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[The Beatles pwn j00!]

I'd like to talk about our philosophies of God and the world. Just as long as we show some respect to one another, and speak gently.

What do you guys believe in? Do any of you care to share some of your thoughts on the nature of God or the universe?

If you find my post too long and don't want to read it, that's fine. But I'm still interested in what all of you personally believe in. So please tell.
___________________________________

I'm a Christian. I believe that this existence has a purpose. It's purpose is for us to willingly make the decision to open our eyes to the truth.

Modern science so far shows that the universe MUST have a starting point. If you put the universe in reverse, the point of it's origin can't continue to get infinitely smaller, because it would take an infinity for the universe to ever come into existence. That's obviously not the case, since we are here.

Having a starting point, something must have been there independent of it to bring about it's existence. It must have a cause. You cannot get something out of nothing. I believe that something has to be God. The universe can't shrink back to infinity, since we are here, but that doesn't mean an infinity doesn't exist. That necessary, independent, inconceivable infinity is the eternal and uncreated being; God.

An effect (the universe) must resemble it's cause (God). It's impossible for an effect to possess something it's originating cause did not have.

"...Can we understand the cause by its effects? Yes, we can, with the following characteristics being surmised:

• He must be supernatural in nature (as He created time and space).
• He must be powerful (incredibly).
• He must be eternal (self-existent).
• He must be omnipresent (He created space and is not limited by it).
• He must be timeless and changeless (He created time).
• He must be immaterial because He transcends space/physical.
• He must be personal (the impersonal cannot create personality).
• He must be infinite and singular as you cannot have two infinities.
• He must be diverse yet have unity as unity and diversity exist in nature.
• He must be intelligent (supremely). Only cognitive being can produce cognitive being.
• He must be purposeful as He deliberately created everything.
• He must be moral (no moral law can be had without a giver).
• He must be caring (or no moral laws would have been given).

These things being true, we now ask if any religion in the world describes such a Creator. The answer to this is yes: the God of the Bible fits this profile perfectly. He is supernatural (Genesis 1:1), powerful (Jeremiah 32:17), eternal (Psalm 90:2), omnipresent (Psalm 139:7), timeless/changeless (Malachi 3:6), immaterial (John 5:24), personal (Genesis 3:9), necessary (Colossians 1:17), infinite/singular (Jeremiah 23:24, Deuteronomy 6:4), diverse yet with unity (Matthew 28:19), intelligent (Psalm 147:4-5), purposeful (Jeremiah 29:11), moral (Daniel 9:14), and caring (1 Peter 5:6-7)."

Deep in our hearts, we all know that He is real. But we are blinded by our sinful nature. We were all within Adam. When he sinned, we all did. Humans inherent a sin nature. Even the tiniest wrong cannot be allowed to enter the perfect and Holy being of God. So we are all destined for eternal separation (Hell) from God. Being a perfect and just God, He cannot leave wrong unpunished. Being a loving God, he did what needed to be done to save us. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, God incarnate. Only God Himself could pay the price for what we did. Christ is the sacrifice for all of man's sin. As long as we have faith in Him all of our sins are wiped clean, enabling us to stand before God in paradise.

I believe that is the purpose of the universe is this: Are you with Him (everything)? Or are you against Him (nothing)?

Our purpose is to willingly make the decision to open our eyes to the truth. To know that we have utterly nothing without God. To accept that He is the only way to anything real. If we can't do right with this finite reality, how can do right with true eternal reality? People deny Him because of original sin. The idea that we can be as God is. The idea that we are in control.

People ask why does it have to be this way? If God is all-powerful, then why doesn't he just *blank*? God is perfect. This is a part of His plan. It HAS to be this way, otherwise it wouldn't be. It is the best thing that possibly could have been. It is all necessary, and it serves a purpose. If we have faith in Him, we will be with Him after this life. All things will be realized then, and we will see that all His decisions were perfect. All of this will be laid out in front of us. We will be in the presence of God, eyes finally open, glorifying Him for eternity.

God has fully revealed Himself in The Bible. It is up to each of us to cast aside our damned pride, and sincerely look for the truth of truth. Your relationship with God is personal. If you earnestly seek Him with all your being and call out to Him, He will hear you. He will open your eyes to the Scripture, His Word, so that you can see it for what it is; truth. His Word says that the only way to establish your place in eternity with Him is through His Son. Once you accept Christ, the Holy Spirit will be with you. It will teach you His ways. It will prepare you for your true eternal life.

If you refuse to open your eyes to what you know in your heart, and if you refuse to open your eyes to The Bible, then throw yourself into the studying of the universe. Rational science will ultimately force you into believing the existence of a creator. And that belief, if true and sincere, will lead you right back to The Bible.

To summarize, a creator is the only rational conclusion as to how and why we are here. The nature of everything points to God in The Bible as being the one true God. The only way to achieve what we are meant to do is through His Son, Jesus Christ. We need to lay down our foolish pride and open our eyes to truth.

That is what I believe.

But this is all very general. I'd like to get more into it. I'm very interested in what all of you personally believe in. Which is why I ask this:

Does anyone else want to share some of their beliefs on the nature of God or the universe?

[killermonkey]

I am an engineer and an Atheist. 100% believe in evolution and Big-Bang or similar theory.

Nice post, btw.

[Rodney 1.666]

Evolution FTW. (Though it could be faster...)

I imagine that would have ended up here had I not said anything.

[major]

I am an engineer and an Atheist. 100% believe in evolution and Big-Bang or similar theory.

Agree as well.

[Konrad Beerbaum]

I don't see much to discuss.  There is a lot of circular logic in your post, and most of your "arguments" require a belief that a god exists to begin with in order to be true, so they aren't convincing to someone who doesn't believe that. There is also no rational reason that your version of a god is any more real than any other religion.  Going even deeper, most of the facts or arguments that you base your reasoning on are huge assumptions that you believe to be true, and aren't able to be proven or disproven. 

To give you an example, most of your reasoning comes down to: God is real because the bible says so.  The bible is true because god wrote it.  You see the flaw. 

In short, you're free to believe whatever you want.  However you are wasting your time if you are trying to prove religion using rational arguments when the entire thing is based on faith. 

[Kratos]

Konrad I love you. I think we should just close this or it may get into a angry discussion. Its up to you.

[Rodney 1.666]

I don't see much to discuss.  There is a lot of circular logic in your post, and most of your "arguments" require a belief that a god exists to begin with in order to be true, so they aren't convincing to someone who doesn't believe that. There is also no rational reason that your version of a god is any more real than any other religion.  Going even deeper, most of the facts or arguments that you base your reasoning on are huge assumptions that you believe to be true, and aren't able to be proven or disproven. 

To give you an example, most of your reasoning comes down to: God is real because the bible says so.  The bible is true because god wrote it.  You see the flaw. 

In short, you're free to believe whatever you want.  However you are wasting your time if you are trying to prove religion using rational arguments when the entire thing is based on faith. 

QFT

[1Rusky]

I'm a Christian, but some of my views do differ from those of the Church. I believe that all religions will ultimately lead to God. All good men will find salvation except for those who have rejected Him. I've never gotten real big into reading the Bible. I think that some stories in it are meant to convey a moral and not all may have happened. I'm also not sure that God wrote the Bible, but rather those who were close to Him did.

I don't have a problem with anyone's religion or lack there of, only those who disparage one or the other. It's a growing problem in society today, too much is placed in materialism. The reason why evolution and the whole science thing doesn't do it for me is that it doesn't explain how the universe happened. There has to be something that comes before this and that; there must have been a creator.


I feel it requires more faith to believe in the science ideology than it does being religious. To just simply accept that after you die, it's over; just darnkness. That is way too bleak for me. There's a purpose to live. I'm not one of these people who say that God has a plan for everyone, I think that everybody can think for themselves and make their own way in life.

[jjmusicnotes]

There are studies that show that individuals who believe in something larger than themselves perform better in all areas of academics.

I don't have specific numbers because I don't remember them, but I remember reading the studies.

From a religious standpoint, if God is all powerful, then God created evolution, and since you guys believe in evolution, then you believe in a thing that was created by God.

And although it has been said that you can't rationalize a belief, I am willing to bet that no one here has actually seen something evolve with their own eyes, and because of that, we cannot help but believe that the data reported to us is true.  We cannot help but trust that the researchers who gathered the data know what they were doing.

The only reason any of us believes anything to be "true," is that evidence of the contrary occurred at a rate non-conducive to supporting different results.

The process of my logic, I think, can be held in accordance to anything that you percieve as fact.

And if someone completely negates the possiblity that I may be correct in some respect, they are no more irrationally clutching onto their "beliefs" as someone who believes in God.



Although Pascal's wager does contain it's logical fallacies, I think that Pascal introduces an interesting point.

To the athiest: What is so wrong about believing in something that promises to yield only positive reward?

I've heard arguments from athiests that say, "Well, what if I go about my life, live a happy life, help people, do good works, and am a decent person?  Do I really need to believe in God to do those things?"

As I understand it, no, you don't.  However, if you're an athiest, then you believe that after you die, you're just going to rot in the ground for another 10 billion years until the Sun implodes and then explodes. 

So where's the motivation?  If you think that the end result of your life is not contained within the measurement of those whom you help along the way, is not contained in what lies beyond the life of your flesh, then there's really nothing for you to look forward to is there?

Is it that you don't want to feel like you're "auditioning" for heaven?  Is it that you don't want to feel like you're obligated to act or behave a certain way?  Is it that you're afraid of feeling constrained, like you won't be able to live the life you want to live?

Or is it that you don't want to be one of those people "blindly" following God without any proof?

In the end, aren't your fears and worries all beliefs based on your perception of reality?

In my experience, all athiests ever do is try and poke holes in things that they're too afraid to talk about or explore.




You guys want to talk about rationalization.  Ok.



How about we figure out the probability that our Earth, and everything on it, was created by chance?

Any takers?

It's easy.  First you just need to figure out how much stuff is in our uniformly expanding universe (which, at it's present state is 13.7 billion light years in diamter.)  Of course, assuming that we have just the one universe.

'Cuz I think quantum physics says otherwise.  Oh yeah, that's a type of science.

Anyway, once you figure out how many things we have, you then need to figure out the most basic conditions that need to occur to support life.

Then you need to calculate the likelihood of the conditions for each "thing" in the universe to see whether or not life would be possible...

blah blah blah

and then you figure out how all those conditions just happened to appear in the Milkyway Galaxy, 93 million miles away from our sun.



You guys have a right to give JessEH a hard time - faith should be, and needs to be explored; something he was attempting to do by starting this thread.

However, if you're going to talk about this, at least have the decency to post more than one sentence in response.

All it shows is an inability to articulate your own rationalization of your own beliefs.

Don't fault JessEH for something that is inherent in all human beings, and if you think I'm wrong, then I would say that you're just proving the point.




@ Konrad -

Whether or not you want to believe it, life is based on faith.  Faith that someone loves you, faith that you're confident in the skills that you have, faith that you're family is going to be there for you when you need them.  Faith that you're going to be able to have a job every day.

Even the numbers that we all hold so precious, the numbers that quantinize our "beliefs" into what we percieve as reality, are all based on faith.

The number 4 is only worth what it is because all your life, everyone has told you that, and you have never believed otherwise.





To all the engineers and programmars, let me put creation in terms that you can relate to:


You don't believe that video games are created by random series of numbers and letters coalescing to form bits of code do you?

So why would you think that the universe and our existence is random?

Just because you don't understand the source code for life, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
 

[Sporkfire]

I think existence itself is mindboggling itself, so I tend not to debate about my own.

[Konrad Beerbaum]

From a religious standpoint, if God is all powerful, then God created evolution, and since you guys believe in evolution, then you believe in a thing that was created by God.

Huh? If you don't believe in god, that is irrelevant.

And although it has been said that you can't rationalize a belief, I am willing to bet that no one here has actually seen something evolve with their own eyes, and because of that, we cannot help but believe that the data reported to us is true.  We cannot help but trust that the researchers who gathered the data know what they were doing.

The only reason any of us believes anything to be "true," is that evidence of the contrary occurred at a rate non-conducive to supporting different results.

Sure.

To the athiest: What is so wrong about believing in something that promises to yield only positive reward?

It doesn't yield only positive results.  For most people, living their daily life, who follow a religion, I have no problem with.  My mom is pretty religious, and I have no problem with it. 

There are really only 2 issues I have with religion.

1.  In science, when something is unknown, Scientists try to find out what it is.  They are constantly looking for answers, and theories are constantly being tested to see if they are true or not.  If new information is discovered that contradicts a theory, the theory is thrown away and they try to find out the answer again.

With religion, when something is unknown, religion makes it up.  If new information comes to light, religious doctrine rarely changes to reflect that new information.  Not only does this result in incorrect information, but it stops people from looking for the real answers. 

2. Religious intolerance and the refusal to be rational.  Some religious people think they have all the answers act act negatively towards others because of this.  One example would be in the other thread and Beatles intolerance of Islam.  I saw that thread and just ignored it even though his beliefs didn't reflect mine, but Beatles had to post a long post bashing his religion.  Other examples would be when people blindly follow religious doctrine and it negatively affects others.

 
I've heard arguments from athiests that say, "Well, what if I go about my life, live a happy life, help people, do good works, and am a decent person?  Do I really need to believe in God to do those things?"

As I understand it, no, you don't.  However, if you're an athiest, then you believe that after you die, you're just going to rot in the ground for another 10 billion years until the Sun implodes and then explodes. 

So where's the motivation?  If you think that the end result of your life is not contained within the measurement of those whom you help along the way, is not contained in what lies beyond the life of your flesh, then there's really nothing for you to look forward to is there?

Is it that you don't want to feel like you're "auditioning" for heaven?  Is it that you don't want to feel like you're obligated to act or behave a certain way?  Is it that you're afraid of feeling constrained, like you won't be able to live the life you want to live?

Or is it that you don't want to be one of those people "blindly" following God without any proof?

In the end, aren't your fears and worries all beliefs based on your perception of reality?

In my experience, all athiests ever do is try and poke holes in things that they're too afraid to talk about or explore.

You guys want to talk about rationalization.  Ok.

How about we figure out the probability that our Earth, and everything on it, was created by chance?

Any takers?

It's easy.  First you just need to figure out how much stuff is in our uniformly expanding universe (which, at it's present state is 13.7 billion light years in diamter.)  Of course, assuming that we have just the one universe.

'Cuz I think quantum physics says otherwise.  Oh yeah, that's a type of science.

Anyway, once you figure out how many things we have, you then need to figure out the most basic conditions that need to occur to support life.

Then you need to calculate the likelihood of the conditions for each "thing" in the universe to see whether or not life would be possible...

blah blah blah

and then you figure out how all those conditions just happened to appear in the Milkyway Galaxy, 93 million miles away from our sun.

How the earth was created doesn't really concern me too much.  Science has some good theories, but nothing that is fact.  Who cares.  They are always looking for answers, and it really has no effect on my life, so it doesn't bother me. 

Death doesn't bother me either. When I die, I'll rot in the ground, big whoop. Until then, I'll live my life the way I want to and the best I can.  I don't need to pretend that there is some magical meaning to life in order to live happily.  I think this is all I've got, so I'll live it the way I want to.  I kinda feel people are cheating themselves by thinking they are going to get an afterlife, and not living the way they want to.  But hey, its their decision, and I'm sure there are positive and negative effects to both sides. 

@ Konrad -

Whether or not you want to believe it, life is based on faith.  Faith that someone loves you, faith that you're confident in the skills that you have, faith that you're family is going to be there for you when you need them.  Faith that you're going to be able to have a job every day.

Even the numbers that we all hold so precious, the numbers that quantinize our "beliefs" into what we percieve as reality, are all based on faith.

The number 4 is only worth what it is because all your life, everyone has told you that, and you have never believed otherwise.

I never said faith was a bad thing, or that I didn't believe in things. 

Look, it comes down to this.  Deep down, I just don't believe there is a higher power, and I'm not going to pretend there is to make myself feel better.  I live my life accordingly.  I also have no problem with those who do, as long as they don't negatively affect others.  There are a lot of good things about religion, and I'm not naive enough to believe that my moral code isn't somewhat based on principles that come from religion. But there are bad things that come from religion too, and I dislike those parts. 

If you'll read my original post, I never said religion was bad.  I said that beatles wasn't going to convince anyone of anything using religious arguments, and that trying to change people's minds about religion is pointless, especially in a forum. 

[jjmusicnotes]

Thanks for the reply to the post Konrad.  I know that it was a long one, and I appreciate you taking the time to exerpt quotes from it.

Thank you also for clarfying your points.  While I may not agree with some of your opinions, I respect them, and I thank you for respecting mine.

My only real intent was to prevent Beetles from being "ganged" up on.

Truth be told, I was athiest / agnostic for few years.  It's funny how things turn around though.

[Sporkfire]

haha I knew someone in highschool who would use any opportunity to say/talk about atheism or bash anything religious at moments notice. Then I saw him a year later wearing a crucifix and talking about church, I was like 

[WatchMyTrace]

There is only one true religion...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

[kraid]

Religions were found just becourse of some reason:
1. ppl need answeres to not be afraid of the unknown
2. they need explainations for things they don't understand
3. they wanna have a meaning
4. they want to belive in something
5. they want to have solace when going through hard times
6. they don't like the idea, their existence might end with dead
etc.

It doesn't really matter what they belive, but everyone belives in something.

So far so good, now there comes the sad part.

Some ppl who are aware of this needs, have found religions.
They give you exactly what you need (see 1-6), but in most cases they do it for their own benifits.

They got might, influence and are shaping the world like they want it.
By formulating laws & rituals, they achive control over these ppl.
They determine the standarts of moral, they tell us what's right and what's wrong.

Partially this isn't a bad idea at all, otherwise we might still slaughter each other without any reason. That way we got at least a reason, even if it's foolish.

In fact there has been so much cruelty in the name of religion, since they were found, so many slaughtering, war, crime, abuse etc. and all of it in the name of god(s).

But what's the alternate?
If we didn't belive in something we might come to the conclusion that we're only deers, tiny creatures on a giant dirtball flying with enourmouse speed through the void. Deers that are to dumb to handle their intelligence the right way, instead of using it to harm each other.
An unhappy acident, a joke of the universe.

Do we really want to belive in this, when the other explainations sound much more plesent to us?

At the end it's on us to give our lives a meaning, a purpose. Everyone should find his/her answeres for him-/herself.

Ofc. it's much easier to rely on things which have been dictated by others, but finding your own answeres is much more satisfying.

Use the religions/sience/ your imagination on your own and you'll see it's not that hard as you might have thought before.

For the Bilble, it's an interresting book, but it was written and assembled by humans. Someone decided which writings will be included and which will not.

There's a lot of history in it, but also legends and myths.
The ppl at this time told the Stories of things that happened to others for centuries, they altered it added things to make it more interresting.

As for me, i belive the one Person refered as Jesus, was not one Man, it's more a collection of true stories which were altered to make them more interresting, combined with the need of a 'hero'.

As for God, i don't belive in a superior beeing which is described by many religions.
This is beeing caused by the need of ppl to have some kind of ueberfather figure.

------ I belive ---------

... it's the universe itself, which is searching for a meaning and does this by creating live.

... there's something remaining after we died, not really a messurable energy or a soul, coz what we describe that way, is just the reflection of a small pice of the whole thing.

And even our universe isn't the allmighty thing, it's just one out of a huge ammount, to big to be ever counted.

All these universes might be the smallest pices of another existing layer.
The whole live cycle of our universes, which i think are alternate realities, might be just a splitsecond out of the view of the next layer. A little flash to small to be ever found.

Our whole collection of alternate realities might be just one dustparticle in this Layer.
The universe we know, created by what we call the Big-Bang, is only one pulsating which will repeat itself over and over again, and always ends in a big crash which causes the next Bang.

Next time we might have the whole cycle of another of these alternate realities, but there surely will be one which exactly repeates the cycle we are running through now.

Anyway, we'll never find out the whole true, and if someone could, he/she would instantly go insane coz of the unbelivability of it.

Maybe it's also wrong to take it as a fact that there is the 'one and only' true.