Voodoo

You two guys are fun.

Lin calls me names, and sometimes, just sometimes, I think he doesn't mean it in a bad way.

Hodge ignores everything I interject. A blast.

Gorthaur

lin, I admit that the Santa Claus analogy may not apply to your God at all. (It's generally a good starting point for most of the people I debate with, i.e., American Christians.) But as Hodge implied, there are countless possibilities for the form your God might take. Until it is defined, I don't see how it can be addressed.

As for personal experience - well, it's either not evidence, or it's very poor evidence. Isaac Asimov expressed my position better than I could.

"Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently,
goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" "Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."" - Isaac Asimov

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Nietzsche

Zensati

Yes Its pointless trying to understand something as inconceivable as god. So why even bother? But we seem to have an inbuilt need to know God. Since Mankind has existed we have allways searched for a higher power. Why do we have this need for a higher power?

Voodoo

If there's nothing else, we all end forever.

Zensati

We are Energy. Energy cannot be destroyed, It merely changes Its Form. In other words Energy Is eternal.

Polartch

Us in the pastafarianist religion beleive that if you serve Him well, which pretty much means dressing like a pirate on fridays, you go to heaven where there is a beer volcano and a stripper factory. If you wish to beleive....

www.venganza.org

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Voodoo

Manson with some liquor.

No thanks.

ladylaughalot

Sounds like fun, how does one join this religion of yours?

Seriously though, I personally believe (and I know many of you will get hacked off at me about this) that anyone who goes to any kind of religios meeting/ place of worship more regularly than once a week is a dangerous borderline fanatic to be avoided at all costs...

Religions are dangerous and devisive, IMHO... Spirituality on the other hand I have no problem with. I believe in a higher power, I believe in the importance of life and right versus wrong. I also believe that if there is a god, all he/she/it really wants is for us to be good people and look out for others to the best of our abilities. If there is a heaven the entrance question will not be "How many people did you convert to the one true faith?" or even "How many times did you attend a church etc?" it will be "Were you a good person?" or "How well did you live your life?"

If you focus on that I don't think you can go to far wrong... worst case scenario you end up in pergatory with the likes of Aristotle and Sophocles.. very interesting people by all accounts.

And now you will probably all understand why I never discuss religion.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Voodoo

Ok, only problem I have with that is: "Religions are..."

They are many things, love.

Be careful that you display your IM, as well. People'll harass the hell out of you for that.

Have a nice day, I salute you for your courage.

ladylaughalot

True Religions are many things... dangerous and devisive are only two of them and only in my opinion.

As for the IM... care to shed a little light on that, I'm not sure what that is or what you mean.

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Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Voodoo

Your IM is public. Seriously, beware who you show that to...

Or maybe I'm just cynical.

Chessrogue

Seek and Ye shall find my dear friend. The truth is out there. We all have our beliefs and disbeliefs but we should always be exploring the teachings of those before us and also meditating on them to create our own viewpoint of the spiritual agenda. Your question as to whether there is a god or not may not be the question you think you need answered. Spirituality is a complex topic of discussion mainly because here on earth everything seems to be physical and is read by our earthly senses. Spirituality, on the other hand is far more difficult for us to discern since most of us are technically "spiritually disabled". You should maybe explore some Bhuddist philosophy and practice meditation to heighten your awareness of the spiritual world both inside and around us...

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Ian

Quote:

I do feel there is something vital, something crucial, something missing from my life. Almost as if I’m pursuing something beautiful and perfect, that will complete my life, but yet – it eludes me, merely because I don’t really know its own nature

Quote:

life is the most overrated and yet futile activity on earth. Looking at it this way, it is wholly depressing. There is no getting away from it. No matter what we do on earth – whether we are scholars or tramps, old men or babies – we end up in the same unconscious eternity, the same infinite nothingness.

Quote:

we end up in the same unconscious eternity, the same infinite nothingness. Religion tells us that death is not necessarily an end, but merely the end of a single phase. Science, ever contrary to these Sunday school, comforting views, tells us that death is just a blunt finish-line in a race that nobody wins.

Like you, I've spent many a night thinking about God. There seems to be an inate desire in all of us, we feel so vulnerable, a rudderless boat in the sea that we call life. Maybe something has been burned into our subconscience so in a way we all have a part, a real link with that Power. It seems as if our modern lives and our education maybe getting in the way of clearer vision.

Modern science in the form of quantum theory has put an end to the certainties of Newton's classical physics. The simple answer is that we don't know and that is a long way from the supposed certainty of atheism.

As you so rightly say life would be the most overrated and futile activity if there was nothing to it. We have been given reason and reason tells us otherwise. I think therefore I am as Descartes said.

Who has been there and come back to tell us about the infinite and unconscious eternity? This is an experiment that science has not yet performed and until they do we have to keep an open mind. The same applies to certain religious claims. Religion is human and God does not have to take the blame for human misdeeds.

When I feel like making contact within myself then I use every possible aid to connect with. The assembly of people in churches can sometimes raise the spiritual intensity where many like minded people have the same thoughts. It could be a case of feeble mental energy waves resonating. Symbols and prayer have the same purpose I believe to raise our consciousness to the other dimension.

On your final point on science, the latest thinking in theoretical physics is that there are many more dimensions that can be proved mathematically than the 4 ones we live in. There is also scientific speculation about parallel universes to ours. Science has grown up and now accepts that there are many things we do not know and maybe will never know. Some even say that the Universe only exists because we are here and not independent to ourselves. There seems to be a lot of magic nowadays with particles being at the same time waves and things appearing out of nothing. It's scientists who talk of black holes and tunneling to other universes.

I tried to raise all these questions in an entry about God that I will post on here hoping to get some input from those who have also given a lot of thought to this.

NightOwl

To make it relevant to the subject of God, would the cat analogy not be more accurate if it were along the lines of:

One guy belives there is a cat in the room, although he did not actually see it.
One guy is not sure whether there is a cat in the room.
One guy thinks that it is very unlikely that there is a cat in the room, given that no one saw one...

??

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