Do you believe in God and why

[fredwiggy]

Just now, Skeptic7 said:

Were Bubonic Plague and Spanish Flu and Hong Kong Flu practice runs too? Why does the "Divine" need practice? 

Maybe the things that are going wrong in the world, and there are many right now, are but a wake up call?

[Tagged]

5 minutes ago, Skeptic7 said:

Yet you latch on to this absolutely unknowable, uncaring, divinely hidden phenomenon, by your own admission! Mind boggling. ????

I think it is time for the brake I planned a bit earlier here ????

[thaibeachlovers]

7 minutes ago, Skeptic7 said:

Were Bubonic Plague and Spanish Flu and Hong Kong Flu practice runs too? Why does the "Divine" need practice? 

No, they were population control. Mankind has passed the point where a bit of population control works, so the real deal is probably on the way. It could just be antibiotic resistant disease or lack of potable water or even just something like a bad flu.

[Skeptic7]

2 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

No, they were population control. Mankind has passed the point where a bit of population control works, so the real deal is probably on the way. It could just be antibiotic resistant disease or lack of potable water or even just something like a bad flu.

In other words...naturally occurring events. There now, that was easy! 

[thaibeachlovers]

Perhaps some of those on here that love science can explain why time goes so fast whenever I'm on TVF. It's like TVF exists in a different space of existence from normal time space, as I'm sure time passes at least four times as quickly than if I were reading a book, for instance.

 

I know that's off topic, but seems that most of the posts on this thread are so far off topic that it should not matter much.

[Sunmaster]

Paramahansa Yogananda’s First Talk in the West and Its Enduring Message   This month we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Paramahansa Yogananda's momentous arrival in America on September 19, 1920.     Shortly after arriving, Yogananda began the organization that he later named Self-Realization Fellowship. Founded for the purpose of disseminating the science of Kriya Yoga that he brought from India, SRF grew, within the Guru’s lifetime, to have a worldwide membership. Since his passing in 1952, Yogananda’s teachings have continued to expand their influence, embraced by an ever-increasing global following.     In honor of Yogananda’s historic landing in Boston one hundred years ago, we look back to his very first speech in the United States, “The Science of Religion.” Speaking to a congress of religious leaders from around the world only a little more than two weeks after his arrival, Yogananda compellingly presented the universal spirituality of India — timeless yet timely ideals that were new to many Westerners yet ideally suited for the modern scientific age.     Yogananda affirmed that true religion is not dogmatic but universal and can be grounded in the concept of God as Bliss. He spoke of the faculty of intuition, by which God can actually be experienced, not merely reasoned about. Greatest of all, he told his audience that there was a practical method for awakening one’s latent intuitive powers of God-perception. That method consists of techniques for consciously controlling the life force — techniques that comprise the Kriya Yoga science in which he initiated some 100,000 people during his lifetime. Its spread continues today through his SRF Lessons.     Following is a short selection of excerpts from The Science of Religion, an elaboration of Yogananda’s landmark speech in book form, which SRF first published in the 1920s and which has just been released in a special SRF Centennial edition.

“What we conceive of God should be of daily, nay hourly, guidance to us. The very conception of God should stir us to seek Him in the midst of our daily lives.”

“If God is not conceived in such a way that we cannot do without Him in the satisfaction of a want, in our dealings with people, in earning money, in reading a book, in passing an examination, in the doing of the most trifling or the highest duties, then it is plain that we have not felt any connection between God and life.”

“Intellect gives only a partial and indirect view of things. To view a thing intellectually is not to see it by being one with it: it is to view a thing by being apart from it. But intuition...is the direct grasp of truth. It is in this intuition that Bliss‑consciousness, or God‑consciousness, is realized.”

“This Bliss-consciousness or God-consciousness can pervade all our actions and moods, if we but let it.”

“We can know God only by knowing ourselves, for our real nature is similar to His. Man has been created in the image of God. If the methods here suggested are learned and earnestly practiced, you will know yourself to be a blissful spirit and will realize God.”

 

(Excerpt from a SRF newsletter)

[mauGR1]

13 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

No, they were population control. Mankind has passed the point where a bit of population control works, so the real deal is probably on the way. It could just be antibiotic resistant disease or lack of potable water or even just something like a bad flu.

No asteroid ? If I think of a "real deal" I would bet on the asteroid, with sudden pole shift, crust displacement, tsunamis and volcanoes in full swing.. oh wait, it happened not too long ago.

[Sunmaster]

This is also interesting...re: hidden patterns in nature and absolute truths in mathematics.

 

-------------

 

A mathematician who tamed a nightmarish family of equations that behave so badly they make no sense has won the most lucrative prize in academia.

Martin Hairer, an Austrian-British researcher at Imperial College London, is the winner of the 2021 Breakthrough prize for mathematics, an annual $3m (£2.3m) award that has come to rival the Nobels in terms of kudos and prestige.

 

Hairer landed the prize for his work on stochastic analysis, a field that describes how random effects turn the maths of things like stirring a cup of tea, the growth of a forest fire, or the spread of a water droplet that has fallen on a tissue into a fiendishly complex problem.

His major work, a 180-page treatise that introduced the world to “regularity structures”, so stunned his colleagues that one suggested it must have been transmitted to Hairer by a more intelligent alien civilisation.

 

After dallying with physics at university, Hairer moved into mathematics. The realisation that ideas in theoretical physics can be overturned and swiftly consigned to the dustbin did not appeal. “I wouldn’t really want to put my name to a result that could be superseded by something else three years later,” he said. “In mathematics, if you obtain a result then that is it. It’s the universality of mathematics, you discover absolute truths.”
 

Hairer’s expertise lies in stochastic partial differential equations, a branch of mathematics that describes how randomness throws disorder into processes such as the movement of wind in a wind tunnel or the creeping boundary of a water droplet landing on a tissue. When the randomness is strong enough, solutions to the equations get out of control. “In some cases, the solutions fluctuate so wildly that it is not even clear what the equation meant in the first place,” he said.

With the invention of regularity structures, Hairer showed how the infinitely jagged noise that threw his equations into chaos could be reframed and tamed. 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/10/uk-mathematician-martin-hairer-wins-richest-prize-in-academia-breakthrough?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2Q7DerM37g35-sCI8rjNprTg3B5i4DuoPjUc_cp27YVLVBitFtAlmiEoc#Echobox=1599743997

[Sunmaster]

20 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Perhaps some of those on here that love science can explain why time goes so fast whenever I'm on TVF. It's like TVF exists in a different space of existence from normal time space, as I'm sure time passes at least four times as quickly than if I were reading a book, for instance.

 

I know that's off topic, but seems that most of the posts on this thread are so far off topic that it should not matter much.

I just watched a very interesting and frightening documentary on Netflix that can answer your question: The Social Dilemma

"This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations."

[VincentRJ]

5 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

This is also interesting...re: hidden patterns in nature and absolute truths in mathematics.

 

-------------

 

A mathematician who tamed a nightmarish family of equations that behave so badly they make no sense has won the most lucrative prize in academia.

Martin Hairer, an Austrian-British researcher at Imperial College London, is the winner of the 2021 Breakthrough prize for mathematics, an annual $3m (£2.3m) award that has come to rival the Nobels in terms of kudos and prestige.

 

Hairer landed the prize for his work on stochastic analysis, a field that describes how random effects turn the maths of things like stirring a cup of tea, the growth of a forest fire, or the spread of a water droplet that has fallen on a tissue into a fiendishly complex problem

Well done, Martin Hairer. Congratulations! We will be excited to see what practical applications your new theory of 'regularity structures' have. ????

 

Perhaps from now on, we will have more accurate predictions of future changes in climate. ????

 

One of the reason for skepticism about anthropogenic-caused climate change is that climate models in the past have failed miserably in their predictions of future climate changes, due to the chaotic and complex nature of climate, the mathematical limitations of the models, and the inaccuracy of much of the climate data from the past.

 

Your new theory might also help biologists create a completely new and original form of life in the laboratory, much to the dismay of those who believe in a 'Creator God'. ????

[mauGR1]

32 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

Your new theory might also help biologists create a completely new and original form of life in the laboratory, much to the dismay of those who believe in a 'Creator God'. ????

I've watched a few Frankenstein movies, I've read the book too, but my faith in God hasn't been affected ????

Try pull the other one.

[VincentRJ]

37 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

my faith in God hasn't been affected ????

 

I know!! I know!! That's the nature of faith. You have to keep believing, regardless of any new evidence that arises. ????

[Sunmaster]

2 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

I know!! I know!! That's the nature of faith. You have to keep believing, regardless of any new evidence that arises. ????

Hmm, maybe I missed some key evidence for the non existence of Spirit...

[mauGR1]

5 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

I know!! I know!! That's the nature of faith. You have to keep believing, regardless of any new evidence that arises. ????

Wrong again, as you taught me, there cannot be evidence of the non-existence ... Conversely, I see plenty of evidence of the existence.

[thaibeachlovers]

21 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

Hairer’s expertise lies in stochastic partial differential equations,

Sorry, but when someone can come up with a real solution to loneliness I'll kiss their feet if I can.

What's the point of all the advances in technology and science etc if it doesn't solve the very real problems of life?

I believe in God and I have everything I NEED to exist, but I need more than faith to make my life worth something.

[thaibeachlovers]

16 hours ago, VincentRJ said:

Well done, Martin Hairer. Congratulations! We will be excited to see what practical applications your new theory of 'regularity structures' have. ????

 

Perhaps from now on, we will have more accurate predictions of future changes in climate. ????

 

One of the reason for skepticism about anthropogenic-caused climate change is that climate models in the past have failed miserably in their predictions of future climate changes, due to the chaotic and complex nature of climate, the mathematical limitations of the models, and the inaccuracy of much of the climate data from the past.

 

Your new theory might also help biologists create a completely new and original form of life in the laboratory, much to the dismay of those who believe in a 'Creator God'. ????

No biologist/ scientist has ever created life and none have any chance of doing so as "life" isn't within the bounds of humans to create.

[mauGR1]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Sorry, but when someone can come up with a real solution to loneliness I'll kiss their feet if I can.

What's the point of all the advances in technology and science etc if it doesn't solve the very real problems of life?

I believe in God and I have everything I NEED to exist, but I need more than faith to make my life worth something.

Why not accept loneliness as a gift ? Freedom is much better than certain unhappy relationships imho, if it's true that helping others is the greatest joy, being grateful and happy with what you have is already making the world a better place.

[thaibeachlovers]

2 hours ago, mauGR1 said:

Why not accept loneliness as a gift ? Freedom is much better than certain unhappy relationships imho, if it's true that helping others is the greatest joy, being grateful and happy with what you have is already making the world a better place.

I'll give up "freedom" in a heartbeat if the right person came along. I'm not talking about being with anyone no matter how unsuitable.

Loneliness kills just as surely as heart disease.

 

The UK NHS understands that and apparently pays for lonely people to attend dancing classes etc. I would not even be offered counseling in NZ by the "public" health. It's no wonder the suicide rate in NZ is high.

[thaibeachlovers]

2 hours ago, mauGR1 said:

if it's true that helping others is the greatest joy,

I've spent a lifetime acquiring many skills, but seems no one wants me to pass them on. I would if I could. The only interest politicians have in old people is at election time. They do nothing for us except give us an insufficient pension that we paid for.

[mauGR1]

25 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I've spent a lifetime acquiring many skills, but seems no one wants me to pass them on. I would if I could. The only interest politicians have in old people is at election time. They do nothing for us except give us an insufficient pension that we paid for.

Well, I've never been to NZ, but I always thought it to be a good place to live.

Then, I guess, getting old is hardly something very exciting, but there must still be ways to make it enjoyable.

Hey, I'm just trying to be positive here, pls don't shoot me, as I'm not too young either ????

[Sunmaster]

I know it's a difficult topic when you're directly affected. I lived in London for 6 years and never felt as lonely as among 9 million people. 

The way I see it now though, is that we're never really alone. If we consider God not as some distant entity that barely cares about his children, but as a supportive father, a loving mother or the dearest of friends, someone we can confide in whenever we need him, then we'll realise that he is always there and has always been there. He gave us free choice and won't interfere with our life if we don't want him to. He's just waiting for us to make the first step and "return home" like the prodigal son. 

The more we talk to him and show him our love, the more we can be receptive to his answers and feel his love.

We are all dearly loved, unconditionally, in every moment.

[Skeptic7]

12 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

No biologist/ scientist has ever created life and none have any chance of doing so as "life" isn't within the bounds of humans to create.

Yet. 

[Mike Teavee]

7 hours ago, Skeptic7 said:

Yet. 

And they're working on it... https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/science-technology/scientists-recreate-building-blocks-of-life-63367

 

Could argue they've already done it... 

In a milestone for synthetic biology, colonies of E. coli thrive with DNA constructed from scratch by humans, not nature.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/science/synthetic-genome-bacteria.html

 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by Mike Teavee

[luckyluke]

20 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

 

What's the point of all the advances in technology and science etc if it doesn't solve the very real problems of life?

I believe in God and I have everything I NEED to exist, but I need more than faith to make my life worth something.

Science has solve some human problems, and will continue to do so. 

 

Some without God ( or any other god, or creator or...) have everything they need to exist, and making their life agreable. 

 

The ways to find happiness and serenity, next to material possessions, are there, to each on their own to chose the one which suit them the best. 

 

 

"Everything" being a relative concept, it is thus  different for each of us. 

It can be "everything I need personally " to "everything possible to buy"; 

or something else. 

[Peter Denis]

1 hour ago, Mike Teavee said:

And they're working on it... https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/science-technology/scientists-recreate-building-blocks-of-life-63367

 

Could argue they've already done it... 

In a milestone for synthetic biology, colonies of E. coli thrive with DNA constructed from scratch by humans, not nature.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/science/synthetic-genome-bacteria.html

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/science/synthetic-genome-bacteria.html

The article is titled > Scientists Created Bacteria With a Synthetic Genome. Is This Artificial Life?

According to the article, the scientists did NOT create life but 'altered' life by doing a search/replace of parts of the DNA in those bacteria resulting in a fundamentally different life-form.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 9/12/2020 at 9:31 PM, mauGR1 said:

Well, I've never been to NZ, but I always thought it to be a good place to live.

Then, I guess, getting old is hardly something very exciting, but there must still be ways to make it enjoyable.

Hey, I'm just trying to be positive here, pls don't shoot me, as I'm not too young either ????

NZ is very, very expensive due to political agendas. If rich it's an outdoors sort of country, but for the poor of us not a lot to do except go on TVF all day. Libraries are free for reading books though. About the only thing that is free here. Even the "public health" is not free- have to pay GP and no discount for oldies ( hospital is free if sick enough to be admitted ).

 

There are people living in cars in NZ because accommodation is too expensive.

 

 

Edited September 14, 2020 by thaibeachlovers

[thaibeachlovers]

On 9/12/2020 at 6:30 PM, mauGR1 said:

Why not accept loneliness as a gift ? Freedom is much better than certain unhappy relationships imho, if it's true that helping others is the greatest joy, being grateful and happy with what you have is already making the world a better place.

Are you alone all day every day? Some like it, like hermits. I'd prefer to wake up next to someone that loves me and I them.

Sadly, I've never met such a person that was not already married. The two people I thought fit the bill were false trails.

 

Not saying there are not benefits to being alone. I like my lifestyle, even though it's not what I had planned or hoped for. It's just not enough to be happy with.

I was happy in LOS even though I was "alone" because company was never far away if I wanted it. There I was only alone if I chose to be so. Here, I have no alternative. That's because I'm poor. if I were rich they'd be lined up around the block. If I won Lotto I'd have to beat them off with a stick. Unfortunately God doesn't give me winning Lotto numbers.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 9/13/2020 at 12:29 PM, luckyluke said:

"Everything" being a relative concept, it is thus  different for each of us. 

It can be "everything I need personally " to "everything possible to buy"; 

or something else. 

Can't buy unconditional love from a human and I'm not allowed a dog in the only accommodation I can afford.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 9/13/2020 at 4:52 AM, Skeptic7 said:

Yet. 

If they could create life that would make them "God" to the created.

But, but, but you do not believe in God.

[bert bloggs]

27 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Can't buy unconditional love from a human and I'm not allowed a dog in the only accommodation I can afford.

So sorry to read of your Plight ,I only believed in God when i was forced to go to sunday school as a lad ,but soon realized it had just been made up by man as a form of control and a way of making money .

I am lucky ,as i have never been lonely , always had lots of friends and people around and have a great family both British and Thai, been married a few times and believe it or not still friends with the exes. then 20 odd years ago met my now wife ,and boy she is the best i could wish for ,

anyway keep posting ,as you write good ones.

by the way cant believe this thread has had so many replies ,i bet Ivor will get an awa????rd