ST #4 - On God
 

so what's netphoria thinking about god these days?

yea or nay?

i went to church w/ my family for the first time in a LONG time and it was kind of neat; i really enjoyed it, actually


so, netphoria, enlighten me...is god in or out right now?

i believe in God.

I keep getting the machine

stunning revelation monte!

I like church, but I don't believe in God. Uhh...I had to spend three hours on Monday writing an exam on the nature and existence (or lack thereof) of God, so now I don't even want to think about God anymore for a very. long. time.

::thumbs up:: on the Standard Topics, btw. :p

I believe in God. I don't regard Him as highly as others may, but I do believe in His existence.

I think GhostCild (possibly?) might have said it back when m2 was released ...

np: If there is a God, I'm fucked

Meh..?
 

I was raised by Catholic parents.. and I used to believe when I was younger..but now that I have a mind of my own.....I don't.. but I haven't completely ruled out the possibility of a higher power..

The better question is: why do you/should you care? And I mean you collectively? There is too much presumption that God means anything if he does exist to begin with.

Even the demons believe in God......... and they shudder

I believe in nothing but myself.

I don't believe in god, but I agree, church is nice. Sometimes I go on Sundays just because it's a nice community sort of thing and it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.

For me it ultimately turned out to be like believing in santa claus. I just kind of... grew out of God. I logically couldn't believe in santa, and I feel the same way about the religious beliefs with which I was raised. I tried to believe in God for a long time, because it felt like a 'moral duty,' or something that would be shameful for me not to believe and accept... then I realised that you can't force or fake things like that, and doing so would defeat the entire purpose of it anyway. I can tell myself constantly that there is a santa claus, and that he brings presents to children all over the world in one night and watches you to make sure you're nice, but no matter how much I read stories about santa or have santa experts and santa believers tell me about santa, I just can't do it. I mentally, emotionally, cannot believe it.


Summary: ho, ho, ho.

"I don't think God really cares how you do it, just that you're willing to do it. This is not ice skating. God wants you to amble toward the right spot on the horizon. You might fuck up, but the idea is that you're willing to get up and keep moving toward that light."

I don't know whether god exists or not.

i like that quote. who said it?

I don't believe in any form of "Higher Power" -God, Creator or otherwise.
Nor do I believe in any form of Afterlife, heaven, hell, whatever.

The notion of "God" was born of Fear. Fear of death, fear of the unkown, fear of ourselves.
Finding no security, we have created the idea of Gods in order to find comfort from our most
deep seated fears. Ever notice how people turn to God in a crisis? Fear & Comfort from Fear.

God looks over man from above with love and compassion just as a Mom & Dad look over thier
newborn in the cradle. The idea of God is nothing more than a phsycological link between
our dependance on independant care as an infant, and the comforting from our suffering as adults.

Agreed, and in this time with all our accumulated knowledge of the world I'd say it was more or less unnecessary or even obsolete to hold immeasurable deities in such high esteem. Belief in any kind of life after this also just seems like an excuse not to accept/think about the obvious truth as well.

I don't see why faith should necessarily be a substitute for knowledge. If you want to talk about science, I'd say the possibility of some other consciousness existing on another plane to us is not reduced by discoveries of how regular and insular our own universe is

It was once common knowledge that the earth was flat. Everyone
believed it to be true, it was in the collective conciousness. This didn't
change the fact that the world is in reality round, and the world was
still round whether the collective conciousness was aware of it or not.
This analogy holds true when we are talking about "other planes
of existance" and "other conciousnesses"...

Let's say these other forces do exist -how does their existance impact our lives in a real and tangible way?
How does their existance take precident over this existance with which
we interact with day in and day out -the existance WE participate in?

No matter what we believe in -a flat earth or a God- the forces which
govern THIS reality are the ones that influence our existance. We still
experienced the force of gravity created by the round earth -whether
we thought it flat, square or otherwise.

So I guess what I'm saying is; if we accept that -all beliefs aside- the reality
of this existance ultimately governs every aspect of our perception,
the need to believe in something which is not part of this existance is moot.

nature. that's all.

I believe in God, sans religion

It is pretty blatant that one cannot come to a conclusion that God doesn't exist. You can't put God, the big bang, or Sagan's infinite regression in a test tube. To deny God is to claim the understanding of all things. For how else could one know that God isn't somewhere either within, or without our galaxy?

Perhaps, as some have stated, there is little evidence that God exists within our perceived dimensions or construct of time, space, and matter. Yet how one can claim to know this, is beyond me. I would almost wager that one who asserts the non-existence of God is a god themselves, having one of the key aspects of a god -- omniscience.

I do believe in some sort of God.

It's fairly easy to argue that both atheism and belief in God require equally illogical leaps of faith.

That's why agnosticism is the way to go, baby. :D

That is my point. Although I think it is quite possible to pit agnosticism against more specific faith.

But I am content just see that there are others that understand the logical fallacy of atheism.

now we're getting somewhere


faith is a weird thing isn't it?...the bible defines is as being sure of what one hopes for and certain of what one does not see


it really is a separate entity than science; one of my archaeology professors at college was a devout catholic and i was always amazed at how easy he found it to separate science and knowledge from faith

Absolutely not. Faith and science can co-exist. But at this point i tend to cover these things in pm's.

I don't remember Santa sending his only son to die and suffer on a cross to open the gates to the North Pole.

I've always believed in God. Through prayers He/She answered those prayers numerous times. Some concerned death.

If I believed this was it..no after life..no God. I wouldn't waste my time on working my way into old age. I would become a master criminal. I would steal, break or kill towards my end goal of money. Because if I had no God to explain myself...WTF. I've done things in my life that warrant me getting locked up as I'm sure some of you have. I stayed one step ahead and would become an enlightened criminal.

I just figure I'll find out when I die. People who go to church seem to need to be told what to do so they may get through life without going berzerk and killing, raping and pillaging everyone else.

A lot of people do that even though they go to church. All of it seems like a bunch of superstitious crap to me though. You have to die to know what comes next. If it turns out to be nothing, then so be it. I won't exist and I won't care. But if not? Who's God is it actually? There are so many different beliefs in the world that I really don't think it's a Christian god. It just seems so idiotic.

Bah.

We're all in the Matrix. I am Neo. Hear me say "whoa".

Well it's generally believed that whatever force might be out there, *is* able to affect our reality. So it could be real, even if it's not tangible to us. Like you said, this planet's greatest scientific minds have been mistaken many times in the past, meaning that their explanations for their perception of reality were wrong. Different people attribute events and states to different things - God, fate, mathematic probability. Not everything can be so easily explained by science, the mind for one thing. Why are you the person you are, where do your thoughts come from and where are they located? Considering this is where perception happens it's a little hard to define existence in physical terms.

im not in the god club. i don't mind others being in the god club. in fact i don't mind others wanting me to join the god club. but i do mind when people feel and act like they are somehow superior to me just cuz they're in a god club.

The first rule of god club is that you do not talk about god club.

heh, teh funneh.

Greatest comment I've read all day.

yeah, but Santa does one hell of a lot for the one day a year he actually works.