Do You Believe In God?, Just write down if you believe or not.

Thanks for the laugh, Emmet

Thanks for the laugh, Emmet

Emmet,

Those who believe will retort that God doesn't interfere because he has given us free will. Convenient isn't it.



Camac.

I gave the concept a lot of thought a long time ago. I have had some pretty nasty times in my life when I wondered where God was, but my conclusion was as follows. If I believed and was wrong, nothing lost, however if I didn't believe and was wrong, very baaad move!! Only when our time here is finished will we know for sure.

Slàinte,   

 Patch    

Patch;

Years ago shortly before she died my Mom asked me what I would do if I died and had to stand before God. Without hesitation I said to Her I'd ask one question Mom, Where were you when we needed you? She dropped the subject.



Camac.

Patch;

Years ago shortly before she died my Mom asked me what I would do if I died and had to stand before God. Without hesitation I said to Her I'd ask one question Mom, Where were you when we needed you? She dropped the subject.



Camac.

You got me, there is nothing I could say in reply!

Slàinte,    

Patch    

i would just add that most of what you recite here are mans inhumanities... God has given each of us a free will to do good or to do harm... oh you forgot Cain.

i would just add that most of what you recite here are mans inhumanities...

Alrighty then...

The Great Famine of India (1876-1878; 5,250,000 dead), the bubonic plague pandemic (1330–1351; 75,000,000 dead), the 1931 Chinese floods (1,000,000 to 4,000,000 dead), the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China (255,000 to 655,000 dead), the 1971 Bangladesh cyclone (200,000 to 500,000 dead), the 2004 Indonesian tsunami (285,000 dead), the Stroggli volcanic eruption around 1500 BCE which exterminated the Minoan civilization, the Lake Toba volcanic eruption around 74,000 years ago which wiped out as much as 99% of the global human population, reducing the population from at most 60 million to less than 10 thousand, et alia ad nauseum; in times of humanity's greatest need, God has been most conspicuous by His absence.

I strongly suspect that God is merely an imaginary friend for grownups.

I fail to see how excluding "mans inhumanities" makes a qualitative difference in the validity of my argument.

I didn't forget Cain, I just didn't see the relevance of mythology.

Of course natural and man-made disasters are not distinguished from each other, if humans are an intrinsic part of nature. But there is no way you can get believers away from the idea that there is a privileged relationship between God and humans that is qualitatively different from the relationship between God and the rest of existence. It's too rich -- it accounts for too much, it excuses too much, and it makes every other argument unassailable a priori. If our species has evolved to come up with that notion so universally, it's always possible to argue that it's because it's true: a true calling that we are uniquely designed or intended to respond to. Many have argued so. And it's too reassuring, validating and reinforcing to make anyone WANT to consider the more elegant possibility, the one that does not add an extrinsic element to make it work: religious nature in humans is yet another side effect of that front-loaded brain development that permits unlimited ideation and interpretation, along with its infernal ingenuity, and also favors interpretation that is self-referential as a survival feature. God MUST be in the system AND independent of it at the same time -- otherwise, how could we explain so much significance in our own existence and actions, no matter how good or bad, and so much justification to continue that existence with no upper limit to what it costs the rest of creation?

It is far easier to explain this human tendency to create beliefs from within the system, as Occam's razor would have it: it's fear of individual death and group extinction that makes us reach in that direction and concoct all the evidence we need to support the yearning for life that is qualitatively different from all other life, in that it need not end. And that will drag us straight to the very thing we fear faster than anything else could, because there is no limit to the self-centered, God-validated justification we will pin on our outrageously destructive behaviour.

Aside from the existential or epistemological questions concerning this subject, its what humans assume are the qualities, desires and will of God that cause the most trouble. God is merely a word. Along with it comes a panoply of assumptions about something no one really knows anything about. Belief, opinion, faith etc are all separate from knowledge in this case. Even if one points to a profound subjective mystical experience to which the word God is the most descriptive term in their mind, in what way could anyone verify it? Outside "verification" from a socially deemed authority or holy book is equally limited to being just that, nothing more. In what way does appointed authority ensure any more knowledge is present than you have? The reliance upon faith and belief is because nothing is known. What else is left?

What does it mean if we call something God? Well, in our historical experience its meant a great deal and still does. The problem is the amount of social, moral, ethical, spiritual, and (in America) political weight invested in ideas for which there can be no verification. In that respect perhaps the most intellegent response would be to consider how well these ideas have served us and what price we've paid for them. There are groups of people who'd use weapons of mass destruction on entire populations based on disagreements concerning their unauthenticated fantasies. Can we afford not to reevaluate our ideas? How have these ideas served us? How have they added to or detracted from our ability to bring about the world we say we desire. Necessity may require it. Whether it inspires it or not depends fundamentally on whether we prefer our untenable ideas to our suffering. What would be the problem in just living with our uncertainty in the interim, and getting on with questions concerning how to live together and create the societies we want? In what ways would rational alternatives be undesirable? If we are too enamored of our maniacal melodramas, or we have insufficient faith in ourselves that we believe only our religions prevent us from self destruction, then our extinction game has gone into overtime. No civilization has destroyed itself by becoming too reasonable, and many who've embraced all sorts of supernatural skulduggery have explored the limits of sociopathic lunacy, so maybe just this once we could not repeat history. If not, then our "infernal ingenuity" untempered by sense may end history forthwith.

Epistemological questions or philosophical arguments pro or con are academic. Those who'd simply espouse their unqualified faith in their God and insist that social, political and international policies continue to be built on a foundation of unsubstantiated supernatural fantasies about the will of a Big Boss in the sky will have alot to answer for if missiles fly. In my opinion they've had alot to answer for for centuries, but that's just me.

Antwn;
To me the exisitence of this Diety (Being) called God is irrelevant in that it can neither be proven or disproven. It is in my opinion a superstition pass down through eons of evolution. The problem of believing in a Diety is in knowing what it wants or expects. My personal belief is that there is a Force, Power, or Entity driving the process. For what purpose; I would not even hazzard to guess for all I know it is Chaos and not reason. What I have concluded in my 3 score and 5 years is that until the Diety God is removed from the equation Humanity will know no Peace. I also believe that the great American Experiment in Democracy is teetering on the edge of the slippery slope to Theocracy and with that comes the Four Horsemen. In my Opinion.

Camac.

Without a doubt.

I believe in a number of Gods. I am a "hard polytheist" as some would call me.

I believe that the Gods are distinct personalities here and in the Otherworlds, and often show their prescence in the form of natural phenomena. They are not the perfect beings often described when people discuss deity, and they are not the "Creators" nor are they always loving and kind. They simply are. They are the conscious beings behind the natural forces that govern us. m(Just explaining, as my definition of deity is a bit different from many views)

So, I do not believe in God, though I do believe in Gods.

I don't recall God promisnig anyone a frikkin rose garden in the first place.

Yes, I too beleive in God. Not just that God exists and is our Creator, but that He lives and loves you and me - caring and preserving, giving and forgiving, healing and saving - inspite of my pride and ignorance, my hurting and being hurt, my silliness and my selfishness and my sinfulness. The blessed Trinity is true to His Word in Christ and is worthy of our humble adoration and trust.

i do.

"Why is it so hard for you to believe? Is my physical existence any more improbable than your own? What about all that hoo-ha with the devil awhile ago from that movie? Nobody had any problem believing that the devil took over and existed in a little girl. All she had to do was wet the rug, throw up some pea soup and everybody believed. The devil you could believe, but not God? I work in my own way. I don't, I don't get inside little children; they got enough to do just being themselves. Also I'm not about to go around to every person in the world and say, 'Look it's me, I wanna talk to you.' So I picked one man. One very good man. I told him God lives. I live. He had trouble believing too, in the beginning. I understood. I'm not sure how this whole miracle business started, the idea that anything connected with me has to be a miracle. Personally I'm sorry that it did. Makes the distance between us even greater. But if a miracle helps you believe that I am who I say I am... I'll give you one. A good one."

George Burns, in the movie,OH God!