Thread: Do you Believe in God?

Originally Posted by Eschaton

If not God & religion do you honestly think the world would be a better place? Humanity has a massive bulletin board filled with amazing ideas to get into conflict. People tend to associate their phobias, their paranoia, their sins with religion. Religion is a scale of measurement, a tool that defines right and wrong to them, a tool that has been calibrated by people in power in order to take advantage for personal reasons. Somewhere in this madness it paved way to fanaticism. If not religion it would have been race or jingoism or something else destroying people.

Faith in God gives you a place to go to when you are at your lowest. Blaming God for your predicaments lightens your burdens. God is an exemplary excuse.

I do honestly think the world would be a better place. Humanity may have "a massive bullitin board filled with amazing ideas to get into conflict", however many of these ideals what been perpetuated by religious ideals throughout the ages. I believe that maybe a thousand years ago this would have been true, but without religion we would have been free to evolve as a society and a race and we would have done so had we not been force fed these archaic beliefs of homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, hate, violence and war.

In my experience the people who believe in a "supreme being" in the religious sense have somewhat lower reasoning ability which they use to escape the realities of life by blaming their "god" which you seem to be talking about in regards to faith by bringing comfort in times of distress and bereavement. However, I am also not convinced that god is beneficial to irrational people, instead, it appears to create confusion, resentment, and continued questioning “Why did God do this?”, rather than acceptance. There can be no meaningful answers to a meaningless question.

Originally Posted by Eschaton

The bright light is a fable, an embellished tale told to give value to life (in my humble opinion). Was the man relieved that he survived? When a person is on the brink of death and actually dwells on his mortality he wonders about his existence real hard. The bright light is a second chance. The bright light is a huge sigh of relief.

My intention was to convey the fact that nothing occurred after his technical death, not to interpret the bright light thing literally.

Originally Posted by JustJenna

Dan, you are undermining the staff's decision and that is NEVER okay. Your Exalted status does not mean you get to argue with the staff, especially after an infraction has been handed out. As ethicks said, the point of this thread is not to make baseless arguments with no thought behind it.

My intention was not to argue with staff, it was to point out my opinion for the other side of the argument as people, not taking into the equation that staff were on the other side of the argument. As you can see, I didn't argue against the infraction but on the burden of proof in this case. Are we not free to discuss opinions with staff but instead just blindly agree with their opinions? Oh Jenna, the lady doth protests too much, me thinks. Surely you don't want to operate a totalitarian regime here?

First of all, let me explain something to you. There is a reason we named this forum "Brain Stew". We expect thoughtful, insightful posts. This forum was not created for people to make spam posts, with no depth or thought process behind them. I am not asking 000 to prove that God doesn't exist, I am asking him to explain WHY he thinks God doesn't exist. Anything less is spam and I won't let this forum, especially this section, dissolve into that. End of story.

This is the decision of the staff and is it not up for discussion. Once the staff has made a decision, that's it. This is not a democracy. Your entitled to your opinion, however you are not entitled to argue once the decision has been made, whether against the punishment or the rule behind it. Furthermore, your post to me was extremely condescending and I will not tolerate that.

Infraction given.

Wow, an infraction for "talking back to staff". Again, I was not arguing with the infraction or the rule. I totally understand that this is not a democracy in regards to rules but I was not debating the rules or undermining staff. I was agreeing with the opinion of 000, he may have to elaborate on his post but his point in regards to "These are the creations of human minds" is sound. I was not disagreeing with the ruling by ethicks and I wasn't even talking about what you posted.

As several people have pointed out to me in the last few minutes "you can't talk to jenna".

I guess there is no civil discussion with you.

Infraction accepted.

Look, JJ, if world would work like someone create a theory, than scientists have to prove his theory is wrong, than civilization would stay at a lower level. Scientist have no time to find evidence against all the stupid ideas ppl come up with (multiple lives, multiple Gods, intelligent animals, Heaven, etc...). We cant prove our opinions? All the modern technology you see around yourself is proving us. How those modern machines made? They are based on sciences, not beliefs. I can pray for God all day long to make a car move without an engine, but it will never move. Or i can rely on proven facts, physics, kinematics, etc, and make an engine, then the car will move. Ppl believing in God are saying that a car without an engine can move, just because many ppl or ancient civilizations believed in that.

Me and Dan are saying that we dont have to prove anything, and i guess we already backed up our opinions as we are being rational, that is WHY we dont think God exists.

I understand my infraction, but not understand Dan's (he wasnt arguing with anyone about rules or staff decisions, just wanted to explain how i thought my words, so you can fully understand what i meant at the first place...). So i accept both infractions, just not understand, but i dont arguing about them, just being curious.

ps.: the bright light and the pictures you see while your brain is running out of oxygene is made by the brain. Called near death experience.

Dan, you are not going to get away with speaking to any staff member like this.

000, you DO have to back up your posts because thats what this section is about. Dan's infraction is for his condescending attitude towards me, not his original post. If you don't want to be banned alongside him, then I suggest you not argue with me about his infraction.

Is that clear?

Well. I Dan mentioned there about all the murders commited by religion.

How about all the murders not commited by religion? Have you read books to see how many people were at that time afraid of god, to commit a sin or to murder or to steal. Even if God does not exist the thought of GOD being with them at that time saved a lot of people.

Ok let's tell everybody now that GOD does not exist. How do you guys think it will make our planet any better? Do you really think no wars and murderers will happen. Do you really think Hitler would have not mass killed everyone? Do you think there wouldn't have been war between country's? As for 911 do you really think terrorist wouldn't have invented a new reason why they should bring those towers down instead of religion?

I do think something exist and contrary from what Dan says i also knew someone who died for 1-2 minutes and got brought back. However he said he was like in a dream the whole time. So who knows.

As ethicks said there is a higher power which we can't explain. We will see after we die, and if you don't see anything after you die and everything is over, oh hell Dan you were right.

JJ: yes, its clear.

Balauru: statistics about the two side (murders committed by the name of God vs regular murders if we knew there is no God) would be interesting, but unfortunately religion affected our living so much we cant make exact statistics about that.
Many ppl committed suicide saying there will be life after death. Well, we dont know for sure if there isnt, but at this time this is the most possible ending. There are also lot of studies about the near death experience, as i mentioned above, biologists says that its just random brain funtion.

Hi ppl,

Well, to be honest I read only pages 3 and 4 of this post so I don't have a global view of what everyone said. I do feel however that I am part of a minority since I do believe in an all powerful, all knowing God.

I have studied a lot of material for arguments for and against evolution, christian and secular books on the subject. Through my discussions however I understood that where there is an argument about something there is always a counter argument. Thus I will try to approach this based on logic and personal experience. Subsequent readers of this post may discard one or both of them according to their own understanding.

Logic: We are surrounded by a world that is really really REALLY complex and at the same time REALLY REALLY beautiful. Poets have tried to speak about it in poems, painters have tried to imitate nature in their paintings, photographers have tried to capture part of it in their pictures. Doctors are still discovering how our bodies work, people studying physics and mathematics still discovering how everything around us ticks. I do believe that complexity shows design. When you see a giant sky scrapper you marvel at the architect who designed it, when you listen to great piece of classical music you admire its composer. Yet, people look at nature, at our bodies, at the universe and boldly state that it happened by-itself without the guiding of any intelligent being. Just that, for me, reveals an intelligent design and thus an intelligent designer, far more capable than ourselves orchestrating the whole universe.

Personal Experience: I am a christian and I was not always one. Looking back I see
that my main reason for discarding Christianity and God in general was mainly the fact that I had to give account to someone for my lifestyle, my behaviour, my thoughts and my choices. It was easy for me, to hide God under the mattress or say that he is not interested in my daily life, rather than to admit that I was at fault.

I don't want to write anything more because it is probably becoming too long. I read one or two guys, defending the non-existence of God by the pain and suffering we see around us. To any serious seeker, I want to suggest the book called "The problem of Pain" by C.S. Lewis where he discusses the exact thing.

Thanks for reading
nik

Originally Posted by 000

Many ppl committed suicide saying there will be life after death.

Well if they believed in god and thought there was life after this they got screwed by one thing. Commiting suicide by the laws of God means you will go straight to hell