Do you believe in God?

hi Pathfinder...

look at the animal world, look around nature and tell me if what you see isn't life and death, and the struggle to live. We humans do not scape of it. the only difference in the natural world, free of any consciousness. Animals don't need reveange they accept status quo. But human being in defeated feels hurtly bad and in xtremely when he feels cheated, that's the point. Human being is the only one who knowing his lamb condition is able to face a lion, contradicting nature volition but figting hardly because of his ego, and it doesn't matter in that try he can find death, at last honor, dignity must be reunited.

Carpe Diem et Memento Mori

Destruction and war are natural given the circumstances...

Not convinced fellas!

It is this biological point of view that causes us to have differing viewpoints on mankind.

I will not compare myself to an animal and therefore will not judge life as though I am nothing more than another amoeba.

The difference between how biologically inclined thinkers see the universe and how I see it can best be described this way:

When they look into the night sky they see the stars, when I look there I see the blackness the stars reside in.

When the teacher looks at a student's school project drawn on a bristle board, they see the work of art, but in comparison to what I am talking about here, I would look at the bristle board itself. Where did the bristle board originate? What is this blackness of space where everything seemed to have taken place?

How can we talk about big bangs, atomic explosions in outer space, the edges of the universe, the exact second of the creation of the universe, etc. etc. and not even consider the PLACE that all this must reside to happen in the first place.

I watch these documentaries that travel through the universe with their special effects, showing the forming galaxies as millions of stars wrapped in neat colorful spirals, and floating around in the huge vastness of SPACE, and as we do the flyby we see billions of stars floating around as though they are passing by us like a streetlight might on the road. The special effects are fancy but not honest.

What I see is all that blackness that these lights float in. No matter how far back in time you travel, even to to the birth of the first star, or the first dust particle waiting for its atoms to explode, there is still that vastness of space, that black 'PLACE' where this happens. Why is it that these so called intelligent geniuses can sit around and theorize about a big bang and not ask themselves WHERE this happened in the first place. That 'WHERE', that PLACE, suggests that the universe already exists in the first place and causes a dilemma from which they cannot retreat.

It is the unknown factors of all of this creation and existence theorizing, that man should be looking to, not the theories of scientists brave enough, and foolish enough, to declare their findings facts. It is the unknown where we will find the true answers. It is not the stars that we should be looking at for answers, we already know they are there and that there are many gazillions of them, and that the universe is huge, to say the least. We know that! But what we do not know, and what many ignore, is that all of this vastness of black sea is as much a PLACE as the piece of ground you are standing on, and cannot be overlooked when trying to establish what creation is all about. You know where the boundaries of your yard lie, and what is beyond them. Explorers spent lifetimes traveling the planet to discover what is on the other side. Well, what we need to know in order to answer all of these questions about the meaning of life and the origin of creation, and whether or not the two are somehow tied together in some unknown mysterious force, instead of just being looked at as accidental, cosmological, biological mishaps, is "What is on the other side of this black sea where everything that we know has taken place?"

Man has been living this existence like the Whos of Whoville, which is a great representation of this mindset. We spend all of our time and effort trying to find out what is in the backyard as though there is nothing at all on the other side of the fence.

Just because we are talking about the expanses of the universe does not mean that we have addressed or considered the real boundaries. Why do we continue to treat the universe as our backyard as though there is nothing outside of the universe? The reason for this is because it is a mystery beyond our comprehension and it is futile to entertain. So off we go in our Starship Enterprise watching the lights float past like jellyfish glowing in the water, and never once considering the Black Sea in which they live.

The difference between you and I my friends, is that I look at the jellyfish, and than the water, and than what holds the water, and than what holds the planet that holds the water, the galaxy that holds the planet, the universe that holds the galaxy, and than WHATEVER holds the universe, etc. etc. etc.

The unknown my friends! The Great Mystery! That is the difference between the biologists and scientists and myself. They limit their thinking to what is graspable to them. I refuse to define limits to an unknown mystery powerful enough to be responsible for everything that exists.

The proponents of biology and cosmology all have one thing in common; they cannot answer the final question. Therefore we all still have the same quest regardless of how far we are willing to let our minds go.

Sincerely
Pathfinder

Animals evolve to superate their obstacles, wich are often each other. This means they are both cooperating and competing, and actually most forms of cooperation involve competition.

The statement is not wrong then, now is it?

As for men trying to dominate men, well that is our nature and it cant just be "put aside", it can merely be supressed.

Pathfinder: Why to look beyond the backyard if you do not yet know the backyard? We should gather information in order of difficult

hi Manored...

It can merely be controlled not supressed. (instinct)

I already feel familiarize with you...

greetings

Carpe Diem et Memento Mori

I'm not surprised by the results. It's a shame that religious and nonreligious folk can't get along. I don't beat on atheists and call them immoral, and I hope atheists don't beat on me for thinking i'm ignorant. In the end, we die anyway and what happens afterwards (if anything) doesn't matter as long as our lives were meaningful.

Although I'm officially Christian, my views leave me more Agnostic than anything else. Thats what I voted. I can't be sure of a deity's existence, but at the same time, it seems unlikely that we humans are all that exist.

I'm personally a fan of M-theory. I haven't studied it much, but it gives me a reason to believe that there is something more than just us, and that it is logical, but we, as humans in the lowly third dimension, aren't capable of fully understanding it. M-theory gives me an excuse to believe that some sort of entity in a higher dimension created us, as easily as we can create something in the 2nd dimension. It makes me feel better believing us humans with our f***** up society and all our little problems aren't the best existence has to offer. It actually makes me feel more secure believing we are practically nothing, and that there is an order beyond our full understanding.

Most of that just explained that the belief in God makes me feel better. Of course that proves nothing, which is why I voted Agnostic. I just hope this (our world, our society) isn't the best the universe has to offer. I don't know. Thats my two cents.

Hi Manored.

I guess its a matter of what you designate as your backyard, compared with what I consider my backyard. My backyard is obviously much larger than yours.

Dont look beyond it then

Its really quite simple why I could be labeled as agnostic, with a teensy bit of an atheist lean. I dont really care about what could possibly be out there, god-wise at least. I really dont care whether or not there is a heaven, a nirvana, a paradise, or nothing, it all means nothing to me because my life here and now is more important.

The problem is we all believe in or reject a different god.
Not quite like "believing" in gravity is it?

I am in a sort of flux as to what/who God is... I came out of 10+ years as a rather fundamentalist Christian... but I know that the 'God' I was taught about was more of an idol that was set up as the center piece of the Evangelical dogma. I was basically worshiping a concept. I guess my present state is one of believing in a fundamental 'Source' or 'Being' of some kind... though I hold no dogma as to the nature or attitude, if you'll allow the anthropomorphism, of this 'Source/Being'. I speak of 'Being' as more of a state or essence, than of a person (i.e. human being)....

---------- Post added 07-29-2009 at 02:42 PM ----------



We are taught, or come, to believe in a variety of 'concepts' which are reckoned as being 'God'.... at least that has been my own experience and observation...

Gravity has more support...

Like gravity, reincarnation is a law of the universe - it happens whether you believe in it or not. To me god is a created concept for the purpose of gaining power by people who created the church.
Majic

Majic; don't blame God for the only thing that sets us apart from other animals... We consceive of reality, therefore we are in it...At some point gravity has to break down...It does so for super novas, and I am certain it would do so for larger bodies, and no, I cannot begin to prove it....If you say reincarnation is a law; then I must ask you to prove it; and even while much of the earth is recycled, it is in a slightly different form... Now, if you are thinking of spiritual reincarnation, then I would say stop blowing sand up my ass...You are starting to hurt me...You cannot prove a spiritual existence let alone reincarnation of the spirit...It, and we are all material...It is matter, cells and genes which are transfered with new life... What ever life is, even if it is conceived of spiritually is not spirit, but life based upon matter, and reality... We are the last links in a chain...

Fido, I recently finished reading biologist, Bruce Lipton's book, The Biology of Belief, Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, and Miracles. Lipton's research indicates we are completely responsible for our lives. It is not our DNA that determines how we turn out in life, but something outside of the cell.
Here is what is written on the inside of the dust jacket.
"The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts."
The signals from outside the cell come from our Life Energy or Soul.
All I'm saying is there are serious researchers discovering at lot of evidence for the existence of a life-energy, or soul, that animates the physical body. Also, we are not unique, this life-energy also animates other animals including bears, cows, lions, etc.
As you indicated, there is no 'proof' for reincarnation, or soul, but the evidence for it is accumulating daily. We cannot remain dogmatic in only a physical world when there is accumulating evidence that suggest that a life-energy exist.
Majic

Majic; tell that stuff to the man or woman born black and raised with prejudice... Many people are born swimming against a current, and your book seems to preach a pull yourself up with your bootstraps attitude... Well who are they selling their books to??? You can afford it, and you can read it, and you have the time to read it...That luxury of time alone puts us far ahead of most, and you have to recognize what impediments people all struggle against if you will ever know anything about humanity...
Let me tell you a story... Polio is quite uncommon today... I may have been born the same year as the polio vaccine...But my older brother had polio, and was eighty percent parylized... Now, I did a lot of pulling and lifting when I young...It was my fate to be less, uneducated, for example so that he might be more than he could have been without my help...But I was made a beast of burden, and it was there I learned my sympathy for people, who are not uncommonly more messed up by life than my brother, yet with few of the obvious signs... I am my brother's keeper, and often I would have denied that fact, but it is true...We all have impediments, and we all need sympathy and understanding... And I will be the last to say we are all determined in our behavior by our genes...We are social beings, and there is an interplay, and to give one side of the other greater weight with pseudoscience does not seem rational...Which is not to say we are rational...We are very much in close touch with our emotions, and our emotions are tied to our autonomic nervous system....We feel our ways through life, but we have little control over our feelings...We can change our feelings only by changing our lives...

That may be true, but the poll isn't asking whether or not one believes in that (or any for that matter) particular conception of God. I voted "yes," but I don't presume to know this God outside of the common negative terms used to describe him.

But god is just like gravity and reincarnation: It exists whenever you believe in it or not, whenever he actually does something significant to us or not... =)

If souls exist, that doesnt necessarly means reincarnation does. I personally believe in life after dead, but I dont believe it necessarly has to be in a human body, on earth or even reality as we know it.

We didn't.

Here's what happened.



Absolutely nothing "sudden" about it.