Do you believe in God?

[Pythagorean]

Please vote above.

Please tell me if you believe in God or don't believe.

Perhaps you could give some explanation or reason for your position?

Thank you
--Pythagorean

[boagie]

Hi Pythagorean,

I think it is logical to assume a source,at least that is the way the mind works.The source,the force whatever, is indicative of an impersonal god if you like.In the east this is the norm,some traditions have hundreds of gods but,they are not the ultimate,they are but manifestations of a transcendent energy[God] From my experience of life there is no personal god,but there is the impersonal god/source/transcendent energy,my mind does not have difficulty in imagining this,and it in no way demands that I embrace the absured.So,yes there is a god,an impersonal god.

[boagie]

Fellow Associates


Where are all the holy rollers on this,you do not mean to pretend this site is not ripe with believers,only the Sally Ann has more.Is the Question now to direct?

[Dthompson]

no. a source is not needed in order to exist, and certainly not needed in order to explain a life. All that is needed in order to live is your self and the act of living. A god or source, isnt nessacary, or logical.

[cjames]

Originally Posted by Dthompson

no. a source is not needed in order to exist, and certainly not needed in order to explain a life. All that is needed in order to live is your self and the act of living. A god or source, isnt nessacary, or logical.

How do you explain life then? Who is your self? It can't be your body? Where is the spirit from? Why do we have consciouness if we only live through the act of living? Would that not make us unconscious?

I think that no source would be unlogical.

[Peter]

Belief in God has always sought refuge in what happens to be inexplicable at the time. In the past this has included the movements of the planets, the nature of the sun, the phenomenon of lightning, the origin of species. As these have yielded to scientific explanation, theists look somewhere else for something yet to be explained and ask "How do you explain life, the self, etc?" The fact that a phenomenon has still to be explained does not automatically make it a justification for the deity hypothesis.

Peter

[ninja pirate]

Being alive is nothing ordinary and is impossible without God. Picture this: just this moment, you popped into existence. From absolute nothingness, you are suddenly a conscious being, reading this forum (let's just imagine you could interpret language). You look around, you see your surroundings, your body, etc. You are suddenly radiating with life after an un-godly amount of time when you didn't exist. But now, you do! But why???? How in the hell did you just pop into existence from absolutely nothing? It is silly to think that there isn't some absolutely, insanely, incredible power that is completely beyond our comprehension that made this miracle happen. In the above scenario, you popped into existence just now, completely conscious and aware, out of the void. The switch was off and now it's been turned on. In such a case it would be absolutely certain that something with incredible power made that happen. But this is exactly what happens every day when people are born! It happens when the first moment consciousness arises in the fetus, out of complete nothingness comes an entity of awareness.

As a child and adolescent life doesn't seem very special. It's all very normal and routine: wake up, brush your teeth, shower, dress, etc. It's not until you realize that life is not at all normal that it will become obvious to you that God does in fact exist. When you wake up tomorrow morning, I want you to imagine it is your first morning waking up, the very first day of your life. If you can picture that, you may begin to have a new appreciation for your consciousness and begin to see the incredible, infinite power sustaining said consciousness.

I exist, and I know with certainty there is a God.

[pokemasterat]

Originally Posted by ninja pirate

Being alive is nothing ordinary and is impossible without God. Picture this: just this moment, you popped into existence. From absolute nothingness, you are suddenly a conscious being, reading this forum (let's just imagine you could interpret language). You look around, you see your surroundings, your body, etc. You are suddenly radiating with life after an un-godly amount of time when you didn't exist. But now, you do! But why???? How in the hell did you just pop into existence from absolutely nothing? It is silly to think that there isn't some absolutely, insanely, incredible power that is completely beyond our comprehension that made this miracle happen. In the above scenario, you popped into existence just now, completely conscious and aware, out of the void. The switch was off and now it's been turned on. In such a case it would be absolutely certain that something with incredible power made that happen. But this is exactly what happens every day when people are born! It happens when the first moment consciousness arises in the fetus, out of complete nothingness comes an entity of awareness.

As a child and adolescent life doesn't seem very special. It's all very normal and routine: wake up, brush your teeth, shower, dress, etc. It's not until you realize that life is not at all normal that it will become obvious to you that God does in fact exist. When you wake up tomorrow morning, I want you to imagine it is your first morning waking up, the very first day of your life. If you can picture that, you may begin to have a new appreciation for your consciousness and begin to see the incredible, infinite power sustaining said consciousness.

I exist, and I know with certainty there is a God.

Do you understand the Big Bang Theory? It actually works with the faith that the universe had no actual creation. The universe is quite quickly expanding, due to inertia from the Big Bang. That's reasonable. However, gravity draws things together, right? If gravity eventually overpowered the force of inertia, then it makes sense that the Big Bang would repeat itself, everything collapsing in a giant heartbeat.

SOPHIE'S WORLD!

Anyway... evolution is a reasonable theory that life originated when electricity flowed through a/the pool of ylem, and then it progressed as a complex chemical reaction.

Also, there's no proof that we actually do have souls, it's more of an opinion. Therefore there's no actual proof God exists, it's just a 'which story do you go with?' Santa or parents?

It's also impossible to disprove a God, because it would be able to hide itself from us if it so desired. Therefore, it's not reasonable to search for proof.

[l0ck]

theres no proof you exist either
the absolute expresses itself infinitely and finitely
you will never be able to prove in a finite realm that the absolute exists because it also exists infinitely, and infinity is not something you can measure and calculate with other measurements because you always end up back where you started- with infinity
a pragmatic approach to logic will not allow you to fully understand the absolute
it is a belief, it is faith, it is love, it is cohesion
lots of very important lessons to learn only through experience and the illusion of separation from the absolute as a physical being
but lets talk about pragmatic syllogistic logic now to help further our understandings of the absolute since western culture has decided to use deductive reasoning to attempt to explain everything even though intuition is still the force responsible for you believing if something is true or not no matter how much evidence you may or may not require to come to a conclusion
some guy once thought about this and he realized:
e=mc2
everything exists both wave form and particle form
we know all mass has energy equivalence and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, so we being matter made of mass obviously makes us apart of this infinite flux of energy that is basically responsible for everything
that energy being god or the absolute
lets logically discuss the electron now because the scientific community believes in the atom (so do i) but noone has ever seen one we have just measured charges from these so called electron things
at a sub-atomic level a particle is both a particle and wave, one with mass and one without mass, and they exist simultaneously. Math has attempted to come to a resolution on this topic but it cannot. Mathematics is limited to finite studys and observations and this makes it a limited system. An electron is a sub-atomic particle that is said to orbit the nucleus of the atom. However the electron does not orbit the nucleus in a mechanistic, newtonian fashion. At any given time an electron has the tendency to exist in any number of places simultaneously. These places are known as orbital postions. The heisenberg uncertainty principle has demonstrated that while it can be predicted with a fair degree of certainty an electrons location cannot be known with exactness. An electrons position cannot be calculated with exactness while simultaneously calculating its velocity, its one or the other. Its all a probability statement or an approximation of reality yet we all believe it. Belief is belief with or without sufficient evidence, so why believe in the atom even though it cannot be proven completely?
God exists, so does the atom, dont let deductive reasoning be your only tool.

[pokemasterat]

"I think, therefore I am."

You never related God to the subatomic particle though. God is not the only solution, but subatomic particles are the only things that sensibly fit into the puzzle. It's like a puzzle with one piece missing, yet that's not the case with God. Also, it's called wave mechanics that determine an electron's position, just in case you didn't know. It's quite complicated for scientists, but it doesn't defy nature.