Is there a God, and if so, who is it?

[Xelebes]

Haha, not quite what I was hoping for, but I appreciate your point of view as a valid one. However, this is a topic which I find very interesting, so I hope you're in the minority with those sentiments.

It seems this thread wants to survive. I am atheist but oddly enough I do not believe in creation, big bang and other theories. Why? Cuz they are all theories. It's all good but I am not out to assert one way or belief. I view religions as theories and it is beginning to look like that Chaos might be the new religion or something where morals are based on evolutionary psychology. I'm not too keen on it as I think the rules are slowly being melded by a few "who know", similar to religions and priests.

Yeah, I'm pretty anarchist right now as you can see by my response. I have a few key beliefs though: I have no soul and when I die my thoughts and being will not exist unless I were to write them down but I'd never be able to continue thinking. For some reason, I take great comfort from this.

 

[Linbido]

Of all the chemical reactions that could have occured in all the universes, is is not a little miraculous that we arrived at humanity?

If I was placing a bet at the inception of all that is, as to what happens when a load of nothing is exploded, I'd think there'd be pretty long odds for arriving at self-questioning beings.

Let alone Lit-posting beings.



Thank you, DL, that was exactly my point. It just took me awhile to write it, so you snuck in between.

 

[shereads]

Right now, even better beings elsewhere are snickering at our ignorance.

 

[neonlyte]

I'm NOT snickering!

 

[Liar]

I am.

But that's my natural state. I snicker even when awestruck.

 

[Boota]

Of all the chemical reactions that could have occured in all the universes, is is not a little miraculous that we arrived at humanity?

If I was placing a bet at the inception of all that is, as to what happens when a load of nothing is exploded, I'd think there'd be pretty long odds for arriving at self-questioning beings.

I appreciate the logic in being agnostic, but it is not very helpful stance to take when asking 'is there a God?' It's kinda of like looking at the problem, and thinking it's not worth bothering with...

Cloudy - top prize so far

I don't think it's miraculous at all. Just because we don't understand the nature of our origin doesn't qualify it as a miracle. Overuse of the word miracle has made it valueless anyway.

Asking the question, "Is there a god" can be mentally entertaining, but it really isn't worth bothering with. You can imagine anything you want, but you will never know. In that aspect, wondering about the existence of a god is no different than wondering about anything else. To me, gods are pointless. You said it's like looking at the problem and thinking it's not worth bothering with. I don't even see it as a problem. It's just one of many ponderings that people have in a day.

________________________________________________

“I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on
will lie about the little things too.”
--Samantha, a character in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods

 

[Liar]

Asking the question, "Is there a god" can be mentally entertaining, but it really isn't worth bothering with. You can imagine anything you want, but you will never know. In that aspect, wondering about the existence of a god is no different than wondering about anything else. To me, gods are pointless. You said it's like looking at the problem and thinking it's not worth bothering with. I don't even see it as a problem. It's just one of many ponderings that people have in a day.

________________________________________________

“I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on
will lie about the little things too.”
--Samantha, a character in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods

Good point. The thing with religion is that it, even by semantic definition, is the art of not knowing. It is called to believe and to have faith. Which, in a way, is admitting and acknowledging that they don't know for sure.

In this way, science is often more self delusional, or at least peoples stubborn belief in science. People think of science as facts, then that too is nothing more than more or less qualified guesses. The sun spun around the earth once, static electricity was magic, and women were genetically dumber, according to science. We know better, or got a more qualified guess, these days. Who knows, maybe we'll be able to scientifically pinpoint God sometime in the furute?

Carl Sagan's novel Contact deals with an encounter with an alien race. But that's not the cool thing about it, but the ideas the aliens bring, which prompts the main character to make complex mathematical calculations, and starts finding hidden messages within the decimals of what should be soulless logic. The end idea there was that yes, god created all of this, even wrote the natural laws. And the dude even signed his work.

I think that might be possible, but as you say, either way, it doesn't affect us much from day to day. So to dwell on it doesn't really make any great sense.

But it's kind of fun.

#L

 

[fifty5]

Is there a God? Well, Caligula thought so...

However, there is a 'miracle' - that the universe does follow consistent rules: magic and religious miracles don't, sorry, can't work. If they could, then we couldn't exist, since the rules would be mutable and gravity and the biochemistry of reproduction and evolution would fall apart.

Mathematicians and physicists specualte about 'what if...?" - and lo and behold, if the theory is self consistent, then it turns out to work in practice. Look at the square root of minus one. There just ain't no number that can be multiplied by itself to give -1. But the mathematicians played 'let's pretend' - and the engineers found that this concept actually made it possible to do sums and such with AC electricity (to name just one application) that always gave the right answer.

And so it goes on. There's lots yet that hasn't been bottomed, but post Newton, post Eintein, post Steven Hawking, we know and can explain steadily more and more. Some of the hypotheses were wrong (phlogiston, for instance), but continued exploration led to better ones that explain more.

The one thing that hasn't happened is that magic or miracle mechanisms have been found - you can't turn lead into gold by alchemy!

So, my faith is that even though no-one yet (and probably no single individual ever) will understand everything, the universe does work according to fixed rules - even when those rules prove that something is indeterminate/unknowable (Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle; Bertrand Russell & Goedel).

... that those rules are unbreakable - and thus, that an omnipotent being is self contradictory: the only possible omnipotent being is one that renounced omnipotence. The hypothetical creation of a rule-following universe precludes subsequent supernatural influence.

If there is a God, then by creating the universe that exists, that self-same God undeified itself for all of subsequent time.

Cracking the genome means that fallible humans are more god-like than God - we can create new life-forms too.

It's up to people to decide what to do for themselves.

IMHO

f5

 

[Guest]

Bloody hell, F5. That was a bit smart for this late on a Friday night. Went straight over my head, that's for sure.

Care to run that by me again?

Lou

 

[Guest]

Finished that milk punch, Loulou? P.

 

[Guest]

Still merrily drinking it, thanks, P!

It's gonna be a looooong night.

Lou

 

[sweetnpetite]

Re: Re: Is there a God, and if so, who is it?

I'll take this seriously....

No there is not. (Even though some people believe it's Alanis Morisette)
How can people believe in God? People relate on some old writings that were given from generations to generations of people who had no idea about the world, i.e. science and stuff.
And anyone who has played this game on parties (don't know the english expression) where you have to whisper something into the ear of your neighbour and he does the same and then the message changes, knows what this means.
Then no one has ever truly witnessed a wonder or a miracle.
Yet all the things that ancient people considered misterious or whatever can be pretty satisfyingly explained by modern science.
So why should anyone believe in God when there is practically no proof he exists and anything can be explained by something else than a higher power.
also how could God allow the world we're living in?
The devil made this? Highly doubtful.
I personally wasn't born a non-believer but I lost my faith because I oh so often talked to God but never got any kind of 'answer', 'sign' or acknoledgement of a higher power.
And I'm too much doubtful about 'spiritual' things.

But don't you get me wrong. I have no problem with people that are religious (I'm not talking about extremists here)...in a way I envy them because they might get strength out of their believes.
But I just can't believe in anything that uncertain and doubtful.

Phew, I guess that was serious enough...no everybody get back to some porn !

Snoopy

 

[fifty5]

Bloody hell, F5. That was a bit smart for this late on a Friday night. Went straight over my head, that's for sure.

Care to run that by me again?

Lou

OK, 'abc' version...

Lean out the bedroom window with a milk bottle in your hand; let go. Will the bottle fall? Yep!

Unless you tied some string to it, or there is some other such logical reason for not falling.

Next, go up into orbit and 'let go' of a satelite. Will it fall? Nope, because it's going just fast enough that 'falling' simply means going around its orbit (rather than flying off into space, or doing the other thing).

Before old Isaac came along and explained the law of gravity, that would considered magic (or 'God's will'), but in fact there are self consistent reasons for it, that were always there, just waiting to be discovered.

Humankind does guess wrong, but the guesses get better, because science is about doing tests to find out if the current theory does ALWAYS work. And sure, sometimes the discovery is that the milk bottle _was_ tied onto a piece of string.

The marvelous thing is that sometimes it turns out that apparent 'nonsense' turns out to be right - and the other way round - but as far as we've got, there has always been a reason that works all the time. Lots of wrong theories - and lots that had to be refined (Newton's gravitational theory versus Einstein's, for instance). Yet never in the whole history of discovery has there been a theory that depends on magic (supernatural happenings) that's been confirmed as really being supernatural by subsequent investigation.

My faith is faith, since we haven't discovered everything yet - it's theoretically possible that magic might be discovered in the future. But... we've discovered quite a lot, so why do absolutely none of those discoveries - zilch, fuck all, absolute zero - discover magic?

And if magic doesn't exist, then God can't work magic. The only self-consistent concept of a God is one that wills not to work magic - so, by 'free will', isn't omnipotent. But ain't the definition of 'God' "Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent"?

A God that isn't everywhere, all-knowing, and capable of taking action on any whim whatsoever ('God' = good whims, 'Devil' = bad whims), simply _isn't_ a 'God' in the sense that I understand the word.

Unless someone genuinely believes that they can pray, lkean out of the window; let go of the bottle; and the bottle won't fall, they don't (as far as I see) really believe in what I understand by the word 'God'.

Any better, or just more gibberish, love?

f5

 

[Guest]

Any better, or just more gibberish, love?

f5

Yeah, sorry, love. "Gibberish" must be my middle name this evening.

Damn bloody physics. I so got it, when I did my 'A' level. I have an addled brain now.

Or, is it cos of the milk punch?

Lou

P.S. Thanks for trying, though!

P.P.S. I understood every damn word the first time really. Ha! Gotcha!

P.P.P.S. Do YOU want to shoot me???

 

[pussy chaser]

OK, 'abc' version...

Lean out the bedroom window with a milk bottle in your hand; let go. Will the bottle fall? Yep!

Unless you tied some string to it, or there is some other such logical reason for not falling.

Next, go up into orbit and 'let go' of a satelite. Will it fall? Nope, because it's going just fast enough that 'falling' simply means going around its orbit (rather than flying off into space, or doing the other thing).

Before old Isaac came along and explained the law of gravity, that would considered magic (or 'God's will'), but in fact there are self consistent reasons for it, that were always there, just waiting to be discovered.

Humankind does guess wrong, but the guesses get better, because science is about doing tests to find out if the current theory does ALWAYS work. And sure, sometimes the discovery is that the milk bottle _was_ tied onto a piece of string.

The marvelous thing is that sometimes it turns out that apparent 'nonsense' turns out to be right - and the other way round - but as far as we've got, there has always been a reason that works all the time. Lots of wrong theories - and lots that had to be refined (Newton's gravitational theory versus Einstein's, for instance). Yet never in the whole history of discovery has there been a theory that depends on magic (supernatural happenings) that's been confirmed as really being supernatural by subsequent investigation.

My faith is faith, since we haven't discovered everything yet - it's theoretically possible that magic might be discovered in the future. But... we've discovered quite a lot, so why do absolutely none of those discoveries - zilch, fuck all, absolute zero - discover magic?

And if magic doesn't exist, then God can't work magic. The only self-consistent concept of a God is one that wills not to work magic - so, by 'free will', isn't omnipotent. But ain't the definition of 'God' "Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent"?

A God that isn't everywhere, all-knowing, and capable of taking action on any whim whatsoever ('God' = good whims, 'Devil' = bad whims), simply _isn't_ a 'God' in the sense that I understand the word.

Unless someone genuinely believes that they can pray, lkean out of the window; let go of the bottle; and the bottle won't fall, they don't (as far as I see) really believe in what I understand by the word 'God'.

Any better, or just more gibberish, love?

f5

Not a bad expalnation..but to fuel the fire..if the bottle didn't drop..wouldn't we be able to fly off in to the universe? could it be that God decided (s)he/it wanted us to be here?..
i believe there was something..bible is just too good a book, not to have some truth in it.

If those with the scientific answers come back with the experts say etc..i say an expert is doing what we do, voicing opinions they just happen to be in a job that we (generally) accept as fact..

and to quote a good old irish comedian...'may YOUR God go with you!!...

 

[Guest]

Would that be Terry Wogan?

Lou

 

[pussy chaser]

Would that be Terry Wogan?

Lou

ermm no the late Dave Allen

 

[Guest]

ermm no the late Dave Allen

LOL!

But Terry Wogan is a comic genius. Hey, can't wait for Eurovision next Saturday!

Ok, I'm fucking off to bed now.

*The AH breathes a collective sigh of relief*

Night!

Lou

 

[sweetnpetite]

So I do not say I believe in "God", but I do think god is what binds humanity. I believe that is the source of life and love, and yes, sorrow and death.

Perdita

 

[sweetnpetite]

I would *love* to hear more about this. It sounds quite beautiful. How did you formulate your beliefs, ie. are there books about this or are you the only one who can tell me more?

feel free to PM, but my box could be full.

Okay, let me see if I can sort of explain it.

First, although most people consider the creator a "he"or a "she", it is neither. It just is (according to what I believe).

The Creator made everything, and yes, is still around. In every tree, rock, bush, and yes, even in us.

The first people were made, according to legend, and lived underground, and when they first came to the above world, the animals could speak with us. But the people didn't appreciate the gifts and thus, the ability to communicate with our animal brothers was taken away.

Yes, I said "brothers." We are allowed to hunt and fish, but should only take what we need, no more. In that way, others that come after will have what they need as well.

Gosh, this could get really long.

I think I answered the major questions, didn't I?

 

[dirtylover]

Some thoughts before I go to sleep...

I find it interesting that the idea of there being a God naturally brings up a reasoned argument against it based on science. Personally, I think this may be because of the Christian idea of God which is the most influential amongst people I know - some bearded man, who created everything, and knows everything, and tells us what's right and wrong...

But for me, as a scientist, it is those very laws that govern our universe that point to some kind of hidden depth. The more and more accurate and perceptive our observations become, the more neatly the whole universe seems to fit together. It seems as if realms of knowledge, all converging towards the ever elusive Grand Unified Theory, make a big neon arrow, pointing to something just out of view.

Another notion I have is that the conventional way to view life and the universe is to see the universe as the necessary precursor to life, which is so. However, in my mind, life and humanity are necessary for the universe to exist also. It seems compelling to think that the universe is a sub-set of human nature, in that is only an elaborate product of our brains, our information synthesisers.

You think the universe is big? Wait till you see God...no, no wait, where was I going with this?...

Yeah okay, what I was trying to get at was that the reason the universe is so neat is that it's all connected. Chaos theory, on an infinite scale. Matter and energy, time and space, are all perhaps made of the same thing - energy can travel in any form, through any dimension - to feel love makes the Alpha Centaurians sing in the bath...It's all connected man.....

Anyway, that is my concept of what God might be - the connections that bind everything together, that give not only all life a common soul, but the whole universe; the connections that are continually being uncovered by Science...


Sorry, just comment on this too...

Asking the question, "Is there a god" can be mentally entertaining, but it really isn't worth bothering with. You can imagine anything you want, but you will never know. In that aspect, wondering about the existence of a god is no different than wondering about anything else. To me, gods are pointless. You said it's like looking at the problem and thinking it's not worth bothering with. I don't even see it as a problem. It's just one of many ponderings that people have in a day.

Okay, I'm totally with you that pondering about the existence of God is just another ponder, but I don't think this devalues its pondering potential. Also, I think you rate the imagination too lightly...Everything we've ever achieved has been imagined first. If it weren't for imagining stupid stuff we wouldn't have a universe that curves in on itself, such that the beginning of time didn't exist, and parallel quantum universes, and the such like...

My point is that although we are unlikely to cover much ground arguing scientifically about the existence of God, it still makes a valid theological/philosophical debate - where progress isn't really the point anyway, as far as I understand it..

 

[sweetnpetite]

Anyway, that is my concept of what God might be - the connections that bind everything together, that give not only all life a common soul, but the whole universe; the connections that are continually being uncovered by Science...

I love this.

Okay, I'm totally with you that pondering about the existence of God is just another ponder, but I don't think this devalues its pondering potential. Also, I think you rate the imagination too lightly...Everything we've ever achieved has been imagined first. If it weren't for imagining stupid stuff we wouldn't have a universe that curves in on itself, such that the beginning of time didn't exist, and parallel quantum universes, and the such like...

My point is that although we are unlikely to cover much ground arguing scientifically about the existence of God, it still makes a valid theological/philosophical debate - where progress isn't really the point anyway, as far as I understand it..

What if while we are pondering god; god is pondering us, and in the pondering we are creating each other's existance?

 

[dirtylover]

I'm digging a pond in the school tomorrow. Thank's for reminding me

 

[destinie21]

I see god in the sunrise of her dark brown eyes
and in the swell of her belly
I hear God's voice in the beat of her heart as I rest my weary head on her chest
a hug snd the knowledge of a spiritual embrace
gives me faith
Tears of joy baptize me and she
as us becomes we
I whorship her
at her feet
and bare my soul on my knees
She's my religon
and so I pen this praise

 

[Liar]

"I'm having a kind of religious crisis. I'm beginning to doubt that I'm God."
-anonymous comedian