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Long Tooth
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Joined: 06 Apr 2007
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 Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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| ian neal wrote: | | Long Tooth wrote: | if there is one god why do the religions sing from different hymm sheets?
These people peddling this are guessing, and we all know if you are guessing then you dont know.
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Hi Longtooth.
IMO God is not religion/s and religion/s is not God. It is possible to reject all religions and still believe in God. The difference between those that believe in God who follow a religion and those that believe in God and don't, is that for one God is defined by and understood through that religion whilst for the other, God is self defined and understood without dogma.
What if I said that life is a self fulfilling prophesy: that what we believe and how we act determines how we perceive the world and what happens to us.
In such a world, if you believe in God you are open to experiencing God and if you don't, you won't. For the believer they will find confirmation in life all around and visa versa.
For me, the chasm that often exists between the religious and athiests is easily understood. In all religions you can find dogma (some of it very silly indeed to the non believer) and intollerance and practices and beliefs that are fundamentally at odds with the core message of past prophets.
This is why personally I have never found any value in dogmatic religion.
To me God is a very complicated concept to communicate. As complicated as life itself. Indeed in trying to describe it you can sow the seeds of confusion. So at the risk of confusing everyone, here's my take (which I should add is not a particularly original one).
God is everything: the alpha and the omega, everything that ever was, is and will be (within the perception of time), you, me, this computer, every thought, word and deed, both the creator and the created. But I like to keep things simple: God is Life is Love is Freedom is Infinite.
So my humble advice is if you don't believe in God, pay this no attention. Instead believe in Love (unconditional Love) or Life for ultimately they are all paths to the same truth. Like I said not particularly original, but true for me. |
Hi Ian, when i said ''those peddling this are gussing'' i refer to the theorists pushing nothing is finite. they do not know so they are basing the theory on a guess.
I put forward my side of the debate in response to organised modern religions.
from recent past history its obvious for all to see except the most blinkered that the organised religions have caused an unduly large amount of suffering,death and misery down the years.
In such a world, if you believe in God you are open to experiencing God and if you don't, you won't. For the believer they will find confirmation in life all around and visa versa.
i was brought up until the age of 11 as a roman catholic, believed everything i was told until i started to think and ask questions, i was then uncerimoniously removed from the religious education class as a disruptive influence for asking too many questions. i never had a visitation from god suprisingly enough, not that proves or disproves anything.
we live in the uk were the christian dogmas dictate a lot of policy through religious heads with influence. The vast majority of christians havant got a clue or had a visitation from god, they cannot even tell you when or how their faith was invented, they except it all as fact.
i realise i am '''''pressing in the wind''''' in regards trying to get the dogmaists and mantraists to ''see the light'' of reason.
As none of us know if there is or isant an all supreme 'being' spirit, god or ET, mankind would benefit greatly if the subject of organised relgion was outlawed. If only they would stop peddling the filth organised religion is, mankind could move on. If a contagious virus was running rampant and causing mayhem, one would oppose the virus to stop the infection, thats how i see organised religion, an evil contagious virus. Its not as if one can stop children going to school and being infected with the chritian mantras.
i have no problem whatever with your version of god, it dosant infect anyone badly and only teaches love, peddle that forever is what i say.
i am not an athiest by the way.
i always wonder why the dogmatic christians are always judging people, when their bible says leave all judgement unto 'him'. (stelios springs to mind)
but thats enough of dogmas, its time to move on. |
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Anthony Lawson
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:41 am Post subject: Labels |
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Labels
Stelios wrote...
| Quote: | | So after all the argument, you are a christian at heart. |
No, no, no! I do not accept that my way of living my life requires a label, or that because I believe in something similar to what a man named Jesus was alleged to have said makes me one of his followers. That would put me in danger of being lumped together with someone who could write:
| Quote: | But athiests are a different kettle of fish completely
they have no rule no regulations
they eat what they like, kill what they like, destroy what they like
with no regrets because they have no conscience and no moral yardstick to follow |
Apart from not being able to spell the name of what you are attacking, if you are not already there, this is getting pretty close to making you unreasonably prejudiced and intolerant of those who do not share your beliefs. In short: You are in danger of becoming a bigot, and I certainly would not wish to be associated with bigots.
For those who insist that a label is an absolute necessity, I would prefer to be known as an Occamist.
William of Occam (c.1285-1349) English Franciscan friar who spent the first part of his career (until 1324) studying and teaching philosophy in Oxford and the last part (1333-47) in Munich writing anti-papal pamphlets. He is remembered for a maxim which has acquired the name of
Occam's razor: it is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer
i.e. the fewest possible assumptions should be made in explaining a thing. Occam distinguished sharply between faith and reason, advocated a radical separation of the Church from the world, denied the pope all temporal authority, and conceded large powers to the laity and their representatives. Occam was the last of the great scholastic philosophers. His ideas influenced Luther, and paved the way for the Reformation. (OED — emphases added)
Other renditions of Occam’s Razor are:
It is in vain to multiply entities beyond necessity.
Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.
And, in more everyday English:
All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.
Although William of Occam (a.k.a. William of Ockham) almost certainly wrote in Latin, the use of the word ‘vain’ in some of the renditions is interesting. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that it could refer to man’s vanity in believing that he was put on Earth for some special purpose? So I wonder what Friar William would have made of some of these statements:
Zabooka (various)...
| Quote: | ...Muslims are told that if no one ever sinned on Earth, He would destroy the World and start again.
God is not a part of the Universe and does not exist therein.
In Islam, we believe that all is from God, nothing can be from God.
We believe Humans have been given a will, as it is the intentions that we are to be judged upon, not our actions.
It is not concievable, that the Creator is also ruled by its Creation's laws.
... in the Quran it clearly states that all Good is from God and all Bad is from us.
The fact that you are trying to say that our Kalaam Cosmological Argument says that even God is finite... and the fact that you do not understand that all language is metaphorical. You see these concepts are not difficult to understand, its as soon as you find an excuse to not understand them, you use it to disregard them. |
Getting back to my own position, perhaps an association with a long-dead monk, who advocated the separation of Church and State, might take a bit of the stigma out of not agreeing with certain people, because there seems to be a lot of that about, particularly when the word ‘atheist’ crops up.
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Gibson
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:25 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Occam's razor: it is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer
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Try telling that to Gillette. |
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Zabooka
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:52 am Post subject: |
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| Gibson wrote: | | Quote: | Occam's razor: it is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer
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Try telling that to Gillette. |
haha  |
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Zabooka
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:55 pm Post subject: Re: Labels |
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| Anthony Lawson wrote: |
Zabooka (various)...
| Quote: | | In Islam, we believe that all is from God, nothing can be from God. |
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Wow... did I really say that? Thats not defendable by calling it a Metaphor lol. Okay, in Islam, we believe all is from God. I don't where that nothing can be from God bit came from. Oh I get it.. I think I must have meant to say, we believe nothing can not be from God. Or nothing can be free and independent of God. |
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TonyGosling
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Anthony Lawson
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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Cutting Wit
Well, at least Occam’s Razor has never been used to chop off the heads of adulterers or the hands of thieves, nor used to shave kindling for burning some poor sinner at the stake.
Ho, ho ho!
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Anthony Lawson
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| Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:10 pm Post subject: Back in Context |
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Back in Context
Tony Gosling wrote...
| Quote: | Anthony Lawson wrote:
| Quote: | | If ‘god’ can be so arbitrary, then could not he, she or it simply be called ‘chance’? |
God isn't arbitrary at all - he's intervening to thwart the forces of darkness all the time. Unfortunatly, through lack of faith on earth in him his powers to get the truth out are limited. |
Do you mean that we unbelievers are acting on God like Kryptonite acts on Superman? I wonder what Zabooka would think of that.
In any event, it is always easy to take something out of context, in order to dodge the issue. What preceded the line of mine which you have quoted was:
| Quote: | | One often hears of people who claim that their survival was a ‘miracle’; that ‘God was looking upon me, that day...’ or words to that effect, when the other poor people in the plane, bus or boat disaster all perished. Much the same is said when a sick baby is ‘miraculously’ cured, while others die horrifying deaths caused by war, natural disasters and disease. |
So, Tony, if ‘God is not arbitrary at all’, then those who did perish—in my examples—died as God planned, and the one’s who were saved should not claim that their survival was a miracle, because that was all part of God’s pre-ordained scenario, for that particular moment in time. It would have to follow that miracles either do not happen, or that it is not unusual for them to have a serious down side, like one or two alive, 150, or so, dead.
Have I got that right?
On the other hand, you may argue that I have taken your words out of context, and that God doesn’t have time to bother with those kinds of things, because He’s too busy ‘intervening to thwart the forces of darkness....’
If that is the case, then either He’s not been having a lot of success, recently—two million, or so, dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, and countless others maimed or destitute—due to what this forum seems to consider to be the forces of darkness: Bush, Blair, their cohorts and puppet-masters, or these guys are not as evil as most of us believe them to be, but merely pawns in God’s larger chess game, so to speak.
Which do you think it is?
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Mr-Bridger
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| Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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I think Carl Sagans views on god and religion are good :
"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."
You see, the religious people -- most of them -- really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a *, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition. [Sol Hadden in Carl Sagan's Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), p. 285.]
The question [Do you believe in God?] has a peculiar structure. If I say no, do I mean I'm convinced God doesn't exist, or do I mean I'm not convinced he does exist? Those are two very different questions. [Dr. Arroway in Carl Sagan's Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), p. 168.]
The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and rightYou can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation. [Dr. Arroway in Carl Sagan's Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), p. 162. ]
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TonyGosling
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Mr-Bridger
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blackcat
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truthseeker john
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 10:58 pm Post subject: God |
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Because the universe exists it is quite logical to say that an originator of the universe (which by definition is God) also exists. However, the god of the Bible (YHWH) whom the Hebrews followed in the sky as a “pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day,” was obviously not the Creator who exists beyond matter and energy and space and time. Then this is even confirmed in the Bible where it says, “the heavens of the heavens (literally meaning the sky of the sky – outer space) cannot contain you" (God).
In other words, the god of the Bible is a creature or creatures, rather than the Creator of the universe. The Hebrew word Elohim is plural and after much research into theology (over thirty or more years), I have come to believe that he (or they) are the same as what we would call today, ET.
There is a difference between the logic of the universe having a First Cause and religion. As far as I am concerned, some talk about how the universe began is OK on here but not religion and religious dogma. |
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petros
Trustworthy Freedom Fighter
Joined: 13 Aug 2007
Posts: 106
Location: UK
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| Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 10:18 am Post subject: |
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Everyone is religious. It's just that most people worship themselves. So when you tell them there is another God then it threatens their autonomy.
A good book to read is the myth of religious neutrality by Closer
Below is a good lecture on some of the evidence for faith that's easy to understand.
It's not blind faith by Mark Cahill
http://64.34.176.235/sermons/SID8186.mp3
The Case For The Resurrection of Christ
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=40aRXR8cBxQ
There is plenty of evidence for a creator and plenty of evidence for the resurrection and the authenticity of divine revelations in scripture and the authenticating personal experience of God in the life of the believer. |
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truthseeker john
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Location: Yorkshire
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