I don't believe in God

That's a bit of a cheap way of globalizing your religion. Those people had their own religions and beliefs, and just to seem all powerful your religion decided to say 'It's okay, they're still children of our God' etc.

Being a more learned Catholic, I know of a lesser-known tenent of
Catholic doctrine: baptism by desire. In layman's terms, it means
that if you are unaware of God, but if you had been aware of him, you
would've been a full-fledged believer, you're still in the running for
heaven. People raised as athiests or who became athiests later
because of any reason involving misinformation aren't secluded from
heaven, if they are truly good people, what (G)god wouldn't let them in?

Common example: if (insert religion here) is universal, and anyone can
be saved through it, how does that help bands of people who can't come
into contact with it? How could natives living in the Americas go
to heaven without christianity, islam, buddhism, whatever?
Baptism by desire.

You don't necessarily need faith to be worthy of heaven.

You make interesting points but drop the whole "i'm an intellectual" thing. It's embarassing at best.

fine, it was a poor choice of words, I'll admit it.

As for French's comments, they do not invalidate what I said.

---

Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

I suppose, but it's pretty much what it is.

I can see your point. Theoretically any organization can enforce
anything it has neither validated nor invalidated, just to "go with the
flow". While it is true that it hasn't been dictated as actual
church doctrine, baptism by desire has been part of catholic tradition
for some time. Quick example, I remember the children's
catechisms my Mom taught me, that's where I first learned about BBD, I
don't know anything about the copyright on those, but they seemed
pretty old. (Think stereotypical 50s kids.)

---

Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

What I'm trying to say is that maybe the only God is actually a native american God, and he's so forgiving that he'll now take everyone. Get where I'm going with this?

What I'm trying to say is that maybe the only God is actually a
native american God, and he's so forgiving that he'll now take
everyone. Get where I'm going with this?

I get it...now :razz:

---

Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

I was watching the History Channel the other day and caught something about "Because god wants to forgive all man, in time even those in Hell will be granted into Heaven" not the word for word quote, but it caught my attention. They went on to say that this isn't taught because of the obvious.

I did catch this between a "the bible code matrix" and some right wing type show about terroism, so I don't know if this is at all accepted. Anyone know?

As for the above line of thought: This just goes back to my idea that man creates and becomes god. While there may be a god, it is only what we make it. If we belive in a main stream god, thats what he will become (to the individual). Thus, no wrong or right, simply what is real to you, IS real. If there is an afterlife, then that reality moves on with you.

"the seven spirits of god" are mentioned at least four times in revelations. (the last book of the bible). it's strange how something like that gets so little attention. the attention that it does get from religious groups is normally to debunk any notion that there may be, or have been in the past, seven 'true' religions.

also, words like faith and belief get thrown about too much, as if they're some sort of key to the pearly gates. doesn't it make sense that the devil has more reason to believe or have faith in the existence of god than anyone else? will it get him into heaven?

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i eat paint

Those who are in hell , usually wish to be in hell , Love is a direct result of free will . They are given the choice of heaven or sin and cannot pull themselves away from sin .. to the point where they cannot enter heaven.

Total agreence with you fishy , All the demons in hell "believe" in god obviously. You must be Faithful to god , in order to get to heaven. More or less at least TRY not to sin.

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.else /me ~kill you
www.arclan.net

Unless of course you want to kill someone from another religion in His name. THen it's all excusable.

Thus, no wrong or right, simply what is real to you, IS real. If there is an afterlife, then that reality moves on with you.

Depends on the word definition of real... if you want to go there. It's certainly not my definition.

BlisTer said:
as illustrated, if a topic is valuable for atleast 1 respected member, then who are we to alter/ban that topic out of personal preference

I have some deep seated points against religion. My personal experience with it is pretty much entirely negative. I come from a deeply religions family so its not something I was taught to believe. In other words, I wasn't raised to be this way.

As for the topic, as I said, I have never shown my disdain for it in any concerted fashion, and quite frankly, the topic doesn't need me to do so now. It is quite clear that even the people who do not believe, do consider "religion=good" on some unconscious level.

The way I view it, if you cannot omit that one piece of the equation, then I have nothing to add..
/my part of the discussion.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

I honestly don't think there's anything good about religion.

• Frenchy: I can vouch for at least ONE religion (Christianity) in saying that there IS good in it. It tells everyone to love others as themselves, not killing, not putting down others, not stealing other people's stuff. If that is filed under "Nothing Good" in your book, then you have VERY messed up priorities.
• Stadric: Why would there be a 'clause' in religion that protects you from others' actions like that? There is no way to heaven except through faith in Jesus. I mean, if what you're saying is true, then if we REALLY wanted to save everyone from hell, then we need to FORGET about God. IF everyone who KNOWS about God and Jesus would get rid of every trace of religion and not tell anyone new, everyone from then on would be saved by default. Why would God make it more beneficial to forget about him than it is to love him.
  The bible quotes Jesus as saying "Love your God with all your heart, soul and strength." How can you do that if you are encouraged to forget him?
  
  But really, it also goes against the "free will" and "predestination" things. If someone tells you the wrong info and you are bound for hell, then God sends you to heaven anyway, that is predestination. and that doesn't exist.
  
  also, where do you draw the line? isn't it the same if someone teaches you false christianity or if they teach you Shinto? </LI>
• Orpheus: it seems a little bit like your problems with religion in general are somewhat psychological. but anyway, why do you think that the thinking "religion=good" is bad?

---

I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

As an outsider, I feel obligated to invade this thread and destroy the civil discourse which preceded my involvement:

I've put my point up at the top, so you can just read the first two paragraphs and skip my rambling mess of a post:

Anyway, my point: Religion should be a tool for steering humanities interests and ideas to further heights. It should balance our drive towards new technologies (science), with a push for greater philosophies and improved empathy to our fellow human. Religion should be tackling the ultimate question: Why is there something, instead of nothing?

Instead, it doesn't even pay that question lip service. It pretends that the notion of an all powerful God answers the question satisfactorally and doesn't even acknowledge the fracturing effect that religion can have on humanity. The Crusades, WW 2, the current Islamic/Western divide, and other conflicts should have served as a learning tool for religions: counter examples from which truely astounding social structures could have been built. Now, I don't mean to imply that these conflicts were purely idealistic/religious in nature (I'd be a fool to argue that economics and politics were not among the driving forces) but only that while we learn from our political and economic mistakes, much of organized religion seems to be completely satisified stuck in the dark ages, thumbing its nose at social progress.

(beginning post post)
It seems odd to me that anyone could dismiss religion out of hand, but it seems even odder that someone could decide that any of the current popular religions (from paganism to christianity to islam) to be factually accurate. All of these religion's roots can be traced back to times before the rigors of modern logic and (dare I bring science into a conversation it probably doesn't belong? yes!) science. Even today, with the details lost beneath the sands of time many of the miraculous stories can be logically explained (Noah's flood for instance was most likely simply the flooding of the Red Sea) and a multitude of logical paradoxes can be produced ridiculously easily (Why is there no mention of dinosaurs in the Bible? Why does geological evidence suggest the Earth is millions of years old? How could two people have spawned the genetic diversity that is so apparent in humanity, or rather, how could such genetic diversity have developed in only a few thousand years?)*

Question's like the above ruin the "big three" religions (judiasm/C&C/islam) for me outright. None of them presents, at their core, a believable or viable worldview. Moreover, the notion that a God created the universe does little to wet my appetite for truth. To illustrate my point I like to recall this old school hindu belief:

The earth is flat -> But what supports it? -> There are four elephants -> And what supports them? -> A turtle, a huge one! -> And the turtule? How is it supported? -> There is water beneath the turtle -> And beneath the water? -> There is sand -> And the sand? -> The End.

Logically, the system is totally ridiculous! It does nothing to answer the original question regarding how the earth is supported, nonetheless this answer was more or less accepted. No doubt intellecutuals of the time expanded on the idea, justifying aspects of it through hyperbole and twisted, perverted logic (just as some do to today's equally logically castrated ideologies).. but at its core this idea remained what I related above, totally ludicrous.

Now, back on topic: There is a universe -> What created the universe? -> God, the Big Bang, or Infinity (take your pick). -> And what created your previous pick (or why did it exist at all)?

Now how are those answers any better than the example involving the ancient hindu belief? Logically they are as weak as the previous example, which probably got a chuckle out of you for it's silliness.

Science, with its iterrated attack on the unknown, provides us with facts which can be applied. But it can never answer this ultimate question (What created the universe? or Why is there something, instead of nothing?), or at least, it doesn't appear it ever will given the current bounds of logic which guide scientific research).

But the monotheastic religion falls even shorter! Not only is its answer totally inflexible, it's also totally unfallsifiable, which makes it impossible to disprove! Why even bother with a God who created the universe at that point?! Just say it lasted forever and has always been and will always be!

Which leads me to the final option: infinity. This is the worst of all the options, and, in my mind, has ramifications similar to the existence of God. For one, in a universe with an infinite temporal dimension humans quickly become reduced to nothing. Think about it: in a finite universe you represent a fixed percent of all that will ever be, but in an infinite universe the expression of you would be 1 part of infinity. Bust out your long division skills from grade 3 and you'll evaluate that to 0.00000 on til your pencil runs out of lead. Pretty depressing, eh?

At any rate, I've rambled way off my original point. Go back up to those two chains of questions I rattled off.. re-read them if you want.. or don't.. doesn't matter.. My point is far simpler, I should have just stated it instead of typing all this crap, but it's late and I'm not in a very succinct mood.

Anyway, my point: Religion should be a tool for steering humanities interests and ideas to further heights. It should balance our drive towards new technologies (science), with a push for greater philosophies and improved empathy to our fellow human. Religion should be tackling the ultimate question: Why is there something, instead of nothing?

Instead, it doesn't even pay that question lip service. It pretends that the notion of an all powerful God answers the question satisfactorally and doesn't even acknowledge the fracturing effect that religion can have on humanity. The Crusades, WW 2, the current Islamic/Western divide, and other conflicts should have served as a learning tool for religions: counter examples from which truely astounding social structures could have been built. I don't mean to imply that these conflicts were purely idealistic/religious in nature (I'd be a fool to argue that economics and politics were not among the driving forces) but only that whereas we learn from our political and economic mistakes, much of organized religion seems to be completely satisified stuck in the dark ages.

note: A bunch of my examples refer to christianity specifically, but all religions run in to these factual shortcomings. For that reason I prefer to think of these religions and their texts not as religions at all, but merely as guide books from which lessons can be learned.

Nickelplate said:
[list]

[*] Orpheus: it seems a little bit like your problems with religion in general are somewhat psychological.

[/list]

Nickel, would you care to rephrase the structure of this sentence or would you rather I rip you a new one in front of God and everyone?

You are continuing to insinuate that I have created a situation of negativity toward this subject. Furthermore, in each case where someone has posed an opposite view, you have insinuated that "they" need to change in some fashion.

The negativity toward religion stems from origins quite a distance prior to my birth, so saying "My problems" is a bit far fetched in the extreme. Its not as if the concept of anti-religious views was born with the advent of Snarkpits creation.

Your problem, and I use this word in the same context that you do, is that you are continuing to believe that religion is good. Religion is NOT good for everyone. People can and do turn out well balanced without the concept insinuating itself into their daily lives.

If one were to take the time to add up the pluses and minuses of religion throughout history, the best possible scenario would be "Religion=neutral" and that would be an over exaggeration at best considering that by the very nature of religion God would never will evil to transcend the notion of goodness. Ever evil act attributed to religion would cancel out innumerable good actions because of the abuse of the systems belief.

Anyway, lets consider that you desire to rephrase your sentence and that you did NOT intend to insinuate that I created this current negativity...

Man itself has an insatiable desire to corrupt everything with noble beginnings.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

i thought that was a long post until i realised you'd repeated big chunks of it.

i don't know if i'd join you in a belief system based on bits of the bible that you don't understand, or bits that don't make sense to you.

---

i eat paint

Orph, don't get sand in your vagina... by "your problems" i mean "the problems you have with religion" I swear it's like when i say "you guys" in front of a black person...

Beguiled:

• Genetic diversity comes from mutations
• the earth IS milions of years old, the "days" they talk about in the bible are not 24-hour DAYS.
• There is plenty of modern logic in religion. See my really long post in the first page for that.
• Dinosaurs ARE mentioned in the bible (Job 41 and Psalms 104:26), but by the time of man, they were all dead except for a select few(remember, millions of years old.)
• Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive. Your whole post was just a regurgitation of those classic questions like "can god make a rock that he can't lift?" Stuff that if you THINK about it and TRY to learn it, you will understand.
• The universe was created by God before time existed, so naturally it has always been. God used the Big Bang (from what we now know with science). Any scientist will tell you that you can't get nothing from something and you can't have an action without a catalyst of some sort. So what STARTED the big bang if not an intelligence. Think about it: if time is measured by change, and there was no time before the universe, there could be no natural change to act as the catalyst for the big bang.

More later

---

I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

Nickelplate said:
Orph, don't get sand in your vagina... by "your problems" i mean "the problems you have with religion" I swear it's like when i say "you guys" in front of a black person...

But of course, how silly of me... again. It is my problem. :rolleyes:

Nickelplate said:
More later

Spare us... Please.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

Dude. Don't take offense. 99% of what I say is meant without offense. You just take offense at a lot of it. Calm, now. Really, I don't like not getting along with you, but you make it tough sometimes to get along.

Anyway, I'll "spare you." I'm pretty much done anyway. This thread has turned into a mass of young atheists' common misconceptions about religion and my attempts to explain that go uncomprehended (by choice)

Sigh this thread is addictive. :rolleyes:

Nickelplate said:
The universe was created by God before time existed, so naturally it has always been. God used the Big Bang (from what we now know with science). Any scientist will tell you that you can't get nothing from something and you can't have an action without a catalyst of some sort. So what STARTED the big bang if not an intelligence. Think about it: if time is measured by change, and there was no time before the universe, there could be no natural change to act as the catalyst for the big bang.

It doesn't work. If God has always been it's about a million times more likely that the universe has always been. The universe is lifeless coincidence, God already is an intelligent being. Why should he be first? Time is nothing more than motion and if there's anything we accept as a universal truth than it's actio=reactio. No movement if there wasn't any before.
________________________________________________

Something not scientific that always bothere me: Christianity teaches that, if you don't believe in God, you go to ETERNAL DOOM. Now you can't tell me that you weren't terribly afraid of hell as a little kid (and probably still today). To a large portion (50%) the whole religion is about fear. Fear of not believing, not constantly following the bible as good as you can. I think that is what turned many people away. Someone tells me I have to believe, otherwise I go to hell. Now if I have the slightest doubts about God I can easily live a freer, fear-less life without God. What if I live a faithless life, be a perfect human being and develop a cure for cancer? I'd still go to hell. How fair is that?

Nickelplate said:
This thread has turned into a mass of young atheists' common misconceptions about religion and my attempts to explain that go uncomprehended (by choice)

Again, its the others.

Nickel, why does it not occur to you that the common denominator is you? Can it not be that you have good points to make (which I believe that religion does) but chose excessively poor methods in which to illustrate them?

This, is just my observation mind, but in each and every instance in which you could have made a vital contribution, you lost the initiative with some wild accusatory setback.

Religion isn't evil. Religion isn't good or bad. Religion is however poorly represented in many cases. You have a bit to learn in the "Statesmanship" regards.

Needless to say, Atheists do not necessarily have "The wrong of it all" or are somehow misguided.

The only "by choice" is your dedication to misleading everyone into incomprehension.

sighs

If you would only allow... Just a little.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

Right, there is no action without something before. That is why SOMETHING had to have created the first action, see?

Also, reaper: It's not that "if you don't beleive in God, you go to hell." it's "everyone is going to hell anyway, and god has offered a lifeline. It was not always like it is now. Because we all sin (affect others in a negative way), we all will go to hell. BUT if you choose to accept God's way and follow his rules on how NOT to affect others (and yourself) negatively, you get heaven at the end of it. Do you get what I'm saying?

Orph, I've explained every little detail and it makes perfect sense to everyone else, what I'm saying. If you see it as incomprehensible (meaning that you can't comprehend it) then it's YOU, either because you didn't bother to read it or because you don't WANT to get it.

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

You know, I am left with 3 options. All distasteful.

1) concede. I allow you to think you've made your point.
2) continue. Which seems moot at this point.
3) locking the thread. Which I vowed to never do unless there were no alternatives.

I pick #1. It leaves the least bad taste in my mouth. Since you seem incapable of not blaming others... It seems the safest course to follow.

I leave #3 open, if I notice you picking on anyone else during my absence.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

[*] Genetic diversity comes from mutations

I dare you to try and breed with a woman, then have your children breed amongst themselves, and on down the line. Watch the "genetic diversity" develop. . .

[*] the earth IS milions of years old, the "days" they talk about in the bible are not 24-hour DAYS.

I'm familiar with this argument, namely that the word day results from a mistranslation of a hebrew word which could mean day or eternity. Regardless, it doesn't account for the fact that the "complete" human history as provided by western religious texts only accounts for a few thousand years of human existence.

[*] There is plenty of modern logic in religion. See my really long post in the first page for that.

Eh, I'm beginning to think the point of my post was lost somewhere inside, I should have been a little more succinct..

[*] Dinosaurs ARE mentioned in the bible (Job 41 and Psalms 104:26), but by the time of man, they were all dead except for a select few(remember, millions of years old.)

The fossil record doesn't support that assertion at all (that man and dinosaur coexisted), I merely brought it up to emphasize that there exists a vast history that the bible does not account for in any way.

[*] Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive. Your whole post was just a regurgitation of those classic questions like "can god make a rock that he can't lift?" Stuff that if you THINK about it and TRY to learn it, you will understand.

Wow, did my point ever get lost. My whole bent issn't that the idea of God itself is unresolvingly paradoxical (as those types of questions suggest), but merely that the idea of an omnipotent God does nothing to resolve the question "Why is there something instead of nothing?" If you believe God created the universe then what created God? That is the question, which cannot ever be addressed scientifically, that I feel religion should be addressing. Instead, religions bicker amongst themselves, never seeming to learn from their mistakes.

[*] The universe was created by God before time existed, so naturally it has always been. God used the Big Bang (from what we now know with science). Any scientist will tell you that you can't get nothing from something and you can't have an action without a catalyst of some sort. So what STARTED the big bang if not an intelligence. Think about it: if time is measured by change, and there was no time before the universe, there could be no natural change to act as the catalyst for the big bang.

It seems this model makes the universe nothing but a fishbowl on God's coffee table, my questioning asks what exists outside the fishbowl and why is it there?

The latter half of this point seems to imply that the only way there could have been a big bang is if there were some type of catalyst, but it totally ignores the fact that you're relying on something before the beginning to explain the beginning. If something existed before the beginning (God) that implies that this 'beginning' was not really the beginning at all. Trace it back far enough and you arrive at a question wholly paradoxical. It is this type of paradox which religion should be devoted to unwinding, think of it as the ultimate Buddhist koan!

At any rate, I just don't feel that "God created the universe" satisifactorally answers the question "Why is there something instead of nothing?" That's my only point. You can say that it does, and just stop questioning the chain of events prior to God's existence, or you can admit that christianity does nothing to explain God's presence, and merely insists that it is so in order to construct a belief system simple enough for most people to accept.

See this is why I stand by the "god exists only inside us."

It solves all the problems I see;
-Science can explain everything outside our minds, why rocks are hard and where everything came from.
-Like dreams god can exist in our minds and be just as real as the computer your looking at.

Speaking of inside. I authed a few tuts and reviews tonight.

I figure, its not my place to judge them, just to make them available for judging.

If they suck, blame the authors.

/Godhood activity.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

Orpheus, I'm not picking on you, man.

Beguiled. religion really DOESN'T explain the existence of God. You're right. But being human, we have a tendency to look at things from a warped perspective.

You see, we think everything's about "me." Just like most people think that God condemns people for not beleiving in him, when instead he saves those who DO. Religion (christianity in this case) doesn't need to explain the existence of god, but rather to explain our existence and our history.

---

I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

Right, there is no action without something before. That is why SOMETHING had to have created the first action, see?

What if there has never been a first action? It would solve the actio=reactio thing at one swoop.

Also, reaper: It's not that "if you don't beleive in God, you go to hell." it's "everyone is going to hell anyway, and god has offered a lifeline. It was not always like it is now. Because we all sin (affect others in a negative way), we all will go to hell. BUT if you choose to accept God's way and follow his rules on how NOT to affect others (and yourself) negatively, you get heaven at the end of it. Do you get what I'm saying?

I think I do get it but it sounds even more extreme. So everybody gets punished with hell for... being born? I guess that's what baptism is all about but you must admit it's just unfair. It's terribly unfair, there's no logic behind it. How can an all-knowing, wise being punish innocents for actions that have been commited by others generations, thousands of years before. And what does it bring?

If you punish people for basically the sheer act of existing what does it help? I'm not speaking about saving the people today I speak about letting them go to hell in the first place. Why? Revenge? That's pure revenge. It's almost childish. I can't believe a God would do that. What are his reasons? I mean he's almighty.

He, by the way, could make everyone (including me) a believer, follow his rules, make this world a better place, probably, by doing something that proves his power. But he doesn't. His methods of bringing people on the "right path" are humble at best. And throwing all the rest into hell wont help him.

reaper, He doesn't need any help. The reason we are all bound for hell at first is because of the actions other. and yes these others could have been generations before. But if God takes away those reactions from the actions, that violates a lot of his systems in place:first, it takes away the FACT that for every action there is a reaction that effects everything thereafter, next it would efffect the free will of the person that originally acted. Plus, if he did something to "prove his power" that would affect our free will. I mean, if he DID something, there would be modern scientific proof of it, and everyone would be forced to beleive it. That's not free will. Please read my first post on the first or second page of this topic. It explains WHY God won't "prove" his existence, ANd why bad things happen to innocents because of bad people. If you read it with your questions in mind i KNOW you will get what I am talking about.

Really, we are still being punished for sins of people in the bible. If Abraham had not sinned by getting Hagar pregnant, the Arabs would have been a completely different people throughout the ages and we may not have such turmoil in the middle east, You see, after Abraham realized that he had sinned by getting her pregnant (she was his maidservant) he sent her and her son Ishmael away and the bible says that Ishmael ended up being the patriarch of the warlike arabian peoples.

And how can there "not be a first action?" there would have to be....

---

I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

Actuatly, lets get to the point. Have you ever done anything wrong on purpose?

I know no man that can say no to that question. With god. it's simple, if you fail to uphold his law, you have sinned. If you have sinned, you go to hell. Simple as that.

That is, unless you have accepted Jesus into your life. His death on the cross paid for your sins, you just have to accept it in order to not go to hell.

You don't get punished for the sins of those that came before you.

---

Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/

who is to say what is sin? Sure the word of God, but I don't think there is much argument that the Bible and much of the "laws" of church (what ever church that may be) has been "corrupted" by the scribes who copy and re-write the holy words. Does this mean there is no 100% assurance about what is and isn't sin?

Why can't god just be happy with me for trying my best to be a good person? I do "sin" on purpose all the time, but I don't do it to hurt people and I have no ill intentions. If I do hurt people or mess up, I feel honest regret, is that not good enough?

Nickelplate, you're talking about free will a lot. But theres a pretty good chance, at least in my mind, that free will is an illusion. Even if you arent conscious of it, you have a reason for doing everything you do, which is ultimately determined by outside factors. When I do something, I do it because I (subconsciously) weighed up options and likely results, and determined the best course of action based on that.

This is actually an interesting aspect to the "god/science" debate, I think. The "free will" argument is much like the "God's will" argument, that things are this way because God made them this way, and not because of F=ma or whatever. My argument, that human decisions are ultimately deterministic, is much like the scientific argument, of natural selection and such. Both arguments explain the issue in a way. Extrapolating from the scientific argument gives rules that can be applied elsewhere, such as physics. Extrapolating from the "God" argument gives religions as we see today: Rules for how people should behave based upon the assumption that there is a being, or beings, which created the universe, and has constant direct control over it.

However, science has no "big answer". You can study science forever, and never be satisfied with how fundamental your observations are. God is, by definition, the only answer to that fundamental question. The Alpha and the Omega. I beleive that this "big question" is just natural curiosity taken to infinity, a byproduct of the way humans think. But I can't disagree with anyone who beleives that a God exists.

---

"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Right, there is no action without something before. That is why SOMETHING had to have created the first action, see?

This quote got me thinking about this little analogy:

Seems to me that western religion traces down the rope of cause and effect trying to find the beginning. It concludes that the rope is too difficult to actually understand, but that it was put here by a mysterious being who relates his motivations in the Bible.

Science traces down the same rope, but has no interest in finding the beginning, it merely wants to understand the bits of rope that it comes across.

The philosopher decides to fill in for the scientist and as he traces down the rope, finding no end in sight he draws upon his experience to conclude that... the rope is a circle. Or ...

At any rate defining SOMETHING (your caps, not mine) which is not an action itself but which creates actions as a way of explaining the universe seems like a cop out to me...

Beguiled. religion really DOESN'T explain the existence of God. You're right. But being human, we have a tendency to look at things from a warped perspective.

You see, we think everything's about "me." Just like most people think that God condemns people for not beleiving in him, when instead he saves those who DO. Religion (christianity in this case) doesn't need to explain the existence of god, but rather to explain our existence and our history.

That doesn't seem like a very christian philosophy at all! Were we not created in God's image? How are we to understand ourselves if we do not understand Him? Dodging the question by saying that humans aren't meant to understand "what God is" seems rather underhanded, if you have no interest in the expansion of your ideology why would you bother with a thread like this? Do you seriously think you have nothing more to learn through questioning what you already know?

beguiledfoil said:
How are we to understand ourselves if we do not understand Him?

how on earth would a simple man, unable to understand himself, be anywhere near able to understand god?

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i eat paint

reaper, He doesn't need any help. The reason we are all bound for hell at first is because of the actions other. and yes these others could have been generations before. But if God takes away those reactions from the actions, that violates a lot of his systems in place:first, it takes away the FACT that for every action there is a reaction that effects everything thereafter, next it would efffect the free will of the person that originally acted. Plus, if he did something to "prove his power" that would affect our free will. I mean, if he DID something, there would be modern scientific proof of it, and everyone would be forced to beleive it. That's not free will. Please read my first post on the first or second page of this topic. It explains WHY God won't "prove" his existence, And why bad things happen to innocents because of bad people. If you read it with your questions in mind i KNOW you will get what I am talking about.

I read all your posts carefully. I'm just not sure if the concept of "free will" is actually correct. But it works surprisingly well, you really make me think here.

Ultimately it would mean that God encourages uncompromising approval to something for which there are no arguments other than the spoken and written word of other humans. There is no way how you can use "free will" to distinguish Christianity from any other religious movement then. Including those that do not believen in Jesus or God. And - after all - even the believe that there is no God that hid his work so perfectly that it looks like fitting coincidence.

fishy said:
how on earth would a simple man, unable to understand himself, be anywhere near able to understand god?

Just because you yourself will never see something completed is no reason not to begin working towards a goal. Millenia from now reality will be totally incomprehensible to you and I (assuming humans don't blow themselves up, first), there's no telling what the limits of human knowledge are.

Moreover, even if understanding god completely is totally impossible why should that be a reason not to at least ask the question? At the very worst we end up learning something about ourselves.

Wilson, my friend from work has come up with the exact same theory. I told him that although all the decisions you make are AFFECTED by the events that have already come into play, they are not DICTATED. If they were dictated, you'd only have one choice per situation. Remember, your decisions you make are based on your PERCEPTION of how things are, which is not always the same as how they really are, since we cannot know the future with 100% certainty , our choices are not completely dictated, thus they ARE free choices. Remember that for every infinitessimal degree of time, there is an infinite amount of possibilities for the next instant.

i.e. your decision NOT to jump off a cliff may be based on the fact that you percieve that there is no water beneath, but what if while you were falling a dam broke and water rushed in to cover the area on which you would have died. See, your faith in your perceptions affected your decision not to jump

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Wil5on</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>that things are this way because God made them this way, and not because of F=ma or whatever. </DIV></DIV>

What I'm saying is that God made F=ma or whatever. God put systems in place like physics and all the others, but so many people think they are mutually exclusive?

DrGlass, We know that the holy texts have not been corrupted by scribes and the like. Our modern bible was checked against the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls, and they turned out to be the same. Even over the period of time that separated them.

A "sin" is essentially, any action that affects an entity negatively.

Beguiled: When I say "something" i mean God. To many others it is unexplained.

We ARE made in the image of God, but we do not need to understand God to understand ourselves.

• we cannot ever REALLY understand God, he's too vast or something.
• EVERYTHING WE KNOW is based off of "an image" of the real object. You know that we do not see actual objects. We only see the light that is reflected from them that is registered by our eyes. We UNDERSTAND trees, but in reality no one has really seen one. (and they have faith that they are there, without having seen)

Reaper, I'm not sure I understand what you mean... Deine Grammatik war unordentlich. But I will answer you as best I can.

God allows us free will and does not violate it, BUT he does not encourage and approve of all the choices we make.

There is only one right way to live with heaven afterwards, God leaves that choice up to us the same as the choice we make when someone asks "what's for lunch?"

If i didn't answer your question just rephrase it for me. :smile:

---

I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

We ARE made in the image of God,

Religious poeple drive me nuts when they say s**t like this. Fine if you believe it, but don't go around telling me that's the truth. You have zero proof, so don't go all pope on me and shove it down my throat.

Looks like some part of this thread has started to flirt with the notion of a clockwork universe, or at least something similar. Such a system doesn't mesh very well with the chaos we observe in the universe, though... As the article mentions such a rigid system of physics does not make it easy to derive the law of entropy nor the subtlties of quantum mechanics, for those reasons I have no faith that the universe is structured so rigidly.

Remember, your decisions you make are based on your PERCEPTION of how things are, which is not always the same as how they really are, since we cannot know the future with 100% certainty , our choices are not completely dictated, thus they ARE free choices.

Under this theory (clockwork universe, or similar) it is your perception (a reasonably accurate, but far from perfect picture of your surroundings) combined with actual reality (which includes the perceptions of everyone else) which creates the closed system. It is argued that the neurons firing in your brain are no less bound by the laws of physics than a rock rolling down a cliff. The fact that the past, present, and future contains things which are unknown to the human merely affects the humans behavior, in perfectly quantifiable ways. The fact that the human does not know the placement of every electon, neutron, proton, pion... quark, even, does not mean that every other quark does not feel the effect of every other quark and trap the human in a web of cause and effect.

Quantum physics, luckily, makes the universe a little more interesting (at least to me).

We know that the holy texts have not been corrupted by scribes and the like. Our modern bible was checked against the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls, and they turned out to be the same. Even over the period of time that separated them.

I wouldnt start harping on the accuracy of the "modern" bible, especially when there are so many different versions of the text. At any rate, I see ample evidence that this book, with its constant (throughout history) corrections and revisions, is the work of men rather than the word of God.

A "sin" is essentially, any action that affects an entity negatively.

Unique definition, do you ever find this idea pigeonholes you into doing nothing? Incapable of taking action lest you affect some entity negatively? Seems like it would lead to a paradoxical situation rather easily, how does it deal with the vast gray areas in human life?

When I say "something" i mean God. To many others it is unexplained.

Yeah, I got that... Replace something with "god" in my sentence, and my point will still remain. Making up definitions to solve a difficult problem is a cop out, if I did it in a math class my teacher would fail me (although it might be an F+ for amusing him).

we cannot ever REALLY understand God, he's too vast or something.

How can you be content with a personal philosophy which sets these arbitrary limits on your understanding?

EVERYTHING WE KNOW is based off of "an image" of the real object. You know that we do not see actual objects. We only see the light that is reflected from them that is registered by our eyes. We UNDERSTAND trees, but in reality no one has really seen one. (and they have faith that they are there, without having seen)

Not exactly sure what you meant by this, but scientifically seeing is defined as the event which occurs when a sensor analyzes electromagnetic radiation (in the "visible" spectrum) and interfaces with a brain. Perhaps you were trying to remind me that such events can only be described as 'theories' by science, and that through God and faith absolute knowledge could be possible?

Specifically, the line "You know that we do not see actual objects." confuses me... of course we do not "see" the actual object, seeing is a system which involves the processing of EMR in the visible spectrum, there is no way to "see" something which does not reflect such radiation, or rather, such objects appear black. This seems a bit like saying you never touch something, you only feel the pressure on your fingertips cause by that thing's electric field...

There is only one right way to live with heaven afterwards, God leaves that choice up to us the same as the choice we make when someone asks "what's for lunch?"

Back to free will. Just curious, do you ever think of the mechanic by which God has granted us free will? Or do you consider that to be as unknowable as God itself? Just wondering how many interesting questions you deprive yourself of, I guess :smile:

And do you think that the answering of the question "What's for lunch?" is a demonstration of our free will? It seems to me that trivial questions like that rely more on strict newtonian physics, things which could be easily predicted given a reasonable amount of information (things like what's in the fridge, what has been eaten for past lunchs in similar situations, what the participant's favourite food is right now, or even, more abstractly, at what state the brain is in at the time the question is raised. Surely, the part of the brain which answers such basic needs questions would be simple enough to be predictable, don't you think?)

I've asked a lot of questions, they aren't hypothetical, feel free to answer whichever you like.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Dark_Kilauea</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>You don't get punished for the sins of those that came before you.</DIV></DIV>Bulls**t. Original sin.

Reaper, I'm not sure I understand what you mean... Deine Grammatik war unordentlich. But I will answer you as best I can.
God allows us free will and does not violate it, BUT he does not encourage and approve of all the choices we make.
There is only one right way to live with heaven afterwards, God leaves that choice up to us the same as the choice we make when someone asks "what's for lunch?"
If i didn't answer your question just rephrase it for me. :smile:

Embarrassingly enough, the grammar in your crude, German sentence is flawless. sigh

It's hard to explain but my point is that it is questionable if "free will" actually exists. I think it's pointless to think about it (literally pointless from a philosophical view). But the whole "free will" idea is flawed. My main argument is that we are influenced by others from our birth. The only reason we (some of us) believe in God is because we heared about him. We read books, listened to people. We've been "manipulated" - a lot.

You say that I can choose wheter or not I believe, even after I heared my mom, the priest, my friends ect. But that's nothing but an illusion. Let me ask you the same question about you. Can you choose not to believe? Can you? Do you feel capable of not believing? I think you're scared of it. Really scared. And that's why I don't think it's your "free will". It's your destiny at best.

Now if someone was manipulated the same way about another religion that doesn't have a God and certainly no Jesus, then those people can have the exact same qualities God is looking for but don't believe in him. In other words: If you were born or raised in India or some native tribe in Africa, never hearing about Jesus, would you deserve to go to heaven, too? What exactly is the difference that doesn't allow a non-believing, but otherwise identical being to go to heaven? What is the quality God wants to encourage in the people he choses for heaven? Faith in him in our short lifes on earth? Why is that so important to him? To Him, the almighty? I see terrible Christians, that do not sin in God's eyes. And I see awfully good people that have no faith whatsoever. Why should I follow Him then? Because I'm afraid of hell (or, in other words, it's the only way to heaven)? That's the only reason left and it sounds affronting.

beguiledfoil said:
Unique definition, do you ever find this idea pigeonholes you into doing nothing? Incapable of taking action lest you affect some entity negatively? Seems like it would lead to a paradoxical situation rather easily, how does it deal with the vast gray areas in human life?

Precisely! That is why we are "born into sin," because we cannot possible LIVE without negatively affecting entities, even ourselves. That is why we are not perfect.

There really are no grey areas in life. Everything is either true or false. If at first glance a situation appears "grey," you know that it can be broken down into smaller situations.

Situations and the right and wrong associated with them can only be dealt with logically in thier simplest forms. For example, if you say "killing is wrong, except for in self defense," that appears as a grey area. But it is really two situations, "self-defense killing" and "killing." This is broken down into two situations instead of one: "killing is wrong (true)" and "killing in self-defense is okay (true)". Do you see what I'm saying?

I guess in short, if something is a "grey area" then it needs to be broken down into multiple scenarios, all of which will either be true or false.

Reaper: I've been practicing my German. It's my minor in college. Anyway, What I've been telling the guy at work, being INFLUENCED and being DICTATED are different things. Sure we cannot choose the situations we are put in many times, but that doesn't mean our free will has been encroached upon.

And yes, I can choose not to believe. Anyone can block anything out of thier mind if they want to bad enough.

As for your last paragraph, this is where the free will of others comes into play. Because long ago, the ancestors of current people of India chose the sin of Idolatry, thier children and children's children and so on are raised with it. They are affected negatively by the choices of others.

And yes, you will ALWAYS see terrible Christians. I live in a country FULL of them. People feel good when they say they are a Christian, because they think that it assures them a place in heaven, but unfortunately, the way they treat others and thier sins might mean they really aren't christians. Don't judge the whole group by some of the bad ones.

You would follow God because you feel it's the right thing to do. More later.... GTG home.

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

Bah, my questions were ignored. Such is life.

There really are no grey areas in life.

What is the 'unknown' then? You have some method that allows you to account for it perfectly in your every decision? Of this I am skeptical... The unknown must be accounted for somehow, either by ignoring it, or accounting for possibilities which are not immidiately justifiable.

Precisely! That is why we are "born into sin," because we cannot possible LIVE without negatively affecting entities, even ourselves. That is why we are not perfect.

Then isn't it possible that someone could simply be unlucky and stuck with sin their entire life, simply never presented with the means or opportunity to redeem themself? And if we're born into sin, do those that die young get damned (I always thought it was the good that died young, your theory suggests the opposite!) :smile:

As for your last paragraph, this is where the free will of others comes into play. Because long ago, the ancestors of current people of India chose the sin of Idolatry, thier children and children's children and so on are raised with it. They are affected negatively by the choices of others.

Their ancestors were presented with (at best) a limited christian/jewish influence, if you were in their situation there's no way in hell that you'd be christian right now... And they go to hell because of it? What a crock of s**t. That rule could apply well enough to people like me, who were presented with christian ideaology, decided it didn't add up, and left it for more reasonably constructed philosophies; but to someone never even presented with the ideas, let alone at an age at which their gulli... excuse me, open minded enough to believe the doctrine... Generations of hindis rot in hell because noone managed to tell them the 'gospel truth'? And this from a God who radiates love and affection (at least in the new testament...) Furthmore, why would God's influence have originated in a single region, rather than across the word simultaneously? Especially if he was so concerned that we worship him properly...

And yes, you will ALWAYS see terrible Christians. I live in a country FULL of them.

And what is a terrible chrisitian? Google bible contradictions and you'll end up with close to 2,000,000 results (knock off the s, and you'll blow by 2,000,000), yeah, some 'theologin' will address some of them (hell, hundreds at a time if he's feeling up to it) but some are always conveniently ignored or 'addressed' in a manner that isn't exactly logical. Hell, I've read the old testament, and enough of the new testament to know that either God went through puberty or his "ways" are so mysterious they make the paradoxes of modern high energy physics look like tic tac toe. Nothing you've said has managed to convince me in the slightest that the logical mess of the Bible is in fact the word of God.

Questions, questions, and christianity never offers any answers... think it's time to sleep.

Man, I don't think you get what I'm saying. God leaves us the heck alone and lets us do whatever we want, until we come to HIM. Until we do that, we are bound for hell. It may seem unfair, but it's not an "innocent until proven guilty" system. We're all guilty and until we repent [apologize, realize that Jesus is the one who can forgive us, and try to do better] then we are forgiven.

about the future being grey area: since what is in the future doesn't really exist it is not anything. I suppose the future would be "false" since it does not exist yet. Interesting though.

From a biblical point of view, everyone knew originally about God, since the first people knew and passed it down to thier kids. It was only when one generation started the Idolatry and passed it to thier kids that it changed. And yes, it seems "unfair" but many people are left for thier entire life without hearing about it all, and as far as I know, they end up going to hell. It sucks, I know. That is what missionaries are supposed to be doing.

I don't know all the answers to every question, but that doesn't mean there isn't one, and it doesn't mean that I'll keep looking.

BTW, what questions were unanswered of yours. maybe I missed them.

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

I look at it like this: religion, like anything, should be judged not for its intellectual contentions, the better part of which we can do little to prove or disprove, but for its utility. That is, rather than asking whether or not God exists, we should ask what tangible good the belief in God creates.

My life experience is little, but already I have encountered people who have turned their lives around because of religion, religious charities that donate to the poor, et cetera - instances where faith encouraged positive change in the world.

Counterpoints: corruption and warfare created by religion. Though it is a legitimate point to bring up that faith has created plenty of violence in the world, I - even as a lifelong agnostic - tend to think that the amount of good that religion has created matches, if not tops, the amount of suffering - though of course there is no way to measure that.

The bottom line in this debate should be whether or not being religious does any good for the individual or for his world. Such a question would have to be answered on case by case bases: I would encourage a Catholic charity to remain Catholic no matter my qualms with their principles, and would encourage atheism of a Christian abortion clinic bomber.

In short, consider the utility rather than the validity of a belief system.

Nickelplate: Seems like you dont quite understand where I'm coming from. beguiledfoil explained it better than I could, but I agree with the idea of the clockwork universe. I beleive that everything, including conscious thought and (apparently probabilistic) quantum phenomena are ultimately deterministic. Of course, this is not provable, and possibly not even observable at a fundamental level (Heisenberg's uncertainty), but neither is the existence of God.

Your last post shows some moral repercussions of your beleif system which I honestly find disturbing. Youre saying that the majority of the world's population are condemned to eternal torment because they follow one arbitrary prophet rather than the other? What if youre wrong, and its the followers of some other religion who get saved? Let alone the fact that there is little or no archaeological evidence supporting monotheism existing earlier than polytheism.

I agree with Cassius' post, and religious people dont bother me. I see that religion does plenty of good. It's just not for me.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Healthy attitude, Cass..

And Wilson: It does seem difficult to conclude that the atoms in our head are any less bound by the laws of physics than those outside, doesn't it?

Wil5on. I think I do understand what you're saying. That, Everything we do is determined by what came before. And since we cannot control what came before, our lives are dictated by the choices of others and not by our own free will. and that we only make decisions based on previous experiences of ourselves and others, thus we do not have free will. I don't beleive that though.

Wil5on said:
Your last post shows some moral repercussions of your beleif system which I honestly find disturbing. Youre saying that the majority of the world's population are condemned to eternal torment because they follow one arbitrary prophet rather than the other? What if youre wrong, and its the followers of some other religion who get saved? Let alone the fact that there is little or no archaeological evidence supporting monotheism existing earlier than polytheism.

• Yeah, it seems unfair.
• Yes, they are condemned to eternal torment. But I find the idea of SOME being saved with Christianity better than the atheist idea that nobody gets to go anywhere. Ceasing to exist would be the ultimate torment: in that last moment before you die when you KNOW you will no longer exist. I bet it lasts for eternity.
• If I'm wrong and all of you people are right, then I've been an exceptionally good person and I'm going to heaven anyway.
• as for archaelogical evidence: There is no event for which all evidence survives. Not to mention the fact that for thousands of years all monotheistic followers were prohibited from making any images of thier God. This could explain a lack of artifacts, since none were made.

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com