Do you believe in God and why

[VincentRJ]

1 hour ago, Tagged said:

The big Q is

 

How can you state there is no god, or how can you state there is a god? 
 

Nobody walking on this earth of flesh and blood do know, but they believe one or the other! Thats a fact! ????

I don't think everyone does believe one or the other. There are those who know that they don't know. They are called 'agnostics'. 'Gnostic' is from ancient Greek meaning 'knowing', and the 'a' in front of it means 'not'.

 

Theism is a belief in a God. Put an 'a' in front of it and it means 'not, or no belief in a God'. However, there is a distinction to be made between 'not having a belief in a God', which is a lack of a belief, and 'having a belief that there is no God', which is still a belief. 

 

Some dictionaries define Atheism as an actual 'belief there is no God'. Using this definition, God-believers sometime accuse atheists of being irrational. How can anyone possibly know, and therefore believe, that there is no God. Where's the evidence?

 

So much depends on the precise definition of the words we use. I use the term 'atheism' as meaning a 'lack of a belief in a God', due to a lack of evidence. I certainly don't have an actual belief that there is no God-like entity of some description. However, If there is a God, of some description, that might be discovered after another thousand years of scientific development, I think it would be highly unlikely that such a God would fit the descriptions of God found in the Old and New Testaments and the Quran (or Koran). ????

[Tagged]

1 hour ago, VincentRJ said:

I don't think everyone does believe one or the other. There are those who know that they don't know. They are called 'agnostics'. 'Gnostic' is from ancient Greek meaning 'knowing', and the 'a' in front of it means 'not'.

 

Theism is a belief in a God. Put an 'a' in front of it and it means 'not, or no belief in a God'. However, there is a distinction to be made between 'not having a belief in a God', which is a lack of a belief, and 'having a belief that there is no God', which is still a belief. 

 

Some dictionaries define Atheism as an actual 'belief there is no God'. Using this definition, God-believers sometime accuse atheists of being irrational. How can anyone possibly know, and therefore believe, that there is no God. Where's the evidence?

 

So much depends on the precise definition of the words we use. I use the term 'atheism' as meaning a 'lack of a belief in a God', due to a lack of evidence. I certainly don't have an actual belief that there is no God-like entity of some description. However, If there is a God, of some description, that might be discovered after another thousand years of scientific development, I think it would be highly unlikely that such a God would fit the descriptions of God found in the Old and New Testaments and the Quran (or Koran). ????

And it is more books and scripts where you find simularities, older than these books describing the same or almost the same stries. So there have been connections between civilations, and tribes where people have been wanderes and preached, shared and told stories, and made new stories. No doubt about it. 

 

Just as today when people find the truth, they have to express it somehow, and some get frenetic and Manic with huge conviction and speach gifts, and finding other people searching and here we are today ????

 

still people searching some find it, some dont, and others just discover it when they have given up. 

[ivor bigun]

So to all you believers ,can you tell me when God was discovered ,because before the Jews "found out" about him and started worshiping him there were hundreds of Gods ,actually there still are ,are they false Gods?

[Peter Denis]

2 hours ago, ivor bigun said:

So to all you believers ,can you tell me when God was discovered ,because before the Jews "found out" about him and started worshiping him there were hundreds of Gods ,actually there still are ,are they false Gods?

The way the question is formulated - and the presumptions behind it - make it impossible for me to provide a meaningful answer.  But am interested if some of the Usual Suspects here can provide a sensible response...

[bert bloggs]

And the Lord said unto John 

" come forth and you will receive eternal life"

but John came fifth and only won a toaster.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 6/10/2020 at 4:17 PM, ivor bigun said:

So to all you believers ,can you tell me when God was discovered ,because before the Jews "found out" about him and started worshiping him there were hundreds of Gods ,actually there still are ,are they false Gods?

You are still talking about religion. The creator is not in religion as religion is a man made structure for the benefit of the rulers/ priests.

The creator is found in faith, and that has been explained many, many times on this thread, and not just by me.

[bert bloggs]

Just now, thaibeachlovers said:

You are still talking about religion. The creator is not in religion as religion is a man made structure for the benefit of the rulers/ priests.

The creator is found in faith, and that has been explained many, many times on this thread, and not just by me.

well i had faith many years ago ,that my first wife and i would live happily ever after ,well i know how that worked out 

[fredwiggy]

Just now, bert bloggs said:

well i had faith many years ago ,that my first wife and i would live happily ever after ,well i know how that worked out 

Faith in God will always work. Putting faith in a human won't many times.

[bert bloggs]

Just now, fredwiggy said:

Faith in God will always work. Putting faith in a human won't many times.

It must be so lovely to believe ,that there is an entity who has created billions of worlds and impregnated a woman by immaculate conception and sent his only son down to this little planet and that one day when you die you will be met at the pearly gates and be reunited with all those you loved ,really i am not having a go at you ,i mean it ,must be a real comfort .

i wonder does the same thing happen to believers in those other Gods ? they have faith as well,who is going to be dissapointed on the day of reckoning?

[fredwiggy]

1 minute ago, bert bloggs said:

It must be so lovely to believe ,that there is an entity who has created billions of worlds and impregnated a woman by immaculate conception and sent his only son down to this little planet and that one day when you die you will be met at the pearly gates and be reunited with all those you loved ,really i am not having a go at you ,i mean it ,must be a real comfort .

i wonder does the same thing happen to believers in those other Gods ? they have faith as well,who is going to be dissapointed on the day of reckoning?

There's only one God, so a lot will be in for a shock.

[n00dle]

2 minutes ago, fredwiggy said:

There's only one God, so a lot will be in for a shock.

One suspects you are entirley blind to the potential irony of your own words.

[fredwiggy]

Just now, n00dle said:

One suspects you are entirley blind to the potential irony of your own words.

One suspects it may be you that is blind.

[xylophone]

6 minutes ago, n00dle said:

One suspects you are entirley blind to the potential irony of your own words.

Pointless arguing with these folk, because they do believe and there's nothing you can do about it, despite the fact that everything points to the religion being made up of fairy stories, and of course believing that two penguins walked all the way from the Antarctic to get on a wooden boat in the desert and such things as this.

 

They want to believe, so just let them be, as no amount of facts or pointing out the impossibilities of the religion, or any religion for that matter, will change their minds.

 

There is a wonderful piece in the book, "The God Delusion" whereby some of the hierarchy of the clergy were at a conference which then broke up for dinner, and at that dinner one of the priests who had served in Africa was relating the fact that these people were just savages, and that they had religion which believed that small "things" lived in the trees and would fire arrows at selected human beings in order to convert them to their way of life.

 

Raucous laughter ensued when they started picking holes in these beliefs, calling the beliefs absolutely stupid, totally oblivious to the fact that their own religion was built on stories of virgin births, rising from the dead, ascending to heaven, the Ark and all of the animals of the world being fitted into it, loaves and fishes and water and wine, and so on.

 

Best to leave these folks to their own devices as you will never win in an argument irrespective of how impossible or stupid their religious beliefs are.
 

[KC 71]

[Peter Denis]

25 minutes ago, fredwiggy said:

There's only one God, so a lot will be in for a shock.

You too, if it turns out that the one God is not what you believed it to be.  But that God is the consciousness that literally encompasses all things, and that religion is just a man-made construct trying (and failing) to grasp that concept.

[bert bloggs]

1 hour ago, fredwiggy said:

There's only one God, so a lot will be in for a shock.

Well the good thing is ,that if there is no God we wont be in for a shock at all ,as we wont know because we will be dead .

[fredwiggy]

2 minutes ago, bert bloggs said:

Well the good thing is ,that if there is no God we wont be in for a shock at all ,as we wont know because we will be dead .

There is a God. Again, the universe didn't and couldn't just "happen", so it had a creator. God. When you die, you will meet him.

[n00dle]

2 hours ago, xylophone said:

Pointless arguing with these folk, because they do believe and there's nothing you can do about it, despite the fact that everything points to the religion being made up of fairy stories, and of course believing that two penguins walked all the way from the Antarctic to get on a wooden boat in the desert and such things as this.

 

They want to believe, so just let them be, as no amount of facts or pointing out the impossibilities of the religion, or any religion for that matter, will change their minds.

 

There is a wonderful piece in the book, "The God Delusion" whereby some of the hierarchy of the clergy were at a conference which then broke up for dinner, and at that dinner one of the priests who had served in Africa was relating the fact that these people were just savages, and that they had religion which believed that small "things" lived in the trees and would fire arrows at selected human beings in order to convert them to their way of life.

 

Raucous laughter ensued when they started picking holes in these beliefs, calling the beliefs absolutely stupid, totally oblivious to the fact that their own religion was built on stories of virgin births, rising from the dead, ascending to heaven, the Ark and all of the animals of the world being fitted into it, loaves and fishes and water and wine, and so on.

 

Best to leave these folks to their own devices as you will never win in an argument irrespective of how impossible or stupid their religious beliefs are.
 

all i have have to say is that is truly a wonderful circumstance that the one god is always the god of those making the claim. 

[n00dle]

1 hour ago, fredwiggy said:

There is a God. Again, the universe didn't and couldn't just "happen", so it had a creator. God. When you die, you will meet him.

what astonishes me is how much your conviction reads like satire.

 

Presumably if the universe didn't just happen, certainly the creator didnt just happen either. 

pray remind how the "creator" came about, i cannot currently recall.

[n00dle]

On 6/8/2020 at 4:42 PM, VincentRJ said:

I don't think everyone does believe one or the other. There are those who know that they don't know. They are called 'agnostics'. 'Gnostic' is from ancient Greek meaning 'knowing', and the 'a' in front of it means 'not'.

 

Theism is a belief in a God. Put an 'a' in front of it and it means 'not, or no belief in a God'. However, there is a distinction to be made between 'not having a belief in a God', which is a lack of a belief, and 'having a belief that there is no God', which is still a belief. 

 

Some dictionaries define Atheism as an actual 'belief there is no God'. Using this definition, God-believers sometime accuse atheists of being irrational. How can anyone possibly know, and therefore believe, that there is no God. Where's the evidence?

 

So much depends on the precise definition of the words we use. I use the term 'atheism' as meaning a 'lack of a belief in a God', due to a lack of evidence. I certainly don't have an actual belief that there is no God-like entity of some description. However, If there is a God, of some description, that might be discovered after another thousand years of scientific development, I think it would be highly unlikely that such a God would fit the descriptions of God found in the Old and New Testaments and the Quran (or Koran). ????

While arguing semantics is all well and good there are many out there without the basic literacy to understand these distinctions who bandy the terms about.

 

I have met agnostics who claim to be atheists and atheists who are actually agnostics because they fail to understand the terminology.

 

I have also met agnostics who claim to be deists and agnostics who actually were deists.

 

Its a mixed up muddled up shook up world.

Edited June 11, 2020 by n00dle

[fredwiggy]

10 minutes ago, n00dle said:

what astonishes me is how much your conviction reads like satire.

 

Presumably if the universe didn't just happen, certainly the creator didnt just happen either. 

pray remind how the "creator" came about, i cannot currently recall.

Was always there. You make fun of this but sadly you'll be woken up to reality when it's yolur time. I hope you change your thinking before thenn, which could be any day.

[n00dle]

6 minutes ago, fredwiggy said:

Was always there. You make fun of this but sadly you'll be woken up to reality when it's yolur time. I hope you change your thinking before thenn, which could be any day.

So I should hold off renewing the car insurance?

 

Will there be a smiting?

Edited June 11, 2020 by n00dle

[fredwiggy]

27 minutes ago, n00dle said:

So I should hold off renewing the car insurance?

 

Will there be a smiting?

A huge one

[VincentRJ]

44 minutes ago, n00dle said:

While arguing semantics is all well and good there are many out there without the basic literacy to understand these distinctions who bandy the terms about.

 

I have met agnostics who claim to be atheists and atheists who are actually agnostics because they fail to understand the terminology.

 

I have also met agnostics who claim to be deists and agnostics who actually were deists.

 

Its a mixed up muddled up shook up world.

Absolutely! This is the main problem. Our modern societies have developed because of increasing literacy and a capacity for precise definitions of experiences, observations and phenomena. Without such precision, scientific development would not be possible.
For example, certain ancient tribes, some of which still exist in remote areas, have just one word in their language for 'tree'. They don't distinguish between one species of tree and another. They are all just trees.

 

That's a bit like believing in just one God.

 

One revealing comment in the Bible, about this 'one and only God, is found in the opening phrase of the Ten Commandments.

 

"You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments."

 

So it seems that this one and only God experiences 'jealousy', just like most humans do.

 

It seems the Jewish/Christian God is not as advanced as Gautama Buddha, a mere human, who had succeeded in dispelling all negative feelings of anger and jealousy. ????
 

[fredwiggy]

Just now, VincentRJ said:

Absolutely! This is the main problem. Our modern societies have developed because of increasing literacy and a capacity for precise definitions of experiences, observations and phenomena. Without such precision, scientific development would not be possible.
For example, certain ancient tribes, some of which still exist in remote areas, have just one word in their language for 'tree'. They don't distinguish between one species of tree and another. They are all just trees.

 

That's a bit like believing in just one God.

 

One revealing comment in the Bible, about this 'one and only God, is found in the opening phrase of the Ten Commandments.

 

"You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments."

 

So it seems that this one and only God experiences 'jealousy', just like most humans do.

 

It seems the Jewish/Christian God is not as advanced as Gautama Buddha, a mere human, who had succeeded in dispelling all negative feelings of anger and jealousy. ????
 

I don't think Buddha had the power to make a universe, and I'm thinking because Buddha , although he may have believed there was a God, felt no need for him, and he might be enjoying Satan's company now. Seeing that God created everything, I think he can make the rules.

[mrmazinkle]

On 4/14/2019 at 10:28 PM, marcusarelus said:

How about those who deny medical treatment to their children in the name of god?  How about those who stone women in the name of god?  How about those who commit mass suicide in the name of god?  Is that OK?

The aztec sun god forecast the coming of the conquistadors and the geneside of their race so of course there is a god.Only one of them was saved that of course was one of his miracles.

Edited June 11, 2020 by mrmazinkle

[bert bloggs]

2 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

There is a God. Again, the universe didn't and couldn't just "happen", so it had a creator. God. When you die, you will meet him.

well as there are billions of people in the world and billions have died already(plus those on other planets we do not even know about) he must be rushed off his feet ,"meeting us all"when we die .

[Logosone]

On 5/18/2020 at 3:10 PM, CMNightRider said:

There are no precursors to the Rapture; it could happen at any time. 

 

Or it could not.

[JensenZ]

3 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

There is a God. Again, the universe didn't and couldn't just "happen", so it had a creator. God. When you die, you will meet him.

What will the "you" be after you die?

[Peter Denis]

5 minutes ago, JensenZ said:

What will the "you" be after you die?

Like the sound of one hand clapping.

All non-essentials stripped and only the divine spark of consciousness remaining, and depending on how you lived your life that being a bright shining light or a faint tealight.