invoke god as creator of the universe, really that is no different than admitting that we cannot explain why the universe exists, why we cannot understand how something could come from nothing. "well, god made it." But we are now confronted with the question: from whence comes god? The usual response is: "god is infinite" or "god always existed" or "god was self-created". Well, if we are willing to admit that god is infinite, there is no reason for us to doubt that the universe- which we can see and experience and necessarily must exist because we're in it (even if it's all in our minds- something is somewhere)- could be infinite as well. Then if we remove god from this equation, we get the same answers.

Another problem is that we are simply reducing our notion of "god" to "creator of the universe". Even if we allow that such a god exists, there's still nothing to connect it with the god that is benevolent, that answers prayers, that lords over the afterlife, etc.

[88Mariner]

Re: God

Look guys it's simple.

No God = No after-life = NON-EXISTENCE when we die (or are killed)= Why am I living now??? = To propogate my DNA??? = That's a pathetic reason = might as well kill myself now to prevent further suffering when I get old and get an enlarged prostate OR might as well kill myself now before I turn into a raving schizo and start killing people = SUICIDE = DEATH.

See it's simple.

corrected for accuracy.


God = After life = existence = why am i living now? = to get to heaven? = that's a pathetic reason = might as well kill myself now to get to heaven. it's eternal you know. probably should stop wearing my seatbelt. = Suicide = Death.

[asdf_admin]

Re: God

That's the beauty of an intellectual conversation.

[Garrick]

Re: God

GOD DAMN, you guys put a lot of thought into this thread.