Do you believe in God?

@manored,

manored wrote:

However you already knew his concept existed before going down that way, didnt you? Well, I guess you thought new things along the way anyway

Hello again,
That is not entirely correct, I knew a concept existed, at no point in my post do I refer to gender, it would seem pointless to place a humanesque persona to a social structure (apologies if you consider this to be nit picking). Nontheless the journey was interesting & many offshoots have arisen.
It's just a pity I was not armed with such insights when I got kicked out of religious education class at school for asking if we could skip christianity and maybe cover some budhism.:shocked:
Cheers Folks,
TTFN

1 Reply

@schloopfeng,

schloopfeng wrote:

Hello again,
That is not entirely correct, I knew a concept existed, at no point in my post do I refer to gender, it would seem pointless to place a humanesque persona to a social structure (apologies if you consider this to be nit picking). Nontheless the journey was interesting & many offshoots have arisen.
It's just a pity I was not armed with such insights when I got kicked out of religious education class at school for asking if we could skip christianity and maybe cover some budhism.:shocked:
Cheers Folks,
TTFN

That use of gender was an accident, the word "god" is still strongly related to the image of an old man in my mind Smile

What I meant is that it seens the beggining of your journey was also its conclusion, what is interesting.

You got kicked out for just that? Are you sure it wasnt a christian education class with a general name to make it sound neutral? Smile

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@Pythagorean,

I believe in the possibility of God, but also in the possibility of Godlessness. Truth is all we can do is live our lives as we see fit to, and hope that if God is there then it was all good enough. If not, then bad luck.

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@Pythagorean,

I believe in a creating entity. Often when I try to describe such an entity I may use language that appears to others to point toward a typical concept of the Christian God simply because I was raised Lutheran, but I personally consider my philosophy/belief to be entirely different from Christianity.

I don't believe the creating entity looks like us, but I do believe it has the capacity of thought. I believe it is spiritually and (oddly enough) techonologically advanced to have achieved the power to act as a creating entity.

I also believe that the ultimate purpose of humanity is to achieve that same power. I believe the experience of evolving from single-cell organisms through to creating entities ourselves is the reason we endure, the reason we learn, the reason we seek technology instinctively. Of course I don't believe that I or anyone else currently in the world will be the one to achieve such a feat. I feel we still have much evolution to survive and endure before reaching such heights.

While my belief certainly places much importance on various hard and soft sciences, I also believe that the only evolution that will lead us to our destination will be one that includes cultural, artistic, social and spiritual evolution as well. In this, while bleeding-edge scientists and thinkers may appear to be the popes and priests of my belief, even "average" individuals may encourage our advancement, such as those who refuse to move to a segregated area of a bus, or stand in front of tanks in protest of wrongdoing.

The part of my belief that usually makes me quite unliked among many is my position that "playing God" with bioengineering and similar fields should not only be allowed, but should be encouraged because of the likely advancement to our species' knowledge and understanding of the universe that they promise.

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@Pythagorean,

I agree that "playing god" should be encouraged, but I dont think standing in front of tanks, or anything other than simply stating your opinion, is a good form of protest.

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@manored,

God is One, God = All.
Nothing is more powerfully true than everything, than God, One or All.
Equal is the truth that shall set us free, try it you'll see!

=
MJA

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@Pythagorean,

I often posed myself this question. And when I get close to the answer it just slips away. Very Happy

So no, I do not know if I believe for the fallowing reasons:
1) I thought humans invented God because they needed to talk with someone and find someone who will listen them. God in the end is just: talking to yourself.
2) I think I believe in something superior, in God. But I do not want to believe if He does exists that He leaves all this suffering.
3) I want to think that there is someone who is watching over us; so that we will not end like in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell), and that there is no one who will counterbalance the humans twisted by selfishness and greed.
4) I fallow the: I believe only in what I hear, sea or touch.
5) I have to read the Qur'an, the Bible and some other religious text, just in case.
6) I seldom mingle religion with faith with church, seldom but still I do. When I get rid of it (soon, I hope), I will ask myself again.

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@Pythagorean,

Good questions, Jester. While I could never hope to answer them for you, I can show how I would answer them for myself:

1. Why would people need a God to talk to if they can just talk to themselves? Did humans create "procreation"? Or did some kind of deity?

2. Suffering is allowed to exist because enduring suffering strengthens beings that can rebuild themselves. In enduring adversity, human beings adapt and in some instances evolve, which leads toward becoming a creating entity/deity/god. In such a way, the allowance of suffering is an act of compassion.

3. Within my belief, people who bring the world to such a state as in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four are (likely unknowingly) working against humanity's evolution, as do those who, say, deny or try to stop technological advancement because of religious reasons. If humanity is capable of godly powers, sickness and illness, death and age, pain and suffering could be essentially overcome. These people deny us the ability to overcome these inauspicious things. The type of entity I believe in, however, would do nothing itself to guard against such individuals, because our own revolution against and overthrow of them is part of our evolution. If we cannot free ourselves, we will never appreciate (or comprehend) the viewpoint of a species who has.

4. I can see, hear, touch, and research evidence of human evolution.

5. I've read the Bible and a few other religious texts, but not the Q'uran. Very few of them provide me with any evidence of human evolution, or that our instinct toward evolution is in any way useful to us as a species. While I personally find them pretty useless, I recognize that they could well and easily inspire others to promote the evolution of our species in a myriad of ways.

6. It would be easy for me to dismiss religion altogether, knowing as I do what a destructive and manipulative sort of social institution it can be (and has been). But, I try to the best of my ability to keep in mind what I've mentioned above - that religion may inspire others to promote our advancement in some fashion or other.

To MJA, I would respond:

Quote:

The concept of a god is One, the concept of a god = All.
Nothing is more powerfully true than the concepts of everything, than the concept of a god, One or All.
Equal is the truth that shall set us free, try it you'll see!

Or something like that.

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@Pythagorean,

Hail,
Here are the answers:

1. Because you can lie to yourself and the men. But you can never lie to someone superior that knows everything, hence you are forced to confess or in other words open your true feelings.

2. Probably I formulated this a little bit wrong of what I truly intended. I just do not consider it just. But I'm not the one that should judge, am I?

3. I do not want believe in something that just stares because this is for humans.

4. Till I do not see God, I will never be sure.

5. This is for "just in case."

6. That's me for now.

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@Pythagorean,

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It would seem to me that God is precisely as real precisely inasmuch that I am affected by him. Sadly, the assumption that there is an immutable, immortal "I" that experieinces things I have found to be sadly mistaken. If that is the case, then how Can I say that "I" am affected by god? Indeed, I don't believe because God supposedly loves me. How can I believe this when I don't believe in "I"?
[/size]

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@Pythagorean,

I'm gonna reply before having read all of these responses. I'm sure this is quite an interesting discussion. What a loaded question, though:

"Do you believe in god?" I'll play along with the 'god' we've all been programmed to imagine. If you think about it, a god that depends on faith is no god, BUT

I believe there is a greater power, in a military sense. I believe this greater power is cowardly and unjust. I believe this thing could not hope to possess the qualities we have earmarked for it. And I believe it's time we all exhale, and welcome each other to the real planet earth.

Welcome!

1 Reply

@Pythagorean,

Though I'm open to the idea of a God, I found out today in class that I literally half-cringe, half-laugh when someone uses a religious doctrine for something. For example, I believe we were discussing whether 'humans are innately good' and someone said we are 'because we are all made in the image of god, and god is good, therefore we are'. It took all I had to stop myself laughing. No offence, it's just a thing.

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@Kolbe,

Kolbe wrote:

Though I'm open to the idea of a God, I found out today in class that I literally half-cringe, half-laugh when someone uses a religious doctrine for something. For example, I believe we were discussing whether 'humans are innately good' and someone said we are 'because we are all made in the image of god, and god is good, therefore we are'. It took all I had to stop myself laughing. No offence, it's just a thing.

No offense taken. You should have spat in his face for imposing such a sad belief system on the class. I do think humans are innately good, but not because of some twisted deity that cannot speak for itself.

Did you at least let out a "Pppffsht!" :rolleyes: ?

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@Kolbe,

Kolbe wrote:

Though I'm open to the idea of a God, I found out today in class that I literally half-cringe, half-laugh when someone uses a religious doctrine for something. For example, I believe we were discussing whether 'humans are innately good' and someone said we are 'because we are all made in the image of god, and god is good, therefore we are'. It took all I had to stop myself laughing. No offence, it's just a thing.

Kolbe, please I do not mean to put you on the spot, but if you would please tell me of one single individual that was born bad or evil. Just one.

Thanks,
William

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@William,

Hello William. Okay, assuming that Kolbe cannot name a single person, where are you going with this?

Do you mean to agree that people are innately good, or that they choose to be bad?

1 Reply

@Pusyphus,

Pusyphus wrote:

I'm gonna reply before having read all of these responses. I'm sure this is quite an interesting discussion. What a loaded question, though:

"Do you believe in god?" I'll play along with the 'god' we've all been programmed to imagine. If you think about it, a god that depends on faith is no god, BUT

I believe there is a greater power, in a military sense. I believe this greater power is cowardly and unjust. I believe this thing could not hope to possess the qualities we have earmarked for it. And I believe it's time we all exhale, and welcome each other to the real planet earth.

Welcome!

I dont think it has to be cowardly and unjust to allow the world to be this way, if it exists... it merely has to be a supreme being... In the same way that we may become interested and fiddle with ants, but not interested enough to try to change their situation for better, "god" may see us as ants: Interesting to observe and fiddle, but not significant enough to direct any special effort towards.

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@manored,

Ahh. But surely it would be aware that it was being revered as a respectable creator, with all the crap that goes around on the internet. (And yes, god would have the internet). And, going with the fair assumption that it knows, I don't see how else you would characterize it, other than cowardly.

This is not even getting into whether or not we were created by it.

Good, manored.

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@manored,

Manored said, "... it merely has to be a supreme being..."
Why does it have to be a supreme being? Maybe our scientist are right with their Big Bang Theory, and evolution form the simplest to the more complex. Perhaps the rules of the universe evolved as the planets and life evolved.
Or, the answer might be buried in the idea of infinity. Even Einstein commented on infinity being never ending AND never beginning. I don't understand infinity, but maybe the universe always existed in some form without any help from a god.
Majic

1 Reply

@Pythagorean,

I get what you say, majic. Now, let's just assume for the sake of this discussion that a god does indeed exist. Let's say it's the one that the christians talk about.

I wonder, would you think that god is worth respecting, given that we don't know who he is, what he looks like, or whether he picks his nose in public?

1 Reply

@Pusyphus,

I feel as a society we have lost respect of people and Nature. And I feel everything and everybody deserves respect. We are all living on this planet, experiencing in our own way, learning in our own way. I don't feel we have any need to interfere with others in their learning journey. So, if this god does exist he/she deserves as much respect as anyone else.
(In my philosophy we are all a part of the Life-Energy animating this world, and we all deserve respect.)
Majic

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