What Do You Think??

After I had a rather long and educational argument with Kirby about this general question, I decide to put this up here. Number one, I want to know what you think, and two, I want you to support it below if you vote. Why does God not exist? Why does he not have to exist? Or why DOES God exist? Can you find God in religion? Or is it only possible to find God outside of an institution? Please comment below! I guess I'll start it off.

I have a very simple belief in the reason that God exists, and although easily countered in the minds of un-believers, I still pose the question "Where did everything come from?" Because even if you write it off by answering question with question: "Where did God come from?" you still fail to answer the first question. And in that, I believe, is a very strong point for the existence of God. To go even deeper, but not much since I have another interesting point, I will answer both questions. Where did God come from? God did not "come" from anywhere. The human mind is to infinitesimal in comparison to everything around it that people refuse to take this as an answer. However, if God is really God, he must be infinitely beyond understanding so simply, so he does not to have a point of starting or ending. In comparison, the universe has a very definitive beginning. The universe has not existed forever. So it, unlike God, must have come from somewhere. Also unlike God, it is guaranteed to end, riped into oblivion by dark matter (just to keep your mighty universe in perspective). The universe must be created, God does not require as much.

Another interesting thing I ran into quite by chance was a rather thought provoking part of the book The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. In the book, they reach a point where they begin to discus what is life and what isn't. When it came right down to it, one of the characters blurred the distinction between alive and not alive so thoroughly that even the most arrogant biologist would have to stop and think. In the book it is suggested that a rock is alive. Absurd, no? How could a rock be alive? It doesn't move, it doesn't eat, it doesn't have offspring....or does it? How would you know? Any given rock could be millions upon millions of years old! Even BILLIONS! How could you, with your lifespan measured in decades, ever judge whether something is alive or not when it's life is defined by eons? Even your entire species has not existed as long as the youngest rocks! (lets exclude igneous, we don't need to quibble) And yet, after all this, the very notion of a ROCK being ALIVE is probably still the most absurd thing you have heard in several years. But WHY is that? How can you argue against the given proofs with physical evidence? (Watch a rock for a reallllyyyy long time. Did it move?) I'll save you that trouble. You can't. But is there something ELSE? Something beyond the simple physical definitions of life and non-life? Could it be a spirit? A SOUL?!

Another interesting question I would like to pose now for all the non-believers to simply answer is:
IS it ok to kill disabled people? After all they are only dead weight in a Darwinian universe. They do not further the species! What is the use of a mentally retarded person to the species?


Just answer the question (if you dare), and I'll follow it up.

I do not believe in god. Pure and simple. "God" is usually refered to the Christian-Judeo Christ. But, if you use "God" in the literal sense, it means a "devine being". So saying that "God" exsists means that every single diety ever created by any group of people through the history of the earth MUST exsist. God is created by Man, in the likeness of Man. The Romans thuoght that Gods controlled human emotions, earthly and heavenly structures, and elements on the earth. Hindu's believe in Karma and reincarnation, WHICH RELIGION is correct?!??!? If GOD exsists, you should be able to tell me, there shouldn't be any question.

There can only be one truth. It is impossible to have two truths to the same fact.

God Exsists, therefore God cannot exsist?

What makes the Christian God the correct one?--Because it says so in a multi-thousand year old collection of papers written by nameless authors who lived over a period of 4 thousand years, and probably had no connection to eachother?

To respond to Rogue: You said that God was infinitely complex and beyond understanding? That sounds to me like the Catholic Church didn't have an answer for something and deicided to answer it saying basically "I don't know".

First off, there is absolutely NO emperical evidence for a divine being's exsistence. The ONLY piece of evidence that can even begin to be considered evidence is the Bible, and that is not saying much. Written over the span of 4000 years, (4000 B.C. roughly to 0 A.D), the Bible was written by a nameless group of people with an understanding about the Earth that is equivelant to a modern-day 5 year old. If you are using the Bible to site evidence of god, then you are crazy.

- An argument that i've heard FOR the exsistence of "God" is "Atheists think that the universe came from nothing....how stupid is that?". To those people i say- read the Big Bang Theory. It makes perfect sense to me, but if you think that the Big Bang Theory sounds stupid, look at the other option-


** And for the record, Creationists believe that God has "always been" and created himself i guess? Yeah, the Big Bang Theory is unrealistic..

CREATIONISM.

The Bible states; and feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, that:


1- The Universe was created by God in 7 days.
2- God Created the Garden of Eden and it was a magical place filled with rainbows and talking animals.
3- God created man out of dirt (you're right creationists, evolution theory sounds stupid... ) , and he created woman out of man's rib.
4- Adam named all of the animals.
5- A talking snake emerged, and tricked Eve into eating the magical apples from the Tree of Knowledge in the middle of God's great garden.
6- Eve ate the fruit, god got pissed off, and decided that humans will not live forever because of "Origional Sin".

NOAH's FLOOD

1- God liked Noah, so he commanded him to make a huge boat.
2- God Tells noah to gather 2 of every animal on earth (believable?)
3- Noah gathers animals and brings them on his ark. Now for some reason, the carnivores do not eat the other animals, and every single animal lives through a miraculous 40 day adventure.
4- Noah and his family inbreed to repopulate the earth.



Now explain to me- WHY WOULD YOU BELIEVE THAT ?!??!?!?

The only logical explanation that i can think of is that you were brought up to believe that, and reject everything eles.

If you believe in religion over science, i will bring up one example that i think proves that religion is retarded.

The Salem Witch Trails.

Conservative Creationists, please tell me, were the people of Salem doing the lord's work? Are witches real? Because if we look only to the Bible as law-of-the-earth, we see that it says that Witches are real. Can people send out their spirits and attack someone? Well, screw science, the Bible says it so it must be right



Now, i'll end this with a quote:

"When you talk to God it's called prayer, but when God talks to you, it's called scitzophrenia."

Thank you, and i await all responses

Well I do believe in God but i also believe in the Big bang Theory and Evolution. One of my friends doesn't believe in God but I asked him if you believe in fate and he said yes. So even if you don't believe in god then you can believe that theres something out there "greater" than us. I believe in heaven and hell, angels and demons, because we have to go somewhere when we die. I don't believe in witches though. Well I don't think ALL or the stories in the bible are suppose to be real, it's just suppose to mean something or symbolize something, or teach us a lesson. I believe that god does exist and is trying to bring good into all the worlds, so he's probably taking care of all of space and being everywhere at once. I believe that because there is obliviously good and evil everywhere, and the good and evil had to have started somewhere. oh and i don't think mentally retarded people are a waste because they can be useful to other people. For example, it could open jobs and people will get paid to take care of mentally retarded people. Well thats all i got for now

I don't have the patience to argue my point, or even state it in full, but, basically, I believe that there may or may not be a "god" not persay a christian god (i definitely don't believe in that) or any god of that kind for that matter. Maybe god and all of us are just an alogorithm, have you considered that? Maybe we're all just an installment in the Sims series on an alien computer? Or maybe we exist on our own earth. Maybe this world we know is a world modeled after a real earth and we're just AI. that thought kinda scares me, but it's cool

huh/ oh sorry i was just completely distracted by your signatures for like 2 minutes Well anyways I get what your saying and Anger would agree with you too. Anger once told me that he doesn't believe in "reality" and he also doesn't believe in.... well something else similar to that but i just can't remember at the movement. Well anyways I get it you believe that theres something out there thats you know greater than us.

These are my own views (I'm not intending to offend anyone):

I believe that the belief in God is only for our own benefit. I think that trying to push your own views of God to another person is pointless. What I mean by this is that believing in God is a substitute for knowing the truth, and basically, no one knows the truth. What happens when we die?

"If we lived a honest life we go to heaven."
"If we lived a dishonest life we go to hell."

These views are only substitutes for the truth.
It allows us to feel like we are worth something.

If man knew everything, then there would be know point in belief.

Let me sum up a few points in here that I saw.

1.) I am NOT a creationist. There is a glaring difference between taking the Bible literally and interpreting the Bible as a literalist. Literalists believe that what it says is what it means in their fallible personal opinion and usually take this to mean things like creationism. Literal interpretation is interpreting what the author has to say and what the author MEANS, not what it looks like it says. If I write "Its raining cats and dogs" anyone speaking modern English would understand the cliched metaphor. If someone dug up what I wrote 1000 years from now, they might actually think it was raining cats and dogs.

2.) There may not be empirical evidence for God's existence (in some people's view) but there IS evidence that the universe began at a fixed time in prehistory. So the universe started somewhere. Simply pointing to the Big Bang is not enough, even if it IS scientifically true, because why is the big bang true? What caused the big bang? Nothing?

3.) Zombie, I think that your first point is a bit of an esoteric leap of thought that doesn't quite work. Why do all the Gods have to exist? Because we want them to all exist? That reasoning makes no sense to me at all.

Additionally, I think that perhaps there is no "true" religion, in that it is the only one that will allow their members to access eternal life.

4.) I know a lot of creationists (mostly intelligent design actually, most people don't believe in creationism any more...except mormons or other crazies) , and from personal experience, they are probably the nicest, selfless, generous, and happy people on the whole planet. There is something to be said for the way that they live their lives, even if they may be wrong.

5.) I think that when God talks to you, it's called intuition.

6.) How can God not be infinitely complex? Would you prefer your God to be cute and stupid so you can take advantage of him whenever you need to?

7.) If man knew everything, there would be no point in life itself. Hows that sound? Think thats wrong? Where do you spend 6 1/2 hours a day, 5 days a week? What is the job of a scientist? Why are you responding to this thread? TO KNOW THE TRUTH. If you knew everything, there could be no point.

8.) I think that honest/dishonest mantra is what the basic person's understanding of heaven and hell is. The reality is much deeper: YOU decide. When you die, you will go to heaven, and when you get there and see homeless people, retarded people, and a bunch of "good-tushues" you will choose where you want to stay, and that choice will be a result of what you believed and what you did while you were alive.



And to top it all off, if you read what I wrote, believing in spirits becomes just a bit more believable.

So, why do we not kill retarded people? Or should we? Are you afraid to answer?

Um rouge I answered your " why do we not kill retared people in my first response, but I'll just restate it anyways

"oh and i don't think mentally retarded people are a waste because they can be useful to other people. For example, it could open jobs and people will get paid to take care of mentally retarded people. Well thats all i got for now"

Well I would still rather choose to be in heaven because I really don't like pain and fear, and I think thats what hell is all about. Plus I think it would be awesome to be an angel because your powerful and don't make mistakes, how great is that!

Rogue, you sounded a little frustrated there , this is just a friendly debate, but to respond to your previous post:

*For the record - I didn't call you a creationists, i just dislike them the most.

1. Even if the creation stories are "metaphors", the Bible; in my religion (Roman Catholisism), is the Divine Word of God. If God's devine word is spelled out in the bible, how is there any wiggle-room for interpretations?

2. I understand that the Big Bang is only a theory, and no one will ever know what actually caused the universe because no one was there. But if the Big Bang Theory isn't correct, it does not automatically mean that God exsists..

3. Rogue, if there is "perhaps no true relgion" then all religions are false. You cannot have two truths at once. This text can't be white AND green. It is only white. The sky can't be BLUE AND RED. It has to be one or the other. So, the Hindu gods can't exsist AND the Christian God exsist too. One of them is wrong, and that means that they are all wrong.

4. Even if devout christians are good people, it doesn't mean that they're lifestyle is the "right" one. Everyone should be able to choose their own live paths. They shouldn't have to read an ancient book to learn how to live. I personally don't understand why people do it.

6. If God does exsist, then i'm sure that he is infinitely complex...but this idea was not created by god, it was created by mortal men, and now is accepted as Religious Truth in Christianity. Same with the idea of Hell. The idea of Hell wasn't even introduced until the 1300's, when priests converted people through fear.

7. I'm not stupid. I understand that Man doesn't know everything. But filling in the voids with unrealistic beliefs does not justify their authenticity.

8. I respect your beliefs, but to create your own reality is unrealistic. If i imagine that the sky is orange, does it make the sky orange? If i believe i can gain energy through the sun, can i? No. I cannot. People can create whatever realities they want, but in the end, there is the real world, and there is their own interpretation of it, and the real world is always right.

-- We can't kill all retarded people. There are things called emotions. We care for other people, but yes, if retarded/disabled people had no one to care for them, they would die. Pure and simple, they would die.

--- There is only one more problem that i have with christianity. Christians/Catholics/Jews worship something that they can't even explain what it is. "An omnipotent diety?". Fancy words...but what i think it is:

"The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree... "

-not my quote.

HOLY FUCKING SHITTY SHIT....... btw thos posts are too long for me to read so....

anyways god/religion is something that can only be determained by the person being asked not by a mear yes or no question it goes more in depth into the thoughts and beliefs of blah blah blah blah blah..

look..... no person and understand if there is or isn't a god/ higher being....
lots of people (like myself) thinks that heaven and hell are places for people to believe in so that they fear death less.....

I myself believe in reincarnation and no i'm not middle easteren......
there are many different aspects to god, the bible and how it can be taken (literaly or metaphorically ( shut up i can spell very well so bite me)) but God it is a very tender topic to be debating, but none the less.....


I BELIEVE ALL RELIGIONS ARE (in some ways) THE SAME.... so God, or whoever... may be a higher power but you have to live in the here and now not the whats going to happen to me when I die, I could care less if I die to me its just another step..... Hell if there is a Heaven (hahaha...) then that would be pretty cool, but I also think that my heaven would be different from anyone elses

But if you really want to get your mind thinking about religion then watch
"religulous" its a really good movie about appling logical thought to religions (all of them)
so... check it out if your interested....

these is me... my thoughts and beliefs, I'm not bashing just expressing.... you don't bash me I no Bash back.....

oh and hey Zombie wat u said about the big bang....

heres a little physics leason for all of u "the univers is always expanding" NO, FALSE, NEGITIVE..... its just the little from other stars finally reaching us

light travels at 300,000,000 m/s <---- meters per. second we are just finally see some of the other shit thats out there

Padestrain,

It's been proven that the universe is expanding. We can tell the difference between light reaching us and the universe growing in size..but that doesn't really have anything to do with the argument

I don't doubt that the big bang is true zombie. Im just saying that the big bang has to be caused by something, and that something doesn't need a cause because it always was.

The creation stories are commonly called myths with a moral message, and for good reason. They probably originated as Jewish accounts of the beginning of time, just like almost every culture since has spawned it's own creation story. In Roman Catholicism, the Church interprets the Bible because the Church created the Bible, and the Church says there is nothing wrong with believing in evolution, which contradicts a literalist inerpretation of the creation story. Therefore there is this "wiggle room" or whatever you want to call it, to decide what you believe about the origin of life on earth.

There may not be two truths at once, but I don't think it is required for any religion to be all of the truth and other religions to be none of the truth. I believe that the Catholic Church has the whole of the truth, but you don't need to believe that. What is important is that we all seek the truth. But why? Why does someone want to find the truth? Do you find solace in the fact that you look at the world and see the truth as a fleeting flash of existence in a universe full of destruction and chaos? Why do you want to find the truth if that is all you will find?

I think that this thing I found explains what I'm thinking above much better. Hell when I look back and read it it doesn't make much sense... but this DOES.

"5. Does God exist? We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him.

I was an atheist at one time. And like most atheists, the issue of people believing in God bothered me greatly. What is it about atheists that we would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that we don't believe even exists?! What causes us to do that? When I was an atheist, I attributed my intentions as caring for those poor, delusional people...to help them realize their hope was completely ill-founded. To be honest, I also had another motive. As I challenged those who believed in God, I was deeply curious to see if they could convince me otherwise. Part of my quest was to become free from the question of God. If I could conclusively prove to believers that they were wrong, then the issue is off the table, and I would be free to go about my life. "

Reality is a bit of a different topic, but I think that you have it a little mixed up. Reality is what is for me. Reality is the way I see things and nothing more. There is a human tendency to move toward a consensus reality where all people see the same reality, but that is not how it has to be. Your personal opinion is reality. It is and cannot be altered unless you decide to alter it. It is very easy to reduce this thinking to "well unicorns aren't real, so even if you think they are real, they still aren't". But I think that this is a bit of an over simplification. You see, If you do not believe in God, it is reality, and God does not exist. That doesn't mean I can't believe in God, who is very real to me.

Where did emotions come from, and what qualifies them as good or bad? Why do only humans (no, your dog does not love you, it is advantageous to his survival that he lives with you) have emotions? There is an undeniable human miracle that allows humans to transcend the normal darwinian strive for survival. An animal may live and work its entire life with another of its kind, but the moment it dies it simply becomes a food source. Why do you bury your dead relatives instead of eating them? After all it is the natural way for their bodies to be re-assimilated into other life. We can't kill disabled people because it is wrong in a sense that transcends the laws of Darwinian life. There is something visibly different about the human race. Keeping disable persons or elderly persons or sick persons alive is a drain to society, and not a physically useful task. WHY IS THAT?

Atheistic quotes aside, there is something more to you and me than meets the eye. Can you deny that?

So RoGuE your saying that there was something living from the very start of time and there was never "nothing" in our universe cause thats what I think your saying in the beggining of your post. Oh and i think we don't just kill sick people, elderly people, and disable people cause we found out it's morally wrong. I guess many people's emotions get in the way of killing those people. Oh and what you said about reality, I think your right. It's all in your head cause our brains are powerful things.

well,hmm.....

Zombie I know where u r coming from and you'er right I'm just saying in terms of the creation of the univers being formed by higher powers or if it was created by chance and science i'm just saying that I kind of lean more towads the science aspect of it

sry if that offens anyone but its wat I believe, so.... there

i do beleive in god because zombie going back to your big bang theory if our planet exploded outa a black hole weres a monkey come from to evoulutinize our civilization but ive always been taught by my parents and church that we have to have faith and that there is a god in heaven and one day jesus will come back. zombie you are right about there is no right religion theres terrorism over a religion hell thats a bit radical but its what they belive and they piss the rest of the world off but yea you just gotta belive

For we walk by faith not by sight -Corinthians 5;7

Freeman, its not that something existed since the beginning of time, it is that something ALWAYS existed. Hopefully I can make this more clear:

Take the analogy of before anything as a enclosed room. Inside the room there is nothing. No gas molecules, no spiders, no soccer balls, and no humans, not even light photons. Inside the room there Absolutely Nothing. Now, how do you get something into absolutely nothing without bringing something from outside? You can't. So can you make something appear? How long would it take for anything at all to appear in Absolutely nothing? Nothing can ever just pop up, no matter how long you wait. Time itself doesn't do anything. Does 10 minutes bake a potato? No. A microwave cooks the potato. SO no matter how long you wait, nothing will ever show up. So that means there MUST have always been something. Even if you say that our reality could just be inside a computer program, where did the computer programmers come from? You are still in the same situation, just extenuated. That something that always was has to be God. It must have had the ability to create things, or else we wouldn't be here. It must have the ability to decide, or else it wouldn't have been able to create anything.

exactly, that what's i thought you meant in the begging of your last post. I understood what you where saying. But thanks for the clear up anyways, especially with the analogy thing. So do we all think that that is believable cause it doesn't really go against science or any religion, something was always there. or do you guys have more arguments?

Who's to say its god? maybe it's not even in control, maybe it's just yeah, i have no idea

Sorry for the double post, but Por Rogue:

7.) If man knew everything, there would be no point in life itself.


What about love, my comrade?

I'm not saying that it HAS to be god I'm just saying that I BELIEVE that it is God who has always been there and there was never just nothing.

Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying, I was addressing rogue tho, I didn't really intensly read his post, it was pretty late, so I may be talking out my ass atm

Lol, how can God not be in control? To create the universe he has to have control over everything. Those "we might be a computer program" things are fun, but they don't make much sense when you get right down to it.

So Kirby, what is love? You can define it two ways, the human way and the natural way. Naturally, love is just attraction between two organisms of the same species attracted to each other in order to reproduce. But that isn't what we think love is when we say love, is it? What is human love and human relationship but the experience of going outside ourselves and learning to think of others before ourselves? Then on a completely different note, there is divine love, but I don't need to get into that unless you want me to.

My friend, I am a taoist, as you know, simplicity and peace are my way. Love is a spiritual thing, yes, it is an attraction, but it is also a caring for your fellow men, and beasts.