god belief

[McRocket]

In a previous post I said that I agree with McRocket that they're ignorant,
but I haven't mentioned that I think I'm ignorant too.
However, in this level, all being ignorant and none being ignorant is the same thing.
We live in a world we don't understand (or is it only me?).
I believe that everything is possible, so, ignorance is relative.

Then bearing that in mind. I should change my 'line' to they are weak and/or potentially ignorant in so far as their basis for religious belief is concerned and/or desperate.

I like my original version (...weak and/or ignorant and/or desperate).

It's got more zing - lol.

 

[AFA]

Re: God Belief

What happened a divine intervention to split the thread in two?

I believe in Mod!!! :bowdown:

No. I'm still looking into the how's, when's, what's and most importantly why's.

 

[D-rock]

I'm one of those people that believe in God. I believe in him because of personal feelings and not any objective standard, but at least I can admit the reasons why I do. I also know there is no proof of God and don't have a problem with people that don't want to assume he exist because of that. I can see why logically they would be skeptical.

I wouldn’t consider all people that believe to all be weak, ignorant or desperate. Unless it's proven God doesn't exist than I'm not any more ignorant than anybody else. I don't need to believe in him because I'm desperate for more to be out there when I die, or to have some reward in the afterlife. That's not why I do the things I do. I do them because I feel they are the right thing to do whatever happens to me later on. If he came down and told me directly I would get nothing as a reward for doing good deeds I still wouldn't change anything. In fact you could argue that people that don't believe are weaker on the inside than some people that do. I think to have true faith takes inner strength. I have seen people fight, struggle, and carry on because of it when lesser people would have given up or giving in that don't have it. That doesn't seem to be instilling weakness to me. In some ways, even if I have no problem with them, I see people that can't get past what they can only sense for themselves as more hollow on the inside.


As to questions like for example: what was before God and if nothing was before him how can he exist to infinity backwards in time, what is infinity really like, why do we exist, what was God doing before existence, did God always exist, what was time like before time existed, what's the meaning of life, why does existence even exist in the first place among similar questions people have stated, you have to keep in mind that it doesn't mean there is no answers to those questions. That is all part of the concept people have of what they consider God, even when at a logical level it contradictory. It's more along the lines that human understanding can't even begin to fathom questions like why does anything exist in the first place. That doesn't mean it isn't real. Reality does exist for example. Nothing is nothing and how something can come out of nothing hurts me head just trying to think about it at a logical level. Even if you think existence has existed forever that's an equally non-understandable question. It could be argued that not only can't anybody answer things like that logically, it will be impossible to ever do it because the whole concept in of itself goes against logic. Some things are just far outside a human being's capability to understand.

 

[sammy402002]

I absolutely agree with everything D Rock said except believing in god. If something defies logic it could be because (a) it's wrong, (b) we're looking at it wrong, (c) logic hasn't yet reached a level where it can explain it (d) we don't have all the facts to apply logic or (e) it's beyond logic. Though to hear you say (e) D Rock is a surprise I must say.

Anyway, my point is, there is no way we can ever know for sure what came before or after, and for all we know the very CONCEPT of before and after does not apply to such things. Maybe before and after is something that we are limited to but that the universe is not, and it acts according to different rules beyond our comprehension.

I always think, we have mastered 3 dimensions, but the 4th dimension perhaps, time, we have not mastered. If we did master time, then life as we know it could change dramatically. You cannot help but think that whatever or however everything was made or whatever the answers to it all, that it operates above and beyond all the dimensions, on a different plane of existence, which means that time itself would not apply, which means that the concepts of before and after... are not even relevant.

Weird.

That was a Damn good post,Fox.-I agree with some of it,but I guess I am one of the people that believes in a God.I believe in Jesus Christ,my savior.----I have heard all the atheist stuff before.--Don't You believe in something?--What do You believe in?--I am just curious and not trying to put You down,Fox.----A Man has to believe in something bigger than Himself.I get strength from it.

 

[Ax3C]

I'm one of those people that believe in God. I believe in him because of personal feelings and not any objective standard, but at least I can admit the reasons why I do. I also know there is no proof of God and don't have a problem with people that don't want to assume he exist because of that. I can see why logically they would be skeptical.

I wouldn’t consider all people that believe to all be weak, ignorant or desperate. Unless it's proven God doesn't exist than I'm not any more ignorant than anybody else. I don't need to believe in him because I'm desperate for more to be out there when I die, or to have some reward in the afterlife. That's not why I do the things I do. I do them because I feel they are the right thing to do whatever happens to me later on. If he came down and told me directly I would get nothing as a reward for doing good deeds I still wouldn't change anything. In fact you could argue that people that don't believe are weaker on the inside than some people that do. I think to have true faith takes inner strength. I have seen people fight, struggle, and carry on because of it when lesser people would have given up or giving in that don't have it. That doesn't seem to be instilling weakness to me. In some ways, even if I have no problem with them, I see people that can't get past what they can only sense for themselves as more hollow on the inside.


As to questions like for example: what was before God and if nothing was before him how can he exist to infinity backwards in time, what is infinity really like, why do we exist, what was God doing before existence, did God always exist, what was time like before time existed, what's the meaning of life, why does existence even exist in the first place among similar questions people have stated, you have to keep in mind that it doesn't mean there is no answers to those questions. That is all part of the concept people have of what they consider God, even when at a logical level it contradictory. It's more along the lines that human understanding can't even begin to fathom questions like why does anything exist in the first place. That doesn't mean it isn't real. Reality does exist for example. Nothing is nothing and how something can come out of nothing hurts me head just trying to think about it at a logical level. Even if you think existence has existed forever that's an equally non-understandable question. It could be argued that not only can't anybody answer things like that logically, it will be impossible to ever do it because the whole concept in of itself goes against logic. Some things are just far outside a human being's capability to understand.

Very well said and written, D-Rock. :bowdown: :hatsoff: :bowdown:

 

[McRocket]

If he came down and told me directly I would get nothing as a reward for doing good deeds I still wouldn't change anything.

What if 'he' came down and told you to **** somone?
He told you that there was a good reason and that it would become apparent after you did it?

Would you do it?

Let me guess? 'God would never tell you to **** someone.' How do you know? You are not God. You cannot know what he/she is thinking. He/she works in mysterious ways.

No biggie. Just a thought.

 

[McRocket]

And I have one other question and one other thought.

As far as Christianity goes, all I have to do to go to heaven is to take the Lord as my saviour and to ask him to forgive my sins.

Fine.

So I can go out and **** and ****** 1000 women. And if one minute before I die I sincerely take the Lord as my saviour and ask him to forgive my sins then I am going to heaven.

However, if ****** Teresa on her death bed sincerely renounced her belief in God. Then she would upon her death be banished to hell for all time.

Explain to me how that makes sense.

And besides. God loves us all as his ********. And God is all powerful. And yet, simply because I do not take him as my saviour he would allow me to be banished to hell forever. No ****** worth 2 cents would ever allow that to happen to his *****.
'Oh', you might add, 'he has no choice'. Sure he does. He is ALL powerful. He is not ALL powerful with and asterisk. All powerful means ALL powerful. There is nothing he cannot do. Which means that he could stop his ***** from being banished to hell forever.
But yet he chooses not to simply because I do not take him as my Saviour.

No great ****** that I have ever known would ever allow that.

Sorry folks. I ain't buying it.

I am not typing that there is no God. But if he is the one many Christians believe in, then he is one heck of a flawed one, imo. And I got better things to do then believe in gods that are THAT flawed.

 

[YMIHERE]

However, if ****** Teresa on her death bed sincerely renounced her belief in God. Then she would upon her death be banished to hell for all time.

Explain to me how that makes sense.

You silly guy. It's because God loves us.

 

[McRocket]

Hey, whatever gets you through the night.

Just don't ever use it to justify anything bad and power to you.

 

[dick van cock]

How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me
That's why I love mankind
I burn down your cities - how blind you must be
I take from you your ******** and you say how blessed are we
You all must be crazy to put your faith in me
That's why I love mankind
You really need me
That's why I love mankind

(Randy Newman: "God's Song")

 

[Ax3C]

Okay ... here's the 'Q''s Notes version of how Christianity works:

Because Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan (one of God's fallen archangels who wanted to BE God) and ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and Life, they essentially fell from grace. When Adam was created, he was sinless and perfect as was Eve. But eating that fruit caused them both (and subsequently, the rest of "us") to become mortal, sinful, and fallible.

Carrying that forward, we ('we' being fallible, worldly, sinful man) created wars, strife, theft, ****, and all manner of evil and sundry things. Satan, being the Prince of Darkness, had been given dominion (essentially, the war for power was still being carried between he and God) over Hell, worldliness, and evilness.

Because God loved us, His ********, He gave Moses the Ten Commandments, etc., etc., etc.

We didn't listen no matter what God did for us, His ********, to show us His everlasting and eternal love. We gnashed our teeth, disobeyed Him, laughed at Him, and pretty much ignored Him.

God finally had enough of it and came to us in the form of Jesus, the ***. Jesus initially preached love for thy neighbor, forgiveness, turn the other cheek, and all of that stuff. After being tempted by Satan while He was fasting in the desert, though, God appeared before Jesus and gave Him a new gameplan.

Jesus was to be sacrificed; His ***** to be shed for us to wash away our sins and imperfections and give us life everlasting in the Kingdom of Heaven. His life was to be forfeited for us - God's beloved, wayward ******** - so that we may once again be perfect and without flaw.

Jesus was given up to the Saducees and Pharisees (the Jewish lawmakers and priests) by Judas Iscariot (one of His twelve disciples) and was essentially ******** by Pontius Pilate and his Roman centurions because He proclaimed Himself to be the "*** of Man" ... in essence, the Messiah.

As it unfolds, Pilate washes his hands and absolves himself of this matter and turns Jesus back over to the Pharisees, who were wanting Jesus ****** because He claimed to be the Messiah (Saviour).

He was crucified (which is a very grotesque, torturous way to die), died, was buried, arisen after three days ... and Christianity developed from there on.

Obviously ... this isn't word for word and I've oversimplified a lot of it because I'm actually getting tired of seeing this thread and feeling compelled to defend my faith.

Let's all end it with this, shall we?

There are atheists, there are agnostics, there are believers, and then there are those who don't quit know what to make of it.

ALL OF THOSE ARE OKAY TO BE. Dear God, people, why are we fighting over something as nebulous as Christianity??? Either you believe or you don't ... it's that damned simple, folks. Why are we making such a big damned deal out of this topic???

I personally have no use for the holier-than-thou Bible-thumpers who try to ***** me to believe their way is the right and only way. I find their methodology to be under-handed, devious, and just plain distasteful. I prefer to sit here and discuss my faith - jsut as I am now - without being told I'm going to Hell because I don't believe that a man wearing a white robe is my way to God. My way to God is through my heart.

I was called to my faith after I ended my hitch with Corps. I WANTED to be a Lutheran pastor ... but I had issues with the dogma and the politics in the Church. I prefer to worship my God in my own way. And I wish nothing more for any other believer. We all believe in something people ... be it a higher power, a nameless ,faceless deity, Satan, money, scientific principle, or whatever. It's in our nature to believe. It's called "HOPE". When you take away or deny hope, you deny life.

Why sit in judgment of someone just because they choose to believe something different than you or it defies "SCIENTIFIC" principles??? Why can't y'all just let each other be?

How hard is that, people? Accept one another, love one another ... life is too, too damned short to sit here and argue over this.

WARS have been fought because of religion.

Neither side will win, in the end. The Christians and other believers will go on believing and praying and the agnostics and atheists will continue to insist that God does not exist.

I have more to say, but my brain hurts ... and I need a damned cigarette.

 

[ChefChiTown]

Nobody can ever "prove" that there is or isn't a God. Neither side actually has a 100% VALID argument as to who is right or who is wrong. We all choose to BELIEVE one way or another. If you believe in God, you believe in God. If you don't believe in God, you still BELIEVE, only you believe that there isn't a God.

My personal stand point on religion is a completely neutral one. Yes, I find the whole idea of "faith" to be a little silly, but...who am I to say it's wrong? Just because I choose not to devote myself to God, doesn't mean that I'm a bad person or that I'm wrong for doing so.

One of my co-workers view on religion was very similar to what mine is. Everyone thought this guy was an atheist, although he was not, and we began talking about religion one day in the office. My boss had asked this guy, "Why don't you believe in God?". His response was/is the EXACT way that I feel about the whole topic of religion...

"It's not that I don't believe in God, I just choose to live my life based on what I KNOW. Nobody KNOWS if there even IS a God, yet one side of the argument would like to state that His existence is a FACT, even though their only 'evidence' is an extremely old book which has probably been incorrectly translated over the past 2,000 years. In my opinion, people who practice religion aren't serving God, they're serving themselves and they don't even know it. Whether God exists or not, one thing remains the same throughout all religions. Believing in God and being religious gives you something to look forward to when you die and that's all that matters."

Honestly, I couldn't have said it better myself. I agree with him 100%. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY that practices religion can actually present evidence that PROVES a God's existence. On the other hand, nobody that denies the existence of a God can PROVE that He/She doesn't exist.

Religion is built upon faith. Believers choose to serve a higher power and choose to be faithful. This, in turn, gives their life a purpose. There is absolutely NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Some people need it, some people don't...so who are we to judge one another?

Until hardcore, undeniable evidence is provided by either side, we should all just be happy with our own lives and stop expecting the "other side" to give in to what WE want them to believe.

 

[nukenitro]

I don't exactly believe in god. I believe that there is something out there fucking up my life. What I believe in are morals that I have taken from tons of different religions and made them my own on the basis of how one should treat others

 

[YMIHERE]

Nobody can ever "prove" that there is or isn't a God. Neither side actually has a 100% VALID argument as to who is right or who is wrong. We all choose to BELIEVE one way or another. If you believe in God, you believe in God. If you don't believe in God, you still BELIEVE, only you believe that there isn't a God.

In Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time, begins with an anecdote about an encounter between a scientist and an old lady:

A well-known scientist (some say it was the philosopher Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down

 

[belfastsixpack]

It's Russel's Teapot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of ******** at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

And also the basis of Pastafarianism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

 

[McRocket]

It's Russel's Teapot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot


And also the basis of Pastafarianism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Man, that is SO cool.

I REALLY have GOT to start reading more.

 

[McRocket]

I wouldn’t consider all people that believe to all be weak, ignorant or desperate.

And btw, I am all these things in different areas in my life.

Just not, imo, in religious matters.

But, who knows?

 

[Becks...poamr]

I believe in God. I believe in gods and goddesses. Just don't ask me my opinion on organized religion(s).

 

[bal]

I've been reading this thread. Some poster said you cannot prove God's existence. I say, then why claim God exists then, why speculate? If one claims it exists, but cannot prove it, I'd then say claims such as the Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Superman exist because I cannot prove they don't. When someone makes any claim, it's only logical to desire proof, if I said I was ******** by aliens, would you just believe me, or require proof first, like me presenting an *****? If I said I had Superman's powers, would you believe me, or require me to fly or lift a house or something?

When asked to defend religion, as soon as a Christian brings up the bible as evidence, with the first story, (the setup of Adam and Eve) I can usually send them running with their tails between their legs.

 

[YMIHERE]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. - Carl Sagan