What are your thoughts on god? Part 2

POSTED BY: christhecynic
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 14:34
VIEWED: 17958
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CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, January 16, 2006 10:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by cartoon:
The primary sin of mankind (and Satan before us) is pride

There are so many names, and legends that didn't make it in. For example Jesus made reference to the Book of Enoch, something you won't see in church today. But if by Satan you mean the Angel in the book of Job, he didn't sin before us, he sinned after. In Job Satan is the adversary of man, not of god. He works for god, and is welcome in god's presence.

Whenever the fall was, it was after Job, and Job was after the garden.

If anyone is pissed off at me because I said that, sorry, but theologians of Christian, Jewish, and Atheist viewpoints have agreed on this quite convincingly. (Convincing to me at least.)

This really is just an alternate view, though I stated it as fact, food for thought really.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, January 16, 2006 10:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Haze:
don’t feel the need to try and turn Religious types to my way of thinking. It’s a personal thing.

Would that more people were like you.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, January 16, 2006 10:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by PrincessRohannen:
I firmly believe that God IS an essential part of the human experience.

The existance of a god, no matter how basic or odd, in all cultures we know of suggests that is true, whether god is real or not.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, January 16, 2006 10:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Tiger:
Of course God is considered supernatural. He doesn't follow the rules of nature - wine from water, bringing people back from the dead, parting a sea, or any of the other hundreds of miracles mentioned in the bibles of the world.

You yourself said, "the very fact you can see it, measure it, or observe it's effects on the world in any way means it is natural, even if you can't explain it."

You telling me you don't believe that anymore? If a sea parts (sea near my house does it often enough) that would cause you to reject nature? If a substance could change in a previously unaccepted way that would mean you would throw out physics?

If time dead can be increased from hours to three days you'll fall to your knees and say, "I was wrong?"

I don't believe it. If it can be seen, measured, and its effects on the world can be observed it is natural, even if you can’t explain it.

-

I don't believe you would give up your beliefs so easily, I really don't. I mean when it was discovered that faith could heal people that didn't cause an outbreak of religion, just admitting the truth of the placebo effect.

When the theory was put forth that Sodom and Gomorra were the victims of what any insurance company would call and act of god and the residents were dumped into a salty sea (pillar of salt ring any bells?) it hardly made the people who were converted to the theory converted to religion.

When it was discovered that all of the plagues of Egypt (bloody Nile and death of firstborns included) were probably real did it make people give up on science? Hell no, it was science that made us understand them.

When people started being alive after they died (death by medical or legal terms, I leave it to you) did those resurrections make people give up on science? Not really, it just lead to the discovery a person electrocuted can, but usually won’t, come back without a defibrillator. If it is discovered that a person who died of crucifixion can come back without help will that make the doctors throw up their hands and get new jobs?

Beliefs are stronger than that.

Like lizards snakes and turkeys, now that we know animals with vertebrae (even warm blooded ones) can have virgin birth it doesn't make people praise god.

-

This is not solely directed at you, so don't take it personally, at all. It is not a personal attack, or any attack, it is just strong emphasis on the idea of miracles.

CARTOON

Monday, January 16, 2006 11:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Quote:
Originally posted by cartoon:
The primary sin of mankind (and Satan before us) is pride
But if by Satan you mean the Angel in the book of Job, he didn't sin before us, he sinned after. In Job Satan is the adversary of man, not of god. He works for god, and is welcome in god's presence.

Whenever the fall was, it was after Job, and Job was after the garden.

I hate to disagree with the person who nice enough to start a second part to this thread for poor folks like me with dial-up, but...

I disagree. The book of Job was written after the Penteteuch (5 books of Moses). No one knows when the story took place, but it everyone I know (and have read) agrees that it took place after the fall -- including the Jewish rabbis who assembled the OT and believed Moses's writings as inerrant cannon. According to the OT, there was no mankind before Adam & Eve, so it would've been hard for Job to take place at that time.

And BTW, even Jesus (and the apostles) refer to Satan as "the accuser of the brethren (believers)", so he has apparently, always been able to come to and fro before the Lord to point the finger at us.

BTW, it may be time for a part 3. ???

NTLZYJSTDNTCARE

Monday, January 16, 2006 11:13 PM

My view is that all notions of God are manmade, and if there is a higher power it has no relation to anything man has said on the matter.

At the same time I find it hard to believe that the creation of life is a coincidence. How did the first life come to exist for example?

There may well be a higher power imo, but we haven't seen any solid evidence of it yet, so I reserve my judgement.

not lazy just don't care (about anything but Firefly)

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, January 16, 2006 11:31 PM

cartoon,

I think you missed the point, the belief that Satan worked for God in the time of Job is used as an argument that Satan fell after that because Job was after Adam and Eve.

The idea is as follows:
The Fall follows Job, Job follows Eden, so the fall is after Eden.

It is, however, just a belief. And presented merely as something some people believe in.

Quote:
BTW, it may be time for a part 3. ???

If you mean, "it is time," rather than, "it may be," I shall make a part three, if you really me "it may be" we'll see what others think.

So, others, is it time for part 3?

QUEENOFTHENORTH

Monday, January 16, 2006 11:41 PM

Okay, I have lots of thoughts on god, life, the universe, and everything. So bear with me, cuz this is prolly gonna be a long post.

First off, I'll start by saying that I believe in a higher power. A being of divine wisdom that created us and everything, blah blah blah, etc. For convenience's sake, I will hereafter refer to this higher power as "God". It's shorter and easier to type than higher power. I believe that God is an embodiment of everything, an "all-in-one" kind of deal, male, female, father, child, hunter, hunted, and so forth.

Now, as to why I believe in God, it's simple. To look at the infinite vast complexity of the universe, the earth, all the species on it, not to mention just how complex people themselves are, and to attribute all that to some accidental "big bang" seems EXTREMELY farfetched to me, even moreso than the concept of God. I also think "big bang" is quite possibly the dumbest, most unoriginal name a person could think of for that occurence, but that's not the point.

Then there's also how people's lives turn out. Yes, I do believe we have free will and the ability to make our own choices and all that, but looking at the way things end up in people's lives even if that's not the way they thought or wanted things to happen, leads me to believe there must be something guiding or directing us.

Take, for example, the way my parents met. My dad left home at the age of 17 and traveled all over western Canada moving from job to job. One day he just happens to be in Red Deer, Alberta, and sees an ad on a bulletin board for a job in Ponoka, a little town that he'd never heard of before. So, he packs up his bags, heads to Ponoka, and gets the job. He then meets my mother at the bowling alley (they're both bowlers) and then they date, blah blah, and get married. But when you think about all the circumstances and other things that had to happen in order for my parents' paths to cross and for them to get married and have me and my brother, it gets very hard to believe that all this could happen by accident. I mean, if my dad had never seen that ad, there would be two people who wouldn't exist (me and my brother), and his life and my mom's life would be completely different, which in turn would affect probably hundreds of other lives. So it seems ridiculous to me to assume that something isn't guiding all of this.

So yeah, those are my compelling reasons to believe in God. That being said, I am not a religious church-goer. I do believe in God, and I try to live my life being a good person, not stealing, killing, and trying not to lie, etc. However, I don't follow any religion, because I believe that religions are man-made, fallible, entirely too flawed, and hypocritical. Not to mention, a lot of the religious people I've met have been some of the worst people that I've met.
Like my cousin's grandma, for example. (Not the one that we share, but their other grandma.) She was a very religious Christian, went to church twice a week, had lots of Jesus stuff, didn't even use the word "stupid" because she figured it was a swear-word. She was also the meanest bitch I've ever met. She treated my aunt like absolute crap because she didn't think my aunt was good enough for her precious son. Not to mention the way she treated me because she thought I was a bad influence on my cousins. She also treated all their friends absolutely horribly. Nobody, not even my cousins or her son, was really sad when she died. Which sounds horrible to say, but it's true. And she lived her life around a religion that is supposed to teach kindness and tolerance of others. Apparently she wasn't getting the message, even though she heard it all the time.

There's also the way that religions or religious intolerances have been responsible for some of mankind's most horrible atrocities: Crusades, Salem witch trials, Holocaust, 9/11, etc. People who believe they have the right to kill or judge in God's name because of religions just freak the hell out of me. This is not to say t

CITIZEN

Tuesday, January 17, 2006 1:24 AM

I don't believe in organised religions, they all seem so damn pious to me, they're right, everyone else is wrong. No idea that God might not actually care what you believe, long as you live your life right, and believe what you believe. I don't want to attack anyone’s beliefs, believe what you want; I just don't think any religion has got it right.

I do believe in what some would consider weird stuff, like psychic phenomena, not just because I've experienced it, precognition and presentiment mainly, but also because I've seen the amount of scientific evidence to support it, evidence largely suppressed by 'real' scientists.

I am going somewhere with this, one of the things suggested by Para-psychological research is the idea of group consciousness, the idea that everyone forms a part of a single ‘mind’, which if true could it not have some implications about the idea of God?

Or even thinking of it in a different way it always seems that religions want to separate us, god and the universe, this doesn't make sense to me. Surely if god was omnipotent God wouldn't be a separate entity to the universe and everything in it, God would be the universe and everything in it.

I think there’s a point buried in there somewhere.

Edit:
I suppose I could put it succinctly. I think the Universe could have formed naturally, that is without help from a God. Assuming a big bang followed by a big crunch and you’ve got a mechanism for the Universe to start again. At the point of singularity our universe didn’t exist, its physics even time itself didn’t exist, so why couldn’t the end of our universe be the catalyst for the beginning of our universe? Before the big bang and after the big crunch cause and effect no longer apply.

Is there a god, sure why not? Who are we to say the Universe isn’t constant, our current understanding of Physics say’s information can’t be gained about the future, but I’ve experienced it, our current understanding of physics is wrong.

Do I think that God is the same entity talked about in the Bible, Qur’an et al? No, not really, I don’t think they’re alike, I’m not even sure if God is entirely the right name for this entity, but it’s not entirely wrong either.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.

USMC

Tuesday, January 17, 2006 2:11 AM

I appreciate religion alot. People need to feel that there will be consequences for their actions, and give them a meaning in life. Many people need religion to feel like a part of something and live a more fullfilled existence. I know there for a fact that god does not exist, but thats opinion. I am happy to know that when I die, I am no more. No soul or afterlife, when i am gone, the person i am no longer exist in any form (wormfood). I accept that totally and have no doubt about it.

This subject is awesome though, i love the opinions expressed (even the cooky talk). I am entertained to see how others think and perceive life. I hope more people express their opinions, seems the same people arguing over their own opinions the last day or so. I wanna see peoples opinions personally, not see others trying to say who is right or wrong.

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