Do you believe in God?

[walrus]

Six thousand children die daily from a lack of clean drinking water/sanitation. Billions of people, currently breathing, think they're "special" because they reached an age where they were able to query their existence.

100 years from now virtually nobody will even know us Saddo pals even existed.

((I'm available for birthdays, weddings and bar mitzvahs))

They may not remember us but they will all remember NVsemin.

[p4pking]

I understand why Some people don't believe. Faith is the assurance in things hoped for and the belief in things unseen. It goes against our nature at times. What I don't understand is why some have contempt for individuals who do believe. I love to discuss faith but when people want to argue I usually run.

As a Christian one will believe I am going to hell when I die, which is much worse than anything I could ever wish upon anyone. I think people are within their rights to be offended by that in the abstract, but as long as such an opinion isn't presented to me I would never judge anyone personally for having an imaginary friend.

[walrus]

I understand why Some people don't believe. Faith is the assurance in things hoped for and the belief in things unseen. It goes against our nature at times. What I don't understand is why some have contempt for individuals who do believe. I love to discuss faith but when people want to argue I usually run.

As a Christian one will believe I am going to hell when I die, which is much worse than anything I could ever wish upon anyone. I think people are within their rights to be offended by that in the abstract, but as long as such an opinion isn't presented to me I would never judge anyone personally for having an imaginary friend.

I can't speak speak for all Christians but Catholics do not believe that people who don't believe are destined for he'll. The theology for people who did not believe during life but make it anyway is actually quite sound. So feel as you must but what you are saying does not hold true to the 1.3 billion Catholics in the world. It's fine you don't believe but perhaps you should clarify some of your misconceptions.

[p4pking]

I understand why Some people don't believe. Faith is the assurance in things hoped for and the belief in things unseen. It goes against our nature at times. What I don't understand is why some have contempt for individuals who do believe. I love to discuss faith but when people want to argue I usually run.

As a Christian one will believe I am going to hell when I die, which is much worse than anything I could ever wish upon anyone. I think people are within their rights to be offended by that in the abstract, but as long as such an opinion isn't presented to me I would never judge anyone personally for having an imaginary friend.

I can't speak speak for all Christians but Catholics do not believe that people who don't believe are destined for he'll. The theology for people who did not believe during life but make it anyway is actually quite sound. So feel as you must but what you are saying does not hold true to the 1.3 billion Catholics in the world. It's fine you don't believe but perhaps you should clarify some of your misconceptions.

Having misconceptions about any religion is almost a paradox to me, as I belive it to be nothing more than fiction in the first place. I do find it fascinating that people are so predisposed to believe in personal gods and I should absolutely learn more about the basis for all of them, but it's not at the top of my list if I'm honest. Imo it's exciting that religion has been all but dismissed amongst serious thinkers in the last few centuries, and any evidence against it will only grow exponentially. Suppose we find concrete proof of life on another planet in our time, what would that mean to you?

[Andre]

I understand why Some people don't believe. Faith is the assurance in things hoped for and the belief in things unseen. It goes against our nature at times. What I don't understand is why some have contempt for individuals who do believe. I love to discuss faith but when people want to argue I usually run.

As a Christian one will believe I am going to hell when I die, which is much worse than anything I could ever wish upon anyone. I think people are within their rights to be offended by that in the abstract, but as long as such an opinion isn't presented to me I would never judge anyone personally for having an imaginary friend.

I can't speak speak for all Christians but Catholics do not believe that people who don't believe are destined for he'll. The theology for people who did not believe during life but make it anyway is actually quite sound. So feel as you must but what you are saying does not hold true to the 1.3 billion Catholics in the world. It's fine you don't believe but perhaps you should clarify some of your misconceptions.

Having misconceptions about any religion is almost a paradox to me, as I belive it to be nothing more than fiction in the first place. I do find it fascinating that people are so predisposed to believe in personal gods and I should absolutely learn more about the basis for all of them, but it's not at the top of my list if I'm honest. Imo it's exciting that religion has been all but dismissed amongst serious thinkers in the last few centuries, and any evidence against it will only grow exponentially. Suppose we find concrete proof of life on another planet in our time, what would that mean to you?

When you think about our Sun; It can fit our earth into it about a million times and our sun fits into the largest Sun in our Universe a billion times! Then there are more stars in our Universe than there are grains of sand in all the beaches of the world. Then we have 12 dimensions around us unseen. That sort of tells me we cant be the only ones in this.We are on the scale of things low lifes the way we treat each other and the planet. First time Ive used a lap top without mouse just then. I want my mouse back!Ah the trivialities.

[IamInuit]

“Barefoot conducts his seminars on his houseboat in Sausalito. It costs a hundred dollars to find out why we are on this Earth. You also get a sandwich, but I wasn't hungry that day. John Lennon had just been killed and I think I know why we are on this Earth; it's to find out that what you love the most will be taken away from you, probably due to an error in high places rather than by design.”

“In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel.”

“I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean.”

“A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.”

“It's not always easy to distinguish between existentialism and a bad mood.”

“You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'.”

“One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.”

“Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”

Now I'm not as dark and hard deterministic and these people but I'm at the door. I hold on tightly to the thoughts or belief that there must be something else. That random chance cant be the father of all of things. But the God of religion and especially Christianity has about the same odds as being the omnipotent one as random chance.

[Dia bando]

Six thousand children die daily from a lack of clean drinking water/sanitation. Billions of people, currently breathing, think they're "special" because they reached an age where they were able to query their existence.

100 years from now virtually nobody will even know us Saddo pals even existed.

((I'm available for birthdays, weddings and bar mitzvahs))

How much do you charge,!!! I hope your cheap.

[Gandalf]

But you struggle to comprehend basic English. What I actually said was that the chance of God existing, certainly in the way defined over the past 2000 years, is likely 99.9% gibberish. Now I don't disagree that science will tell us more, but it has nothing to do with God as defined by religious man.

Dismissing God based upon evidence is not shallow as there is zero evidence to support the claims that an all governing God with the power to starve, kill, and condemn exists. Now that doesn't mean that it is 100% no chance of existence, but to rely on 0.1% or less is in itself pretty shallow.

Seems to be you are the one struggling w/basic English. Spicoli didn't say anything about a "god" defined over the past 2000 years. In fact I'd say his post suggested a lack of definition. I'd say the evidence that the Universe is expanding and therefore had a definitive starting point suggests a catalyst to the Universe that we currently and more than likely never will be able to comprehend. I don't really like using the term "god" to describe this ambiguous and infinite concept but I don't begrudge others that do.

But that has nothing to do with God. God is a word is it not and it is a word that has been defined by religious doctrine and so it is only right to use it in that context. If there is some other expansion of the word then you need to explain that otherwise it is just a random word. To be attacking my comprehension skills when it was IamInuit trying to attack mine when he was obviously wrong is just a weird bamboozle deflection.

Now if Spicoli was talking about science then fair enough, but science has NOTHING to do with God or God's. Science has systematically destroyed concepts of God for centuries and religious people keep on moving the goalposts. 'Okay, maybe wrong here, but you still haven't answered that. That could be God'. So, here we are at 0.000032% of a chance and still there is clinging. But let's just call it science and forget with the God nonsense. To use the word God means that they were semi right, when that is blatantly untrue. They have always made it up and changed the goalposts.

All I ask is what is the problem with just being happy with what you have and to use it well and that just be it for you. It's a selfish, selfish thing to cling on to the belief that there is more and that I must be part of it. Maybe there are more dimensions, maybe much more to know, but you as a conscious person are likely nothing to do with it. We are born into lives and live them through and that is what we do here. Nobody comes back from the dead and says 'Hi, It's lovely here in the 8th dimension, avoid the 10th one'. No evidence at all.

[VictorCharlie]

But you struggle to comprehend basic English.

To be attacking my comprehension skills when it was IamInuit trying to attack mine when he was obviously wrong is just a weird bamboozle deflection.

Pot, Kettle, Black

But that has nothing to do with God. God is a word is it not and it is a word that has been defined by religious doctrine and so it is only right to use it in that context.

As an agnostic I use the word "God" when referring to an unknown/undefined higher being b/c it is easier when speaking w/theists and atheists b/c that is the word they use/understand. I'm not sure what you are saying has nothing to do w/god? If you are referring to the expansion of the universe, I'd argue that the universe having a distinct starting point challenges a purely secular viewpoint.

[Gandalf]

But you struggle to comprehend basic English.

To be attacking my comprehension skills when it was IamInuit trying to attack mine when he was obviously wrong is just a weird bamboozle deflection.

Pot, Kettle, Black

But that has nothing to do with God. God is a word is it not and it is a word that has been defined by religious doctrine and so it is only right to use it in that context.

As an agnostic I use the word "God" when referring to an unknown/undefined higher being b/c it is easier when speaking w/theists and atheists b/c that is the word they use/understand. I'm not sure what you are saying has nothing to do w/god? If you are referring to the expansion of the universe, I'd argue that the universe having a distinct starting point challenges a purely secular viewpoint.

No, I call bullshit on that. That's a cop out. Mine was an obvious criticism whilst you had no clearly defined parameters to argue with.

In your second argument you are just arguing semantics. I disagree with the origins of the universe having anything to do with God, it is a scientific thing that will be explained.

Science has always explained, religion has always ceded ground. Logic would assume the former makes a lot more sense.

[VictorCharlie]

Oh well you called BS so I guess that ends it.

Considering we agree that the universe has a distinct starting point and that it would have required something incomprehensible to the human brain to create this sudden and massive expansion, I find this to lead to natural agnostic belief. I think that is where the use of the word shallow and arrogant is applied to atheists. I find the way organized religion attempts to define infinite concepts equally absurd but considering what we know/don't know about the origins of the universe I don't understand some sort of hardline stance that we as finite beings can understand/define all things. Some things are simply beyond our comprehension. All that aside, I completely understand and agree w/your rejection of religion.

[Gandalf]

You know, maybe it does have a starting point, and maybe it doesn't.

All I know is that I look at the sun and sometimes wonder why it doesn't shatter this world to bits right now. Then I realise it is because we seem to understand a bit about it. That is science. It's all we know, so we should believe in what we know rather than what doesn't.

I don't think any of that matters though. I think maybe I have a few decades left and then I am dead and you cannot rely on anything after that. In that sense, it doesn't matter about any of this religious nonsense.

As long as you die with only a few people calling you a bigot to the grave then that is a job well done. You've pissed me off with this bigot language.

[VictorCharlie]

Miles, if I were to start post full of misconceptions and inaccuracies about say the NHS in the UK or its firearm policy followed by a litany of insults about the people of Britain and how their policies are utter nonsense, the UK crowd would rightfully chastise me for trying to preach my American beliefs to them particularly considering outside of flying through Shannon I've never spent any time in the UK. This is pretty much what you have always done. I don't call you a bigot b/c of your beliefs about US foreign policy b/c that actually has some impact on you but the way you criticize American domestic policy despite not really understanding it is absurd. I wouldn't expect a pass on telling people in another country how I know better than them about their nation, how it should work and how horrible it is and you shouldn't either. Be pissed if you want but it seems what you really don't like is having a mirror put in front of you.

[Andre]

I think the starting point is way back beyond 'the splitting point of one into many' which is where we can see back to while in this dimension looking out of material eyes at material.We can be blinded by the light but only when we look one way.

[walrus]

I am writting to reply to a question p4p asked me. He asked how my religion would change if life were found on another planet. I can tell you it wouldn't change at all. Saying we are the only life in the universe would be putting a max on the big guys creation abilities so it would not alter anything. Sorry to reply so late, I just saw your question.