do you belive in god?
and why?
i want to, it feels good
you ought to work a lot harder on the threads you create. lucky for you im just really bored right now.
i guess its the prime thread here. still, you might wanna check the link in my sig.
to answer:
no, because there is no reason to.
of course theres a reason to! eternal death is boring and heaven is fun. and i think it feels better to believe you have at least a tiny grasp of the situation as opposed to falling blindly into who knows what sharp rocks you cant see.
i think you meant to say proof. which there isnt. but there also isnt any disproof (of deism).
There’s also no disproof for pink unicorns. (of the invisible variety.)
would you consider it prudent to believe in them?
As an atheist I ask myself, what logical concourse is there for believing in a creator of the universe? is there any logical intelligent design present?
I think the evidence is overwhelmingly against any sort of “powerful” deity.
As a mythologist, what can these stories teach us about ourselves? Alot. Think about the emotions that god displays… these are the same things we want our children to display towards us. (and the creator of yahweh is directly reflected in the image of his creator, much like the statues of Zeus reflect the artist who rendered it.)
Where did all ancient gods live? in the nearest volcano/mountain. Zeus had mount olympus, yhwh mount sinai, the god(s) of the aboriginees had uluru (ayers rock).
Why a mountain? Anyone who’s stood next to a massive mountain and witnessed even video of an explosion should understand the massive power associated with them. Now travel back a few thousand years and erase any knowledge of plate tectonics and geology.
Also add in that the mountain has a… certain immortality to it. It’s there for generations and generations.
What feels good is denying death from your doorstep.
nope, i meant to say reason. 
i think it feels better to believe you have a realistic grasp on the situation as opposed to making up stories to comfort yourself, I prefer to believe that this life is more than a test. .
yeah but believing in them doesnt make the design or current state of the universe more reasonable
it sure wont hurt. unless i pay 10% income tithes to them, that would be pretty stupid
no, the evidence is overwhelmingly against a powerful creator who made a universe that wasnt specifically intended to look like it didnt have any intelligent designers behind it (god doesnt want you to know he made the universe, so when it doesnt look like he did, it shouldnt)
bah. if you hadnt already known what you want from your children you wouldnt know the bible was telling you about it. we can learn about the backwards cavemen who wrote the stuff, but i think there are better sources of the kind of knowledge you can pretend you found first in a bible.
yeah its safe to say that any kind of theory created more than a couple hundreds years ago ought to be looked at with serious skepticism and an appreciation of the sort of knowledge that everyone believed at the time.
ive created a separate thread just now asking why people believe in those gods, one in particular. i think this broader thread should be allowed to ignore the silliness of that old fashioned kind of belief in god.
what do you mean? trying to tell yourself you dont care if you die for all of eternity or go to heaven even though you are about to die? does that make you feel like a big man?
wouldnt it feel good to KNOW that you are going to heaven, or that there is a god who is utilizing your struggle for some purpose you cant begin to understand? dont you wish you knew that?
but oreso, you dont have a realistic grasp on anything. you know how to enjoy life, you know it doesnt involve ridiculous rituals and taxes that pay for golden chalices.
but what do you know about where your or the universe came from and what will happen when you die? nothing!
i believe this life is more than a test too. i believe god made a machine and we are its cogs, completing some useful function. the way we go about completing this function is by doing exactly what god made his cogs want to do: create happiness, period.
the only thing i gain by believing in god is a belief in god. what do i lose? not taxes, not time spent on rituals, not even time spent on making people happy, because i would do that anyway.
all i want is the belief. and to tell you the truth, i totally dont believe in god like i believe in my hand, but i want to believe really bad, which is like almost believing.
i do, however, think a conscious creator is more likely the first cause rather than some physical process in this universe that doesnt require a cause. i mean… what in this universe could possibly not require a cause? so the thing that started the universe must not exist inside of it, as it is not bound by the law of cause and effect.
oh right i forgot! quantum particles can just jump into existence without any cause, from nowhere… somehow! so thats what the entire universe did! do you believe [b]that!?!?[/b]
This is precisely the realistic grasp. Just because i dont know something doesnt compel me to make up the answer, or even assume that the answers are knowable.
Sometimes the correct answer is to reject the question.
i guess thats very nice for you. i dont think i could believe something based on what i want to be true though. I would be happier knowing what is actually true.
Obviously if something caused the univese then it is not in the universe. However, there is no reason to believe even ‘universal laws’ apply outside the universe itself.
Hm? No, its simpler than that (though something like that would be a good enough reason, at least it would have empirical backing rather than wishful thinking, even if it doesnt match the answer you expect or want it to be.).
The actual reason is that cause and effect only applies on a timeline. Time began at the beginning of the universe, and so, there can be no cause (or anything else) before it. The universe is and that is all, to suggest anything more with our current knowledge is sheer speculation at best.
ok so you dont believe that he doesnt exist. you just choose to ignore the problem, which is certainly the most correct. correctness isnt neccesarily what i find most important though. but like i said, i dont actually believe anything either.
but something caused time to begin, which, if its like a normal cause, would have happened before time began. unless that cause had a time machine and went back in time to create the universe before it created the- …
ok yeah, anyway, final answer on god is there is no answer. dont say youre sure he doesnt exist because its totally plausible to believe in deism. and i think it makes you feel better if you assume a larger world with more gratifyingly understandable knowledge is above us.
Oreso said:
I beg to differ with this contention. There are no “timelines” as there is no “time”, that term is part of the construct of explaining change. We create the illusion of time through our necessity to divide the observable universe into understandable fragments of the whole. It is indicative of the limited capabilities of human deduction. There is also no reasonable scientific theory based on empirical evidence to refute the possibility of existence of “x” before the universe. Unless a person is willing to believe the impracticality of special pre-universe laws that only existed in the instant before the inseption of the universe, and then were in the same instant completely reversed. That, like time, is also a complete fallacy.
There is something else that requires definition, but we have yet to find it.
Rather than calling “time” a fallacy (since it clearly does exist, but not as most think it does) perhaps we’d be better to refocus our definition of time, into “one of several human processes of dividing the observable universe into understandable fragments of the whole.” Instead of saying time doesn’t exist at all, we should be trying to figure out what time REALLY is.
Future Man,
and believing in god does?
Explain that to those who have to have their appendix removed.
Let’s say I believed there was a diamond the size of a mack truck, buried in my backyard. I tell you things like; “The diamond makes my life worth living.”
Every Saturday I get together with my family and friends and starting digging up my backyard trying to find this diamond. Eventually when I die there’s no diamond ever found but it’s passed on through my family that there is this great big diamond in the backyard of everyone’s house. Then later on the diamond becomes a metaphysical thing even more… The diamond exists within each of us and we have to dig for it.
Early man dug for god by going to mountain tops, and early followers BELIEVED literally that god was on top of the mountain.
Later on it became obvious that god didn’t live on top of the mountain and he was moved to “heaven” in the firmament. Later it became obvious the earth wasn’t flat, we weren’t the center of the universe and no beings live in the firmament.
So god, where do you live now?
in the hearts of the believers.
So if one denies god do they deny apart of themselves? deny the existence of the diamond? Isn’t the diamond an important part of your “self”?
No. The diamond is a metaphor that exists whether or not you imply it’s existence. The belief in the diamond can change your behaviour but not as much as the belief of what you think belief in the diamond brings. If you think that getting the diamond brings you an afterlife, will you care as much about your journey through this life? You have after all already found the largest diamond in the world within yourself. You are ensured a wonderful afterlife. This life is just a test, where god constantly tempts you with disbelief. (I’ll touch on this more later.)
We can live a good life, and be good people without the implications of knowing, (which is impossible and damaging) what happens after we die.
I agree. And I’d want to keep the 10% of my diamond anyways.
This is part of the whole contradiction of god sending us here to test our faith in god. It’s really no different than believing the earth is 6000 years old and that god planted dinosaur bones and old rocks here to test our faith in his power.
Is it really a good thing to believe in such a nasty god, who’d go to such lengths to discredit knowledge?
The type of god that encourages looking at life through a filtered vision of the diamond in the afterlife, and ignoring the importance of knowledge in this life?
No matter what way you think about god… he adds a filter that hinders our ability to fully get what we need from life. I liken it to the 30 year old (or older) kids who still live in their parents basement because they are afraid to go out and experience the world on their own.
i think any source can be as bad as the bible… it depends on the filter you apply to the information you have.
I think it’s safer to say we should be just as skeptic of supernatural claims today.
Well I have to admit it is pleasant thinking we’ll be recycled like in reincarnation. And certainly you could evidence transitionary energies the way the sun converts hydrogen to heat and light the earth converts those energies into weather, energy (trees, animals, etc) and into us.
The problem is, proving there is any transitionary energy outside of our brains and bodies.
Sure.
You’ll spend your life absorbed with heaven instead of enjoying and learning about life here.
Hm? i was talking about other questions (what caused the universe, etc). No, concerning any particular belief, the only reasonable response is non-belief. I emphatically do no believe in god.
You’ll just mess up if you try to think about it in sloppy ways. Our grammar is built for temporal things.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, but regardless of if a particular belief is plausible, if it has no evidence then i find no reason to accept it. Thus i do not accept the existence of god.
As a side point, the world is large interesting and strange enough already, far more than i could ever appreciate as it is. The stories are good and all, but best enjoyed for what they tell us about ourselves than what they can tell us about the structure of the universe.
And no knowledge is beyond humanity.
just to be skeptical…
There’s no evidence for the non-existence of god either. (make sure you read my response to future man before responding.)
scythe, you have to remember, i made my whole religion up from scratch, while thinking about all of these things you are arguing against. the great point, however, is that looking forward to the afterlife does make you care less about this life.
yeah, i think of how much a pain in the butt it is when people truly believe that quantum particles pop into existence for no reason and then that the only alternative to religion is that the whole universe did that. no way! i refuse.
god created the universe in such a way that his existence cant be proven. this means as few deus ex machina’s as possible. er uh, machinas ex deus i guess. the foundation of the universe is relatively simple compared to the complex world we see built around it. he tried to make the foundation of the universe as simple as possible so that it would be easier to beleive that he doesnt exist.
this sometimes causes flaws as there are so many dna particles to get knocked out of place by so many solar radiation particles and whatever might be floating around in there.
he obviously could have made a more perfect world (and should have if he wants nothing besides human happiness), but then it would be easier to determine where the laws of physics end and magic begins. right now we just have one big bang and 13 billion years of pretty much perfect law following until the dawn of life which seems to also pretty much follow all the laws of physics. makes it pretty easy to believe he doesnt exist doesnt it?
PLUS! my god’s machine harvests the selfless actions of humans, which means that some must suffer. hopefully only in exchange for their previous lives of sin, or better yet, only when they are soulless automatons created by god to be the recipients of the real humans selflessness. but if its totally random that makes sense too. someone has to be the recipient of selfless actions and nobody needs it if everything is perfect.
well the most important part of my faith is that everyone is supposed to be made as happy as possible. if thats what made everyones life worth living, you should keep your mouth shut if you dont believe it, for the good of the world. but i totally see your point and totally hate christianity, maybe even more than you. (i think i remember that diamond from the last time we did this)
man is that christian god an idiot or what! i think he actually just had a hard time transfering his thoughts into the bible writers, thats gotta be tough. im sure he means well, he’s probably pretty frustrated at all the various interpretations. he should make a real superman to fly around spread the Good Word with violence and explosions. id believe THAT!
well knowledge of this universe is only valuable in this universe. and the whole point of this universe is to create some byproduct to be utilized by god. all the cog is supposed to know is where the teeth of the other cogs are and which direction they are moving.
not if you know that you cant know anything about heaven and that god really would appreciate it if you spent your life here enjoying happiness and creating as much as possible.
by the way ive just remembered now, i made all this up as a defense against atheism. because you cant prove or even close to proving that it isnt true: god made the universe to harvest a certain prevalent human behavior and he designed us to behave in that way and designed the universe to hinder our discovery of our place as a mere cog in the machine.
cant prove it wrong. therefore true.
thanks, I think the diamond point is good as well.
hmm… what if the quantum particles are just phasing in and out of alternate realities or alternate existences, and that’s just the natural behaviour for quantum particles to appear to our “eyes” that they “pop” into existence.
yes I know, you stated that earlier. I fail to see how this makes for an ideal god to believe in. It’s like “here I’m gonna create this wonderful game system for you, but i’m gonna not put my companies name on it, and you won’t be able to find any trace of my company.”
But the game machine exists… where’s the creator?
(I’m reminded on an Aurora song:so I post it below)
After centuries of human existence, a question arose, they asked themselves;
what is the purpose of everything, what is the sense of the sun which shines upon us, what is the sense for the murderous urge for expansion, what is the sense of love which consolates us all?
So the built a brain, it’s purpose was to find the answer to their question.
100,000 years passed by without finding the answer, they decided to place it in hyperspace, they improved it so it became 1000 times more intelligent.
The computer mused, but the question remain unanswered.
700,000 years passed by, the human race had spread out throughout the entire galaxy. but, the dissapointment grew as it asked for even more intelligence to find the answer. They humbled it’s wish as it was wise.
They constructed it anew, only out of atoms and molecules, it existed in the seventh dimension. They hoped for an answer, because the frustration about the senseless life grew stronger.
1 million years later, when only 10,000 humans were left, seperated from their bodies. lonely wandering through the universe in spirit, the illusion had brought them to the virge of extinction. They asked without hope, if it could tell the last survivors the sense of living on.
The computer demanded a bit more time, the humans lost the will to live and committed suicide.
Out of the seventh dimension he observed everything, and mused and mused.
the universe was near it’s end. throughout billions of years it slowly grew darker, until at last the last sun burst apart and everything was dark cold and dead. He was nearby turning himself off. When in the last corner of hisintergalactic brain, the solution and answer to all arose.
and he said;
“there shall be light”
“and there was light”
“after centuries of human existence a question arose…”
Again I ask … Why would god want to hide his existence?
It’s not god that has hidden (or was ever hidden), we have forced him into hiding with science and knowledge.
your blaming the existence of the appendix on solar particles?
the way I see it there are a few possibilities.
-
god is dead. The only life we have is right here and right now…
-
God is the universe. If god is infinite and the universe is infinite, there can only be one infinite being at once. He let the universe displace him, so that we could have a short time here. As for reincarnation? It’s hard to explain using eastern rules, as the ultimate role of Karma means that their is some infintely wise being sitting on a cloud waiting to judge us when we die.
-
we created god (much like the song I posted above.)
the ultimate purpose of the selfless actions being to power the machina deus ex?
I think I’ll stick to my advice and be skeptical of modern day god interpretations as well. I think we can be happy without god, it isn’t god that makes happy at church, it’s being around others who believe as you do.
the diamond example wasn’t specifically related to christianity… it could be related to ANY form you decide god to take.
and yours isn’t? he sends us here to test our capability to do good so he can harness our souls… you could look at the earth as a filter, but that would remove a capability from your god, making him less god like. All knowing.
[qoute]he should make a real superman to fly around spread the Good Word with violence and explosions. id believe THAT!
[/quote]
sure, who wouldn’t? There’s a difference between a god hiding his existence within the universe for faith, and intentionally laying down deceptive markers in the past to make the world look older.
I don’t know about you… but I’m still in this universe, thus knowledge about this universe is important to me.
yeah… as soon as you prove the existence of your god, you can move on to how your going to get people to step in line.
yeah? Most christians and muslims and judahs believe that (about god wanting you to spend your time here well.) yet somehow they still get obsessed with the idea of an eternal afterlife.
Why? immortality is attractive. Especially when you start to see friends and family pass away around you.
So? you can’t prove it’s true or false, does that make it true? What makes your version of the truth better than the christian version which has been around for 2000 years?
Let’s return to the diamond. Let’s say that I tell you, after you tell me it’s pointless digging for the diamond; “You can’t come close to disproving there is no diamond in the ground”.
So you take it upon yourself to hire a seismologist to use a machine to determine what is in the ground to prove to me that there is no diamond below the ground. The come back with the results and they are inconclusive.
Does that mean the diamond exists?
So, can you disprove the existence of my diamond? the seismology report was inconclusive.
thats exactly what i said! except that other existence has to be created just like ours. or maybe not just like ours but in some analogous way.
the purpose of life has nothing to do with humans purpose. humans purpose is to do what they are programmed to do: pursue happiness, those brain chemicals that feel indescribably good as opposed to bad.
its not only not neccesary for us to know gods purpose in order to implement it, but it probably wouldnt even make sense as he exists outside of time and space (probably?)
and aurora ripped off isaac asimov! that guy is awesome.
he was never out in the open! the only reason people thought he was was because people lied in order to manipulate peasants.
how is science ever going to explain the first cause? the whole purpose of science is to find out what caused “that”, whatever it might be. nobody is even thinking about what caused the big bang. what caused particles to exist, what caused forces to exist. what caused whatever it is that caused them?
either we find out what caused time to start existing (and therefore the concept of cause and effect) (and my mind will explode out of my eye sockets) or we leave it to some kind of magic that exists outside of time and eternally outside of our perception.
why would god want to hide his existence? you see a crippled leper 5 year old. you ask yourself, why should i help him? if you KNOW that god is real, you either know of his retribution or you assume that there must be something. at that point, any act of charity will be to please him, and it will not be selfless. selfless means you totally dont care about what happens to you. if you KNOW that a god is watching you or might be, then you know that you might get a hugely awesome pat on the back for your good deeds.
my theory says the reason why god doesnt want you to know he exists is because he wants all of your selfless actions to be truly selfless and to never be based on your expectation of gods reward.
yeah some sperm back in the day of lizards got smashed with a proton and when it was supposed to create a functioning appendix it- oh wait the appendix! now i get it.
well if somebody goes back and looks at the genetic record of evolution up until humanity, they will see that its not a perfect process and that it probably was not implemented by a perfect god, exactly as you are suggesting. and so there will be yet another piece of proof that god doesnt exist! exactly like he wants. dont you see how easy this is for me?
so the first universe, which was not created by our machine, must have really sucked bad. what would have motivated that machine to create a universe that wasnt perfect? aaaand what created that first universe if not a machine from the previous one? oh! the machine went back in time and created itself.
well if youll recall my response to your post in the omnipotence thread, just because you cant drown a chimpmunk in open air doesnt mean you cant drown him in an aquarium full of sulphuric acid. god exists outside of our universe. the universe expands in a direction that doesnt exist in his, either because his universe doesnt contain the concept of space or because it contains spatial dimensions in different directions (like the difference between up and left, except a fourth one that we never heard of)
yes. there damn sure isnt any other purpose. and you damn sure cant prove this one wrong.
absolutely. my god doesnt make me happy either, he just helps me believe that there isnt an infinite void of empty death waiting for me every time i get in a car. happiness makes me happy, and thats all that my god demands. if he made a universe where happiness (highest possible average happiness, not individual sadism) isnt his ultimate goal for humans, hes a fucking idiot.
no, any form where god demands that you do some silly ritual or hold some silly faith so that your afterlife will be better. my god demands that you do what you want as much as you can while allowing others the same. if you live your life any other way, you are a total failure, atheist or not. i believe nothing about an afterlife and i will curtail my current life’s happiness for nothing.
no he isnt testing anything. the good deeds are the ACTUAL spinning of the cogs. he isnt separating sinners from not, he is utilizing the non-sinners, AS they do their good deeds. the universe IS the machine itself. the friction is overcoming the selfishness and hatred and darwinian emotions. the progress is creating as much happiness as possible.
the impetus is the happy chemical in our brain. thats what drives us, like the furnace burning the coal that heats the steam that pushes the gears. the happiness chemical is that initial force. it causes the gears to push towards more happiness, away from the frictions that cause less happiness.
im sure someone may think that selfishness and darwinian emotions can lead to happiness as well, but unfortunately they are wrong. happiness is the good one, if we could all agree to feel one and no others, it would be happiness, not victory or retribution, just loving joy. and so thats why my theory is that that is what god wants from us
uh wait thats not what i thought. i thought the christian god put those dinosaur skeletons in place in order to fool non-christians into not believing in him because of their disgustingly sinful skepticism…
why else would he want the world to look older when its not?
i agree, just dont try to tell me you fully believe in atheism
they will step in line because happiness is good! stepping in line is good! thats how god made it! how else could he expect us to do what he wants without threatening us with eternal fiery torture?
thats because some fucking asshole told them that he has been chatting with god and god told him all about 72 virgins and video games as far as the eye can see because that asshole wants to manipulate them into giving up their money or life or something disgustingly selfish.
i dont concern myself with the afterlife for the same reason as you, theres nothing to know about it. if everyone followed my religion, theyd agree with you here and with the diamond metaphor just fine.
are you serious? im sure that you know there are serious logical differences between what ive written and that sham christianity. i mean, for one, how does god expect me to believe something that ive never seen and have no evidence for and then determine whether or not i go to eternal bliss or torture based on whether or not i believe it? (sure most christians today arent so amazingly retarded, but the people who made up your religion totally said that shit! and im not even talking about catholics!!)
no like i said, i just wanted atheists with their disproof of any and all gods to stop saying any and all and focus on the real enemies.
to tell you the truth though, i think i may be believing myself more than i did a year ago. simply repeating this theory over and over and telling people that it could be true and knowing that it feels better to not believe in the infinite void, i think ive forced myself to believe it just a little bit. maybe another ten years of this and some age related brain deterioration, i might totally believe it.
because, like i said, theres no reason not to. and thats where the validity ends. there is no reason to believe it other than the fact that the first cause must exist outside of time. it could be some phenomena in a universe not determined by time, but im just so turned off by the idea that so much beauty and happiness (happiness: indescribably good chemicals?!? wtf?!) can come from the fart of a blob of sludge, except even more pointlessly farty and more emptily sludge than those visualizations describe.
check out the first post here. we are totally encouraging that kind of behavior.
Hm? I read your posts, and i still dont see what stops me making an affirmative claim to disbelief. You do not need evidence to the absence of something (which is pretty much impossible) to claim its absence.