What difference would the existence of a God make?

No. Many believe with all their heart and soul that there is a god, but look at the world. It's self-explanatory.

There is a huge difference in believing in God and acting like it. Man had indeed made a mess of the world. Without getting into a heavy discussion, I will just state that the world could be a much, much, much worse place if the millions of believing souls that take God's word to heart did not do so. This may be especially timely now that, at least in the east coast, we are now into Good Friday.

There will be untold number of people filling the Churches on Sunday that make it a regular habit at least twice a year.

Many humans proclaimed to be a god. That didn't help either.

If he made promises to us, and had the ability to see them through, then of course.

It would make no difference.

The believers already 'know' that a god "indeed exists", and the disbelievers will not suspend disbelief (by definition).

So same same.

I agree. Wether or not god exists is irrelevant. It is the question that is important.

The fact of God being actually in existence is irrelevant because religion is about a subjective relationship with God - not an objective observation that God exists.

Acting like God exists is all that matters because acting as if God exists is to follow the edicts that that relationship demands. Any good relationship demands effort, certain actions, and the want to gain more depth in that relationship. This depth takes knowledge.

I think the majority of religions go wrong when they do not attempt to gain anything more than a surface level of knowledge and do not understand all the facets of that relationship.

Religions tend to inhibit knowledge for it's believers. Certain sects of Buddhism, which only venerates the Buddha Nature (instead of encouraging the person to figure out how they can break the samsaric cycle) and Baptist Chrisitianity which believes all you need to do is believe and you are 'saved' - job done (these are only two examples).

I think the personal relationship between yourself and God is not only what religion should be, but can prove subjectively that God does exist. I wish not to exclude religious beliefs that do not have a firm diety (like Buddhism or Taoism). I have no clue of thier validity and wish not to judge against them. One - because my beliefs preclude this judgement - and Two because I am not a subject to thier structure.

TTF

It would depend on what kind of god existed. There is no logical reason to believe that a deity would be perfect or kind.

A god who was indifferent to human existence and suffering would make no difference in the world. It would not intervene to save lives or respond to prayers. It would not correct the problems it created. It would leave mankind wallowing in ignorance and misery for tens of thousands of years.

A god who was unwilling or unable to communicate his existence and desires unambiguously to every human being would cause all sorts of screwy religions to spring up, each claiming to have exclusive knowledge of the Truth.

A cruel god would create imperfect beings that were biologically programmed to compete for survival no matter what the cost to others. They would fight over mates, territory, food, and ideology. A truly sadistic deity would create flies, mosquitoes, worms, and other parasites to inflict pointless suffering on animals and children.

A god who required his chosen people to make war on their neighbors, sacrifice animals to insure his continued support, and kill people for the slightest infraction of his rules would make the world a worse place to live.

A god who demanded a certain standard of behavior and was willing and able to impose immediate consequences would make a big difference. Untestable promises of retribution in the afterlife are not a viable way to insure good behavior.

Immediate rewards for good behavior and punishment for transgressions would make a difference. Imagine a God who would boom out, "STOP THAT!" if one of his priests tried to molest a child, shrivel the organs of rapists, paralyze an arm raised to beat a spouse or kids, blind thieves, and make carelessly discarded trash buzz angrily around litterers' heads until disposed of properly.

If a god is going to judge us on our choices, it is morally obligated to clearly communicate its wishes and provide every human being with a sound mind, healthy body, good conscience and the will-power to control harmful urges.

The great majority of theists live their lives as atheists ... six days a week.

Quite so.

If there is a god then we would know. All of us ! There would be no room for discussion because it would be there and you could go see it and talk to it and it would do whatever god's do.

Nobody argues about the colour of the sky do they ? Ohhh no. That's because it's right there for anyone to see.
If there were a god right there for everyone to see then there'd be no arguments about that either.

Re: What difference would the existence of a God make?


It would depend on what kind of God it was. There may already be a God which simply doesn't interact with us or the Universe at all, or in ways that we could recognize, in which case, nothing would change. This condition would be indistinguishable from a "no God" world, which is the state we actually find ourselves in.

Or there could be a blatently, in-your-face God who meddles in everything that you do (like "Q" in Star Trek TNG), in which case changes would be obvious.

Or there could be sly, muddled type of God who interacted unpredictably, and with chaotic and irrational (seemingly) intent, like the Christian fundamentalist view of things: Human insanity expressed in a Deity.

If, and that's a big if, the bible stories are supposed to be true, many "sinned" during the time of Jesus. It would be no different today if somebody proclaimed to be "Jesus."

Terry;
If I read you correctly, you can live with a God who is not All-Powerful , and is indifferent to the whims and fancies of his " creation".
And the so-called moral obligation he/she/it
has to judge our actions.....which you refer to....
is this the extent of your God's responsibilities , or
concern?


Neitzsche;
For God's sake don't spoil it for them!
On the other hand , they could improve.....to seven days out pf seven !!!

Even with "seven days out of seven," this world will continue on the same path.

There's a message in the following article, but people will need to come to their own conclusions.
*****
March 27, 2005
The Vatican Code
By MAUREEN DOWD
Some may mock the Vatican for waiting until everyone on earth has read "The Da Vinci Code" to denounce "The Da Vinci Code."

I am not one of them. It's Easter, and I don't want to blot my catechism.

It's a little late, now that the two-year-old thriller by Dan Brown is a publishing miracle - with 25 million copies sold in 44 languages, a cascade of other books inspired by the novel and a movie with Tom Hanks set to start filming this spring - for Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to intone on a Vatican radio broadcast: "Don't read and don't buy 'The Da Vinci Code.' "

But when you think of the history of the Catholic Church, the Vatican is acting with lightning speed. It took the church more than 350 years to reverse its condemnation of Galileo. The Vatican only began an inquisition of the 16th-century Inquisition in 1998. It wasn't until the reign of Pope John Paul II that the Vatican apologized for the crimes of the Crusaders and offered contrition for the silence of Catholics in the Holocaust. The church has still not apologized for shameful dissembling by its hierarchy on the sex abuse scandal. And America's Catholic bishops only last week announced they were finally going to get serious about opposing the death penalty.

The 70-year-old cardinal assigned by the Vatican to exorcise the success of the novel is the archbishop of Genoa, a former soccer commentator and a contender to succeed the ailing pope. "There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true," he told Il Giornale.

It evokes the Dan Quayle-Murphy Brown flap for a Vatican official to slam Dan Brown's fictional characters, but a former Vatican reporter explained it this way: "The church is founded on a story that some people believe and some people don't, so the Vatican tends to get very threatened by other versions of that story, especially racier ones."

Mr. Brown's zippy version has Jesus and Mary Magdalene marrying and having children. This "perverts the story of the Holy Grail, which most certainly does not refer to the descendants of Mary Magdalene," Cardinal Bertone said. "It astonishes and worries me that so many people believe these lies."

The novelist is not the first one to conjure romantic sparks between the woman usually painted as what one writer calls "the Jessica Rabbit of the Gospels" and the eligible young Jewish carpenter and part-time miracle worker.

For years, female historians and novelists have been making the case that Mr. Brown makes, that Mary Magdalene was framed and defamed, that the men who run Christianity obliterated her role as an influential apostle and reduced her to a metaphor for sexual guilt.

The church refuses to allow women to be ordained as priests because there were no female apostles. So if Mary Magdalene was a madonna rather than a whore, the church loses its fig leaf of justification for male domination and exclusion.

It's obvious that Vatican officials did not read to the end of Mr. Brown's novel or they never would have denounced it.

(Caveat lector: If you have somehow missed reading the blockbuster or are one of the thrifty souls waiting for the paperback to finally come out, do not read further.)

After whipping you into a feminist frenzy over the hidden agenda of the church's unjustly perpetuating itself as an all-male, all "celibate" institution - precepts that have clearly led to some unnatural perversions and attracted a disproportionate number of priests fleeing sexual confusion - Mr. Brown abruptly deflates you at the end, going along with the notion that women should stay silent and submissive, letting the men who run the church continue to run the church with men.

The woman who is the descendant of Mary Magdalene and Jesus tells Robert Langdon, Mr. Brown's Harvard symbologist hero, that the secret saga of how the church smeared her ancestor as a slut and swindled all women out of serious roles in the church does not need to be aired. It can continue to remain a secret.

"Her story is being told in art, music and books," the woman says, adding that things are gradually changing for women: "We are beginning to sense the need to restore the sacred feminine."

No whistle is blown. No alarm is sounded. Talk about an anticlimax for a fantastic ride. As it turns out, Mr. Brown is not the tormentor of the Vatican, but an ally.

E-mail: [email protected]

c.i. : thanks for your posting; i think maureen dowd is again 'spot on'. haven't read the da vinci code and am not sure if i ever will, but there is certainly plenty of talk about it - even in the change room at the swimming pool ! hbg