What makes our modern God different than the gods of ancient civilizations???

reply to post by St Udio


That would be the Traditional Christian God, St. Udio. Now, if you believe Jesus was simply a prophet, not different from Moses or Muhammed (sp?) then the Trinity isn't relivent. The Muslim Allah (God) isn't a Trinity, though being the exact same Being.

In fact, until Christ no diety was linked... they were all singular with physical manifestations.

reply to post by Bigwhammy

There is no reason that the big bang couldn't have arisen from pre-existing matter or a pre-existing universe. Indeed there has been much speculation as to how this could have come about, admittedly being just speculation; which puts them on a similar level as the god hypothesis.

Furthermore... and this is the big one, which I adressed in another - clearly avoided as of now - thread... why is it that god can be eternal, but not the universe? Why is it that the astronomical improbability of god's own creation is ignored, while the imagined improbability of evolution or materialism is gleefully advertised by religious nuts?

Thirdly, your "my god is best because" argument is largely why I hate abrahamic religion. No god has any evidence to support his existence, period; it survives like a weed in the gaps between scientific knowledge. Because you have the gall to constantly misrepresent evidence and redicule more "primitive" religion does not make you better in any way.

As earlier, I applaud your research - or should I say, frantic scramble to obtain misrepresented data - but your argument is weak.

Not to mention the fact that it impedes human advancement and inspires an appalling amount of conflict.

reply to post by SlyCM


Sly, if this Universe came from another Universe... where did that Universe come from, and so on and so on.

Just like the old addage, if God make the Universe, what made God?

There is really no answer to this. It's the trap of Scientific Inquirey. There will never be a satisfactory answer to the beginning of it all because of one question. "And before that?"

Maybe the Large Hadron Collider will help us with that.

Either way, so much more fun than "god did it".

I'm not sure why a bunch of you on the creationist end, from your replies, seem to think theres more what you would call "proof" than existed in the context of past religions. When we're talking about religion and proof, of course it is entirely 100% in the eyes of the beholder, which by definition is not actually proof at all but thats not even the issue.

The issue is you believe there is more proof, but is there? I would argue religions of the past were much more convinced of the validity of their belief system and possessed libraries more "proof" than any modern day religion. To illustrate this I refer you back to my last point; any religious "proof" is completely subjective.

You can't say because Jesus had 3rd party support as to his existence as a real person in the form of documents of an official nature, that this trumps the mythologies passed down in a more faith based context in both written and oral form in ancient times. In ancient Rome or Greece or where ever, this was equivalent to having the crucifixion of Jesus captured on 1080P HDTV, their concept of proof and what counts as a credible source is entirely different and you can't overlay your own 21st century standards.

One difference that I can think of is that Christian nations have spread the furthest through conquest and subsequent conversion of the most foreign nations than those of the past. Christian backed modern Europe has simply been more effective militarily than any other civilization before it which has allowed it to spread it's beliefs all over the planet.

Some of you creationists need to take a few steps away from the PC and suck in a few deep breaths before rejoining the conversation... This has nothing to do with evolution vs creation, or who's right and who's wrong, most if not all of you missed the point entirely because you're so bent on pushing your faith and being right. There were some pretty decent lines of thought playing out with some logical conclusions being drawn.

I'm extremely fascinated by theological history and theism from a sociological perspective, as I think the author of this thread is, I really don't care about where you think the universe came from and how we all came about. This question is valid and invokes some interesting discussion about theological evolution (hah!) as a whole, not just Christian or even abrahamic principles and certainly has nothing to do with evolution of species or atheism.

Sorry but I'm so tired of it, is it just not possible to discuss an aspect of religion on a whole without it immediately degenerating into an atheist versus christian argument?

[edit on 31/5/08 by 1-Cent]

Our Modern God is better because hes up to date
his Cell # is PRAYER

and he has this cool very popular BLOG going called the Bible which has various other names and languages it goes by around the world

Originally posted by AlexG141989


yeah well it just so happens that i am not an atheist... im more of an agnostic... but i (like Albert Einstine) believe the bible and its stories to be "pretty childish"... i believe there has to be something out there... because common sence tells me that something cannot come from nothing... however the difference between me and the religious is i dont attach myself to any stupid beliefs written by primitive people, in a primitive era... where anything out of the norm of the time was seen as magic or a gods doing... i cant do that... common sence prevents me from it...

just a thought here but have you ever wondered about there being a creator that has no wish to be god for anyone or anything?

We went through this in a Philosophy class at the U of Alabama. Very interesting stuff.

We were asked if God existed, and to prove or view. Many became very emotional over this, but it was very eye opening.

The fact is, presented with the Judeo-Christian concept of God, it is very difficult to defend. However, there are certain things that are argued to disprove God that can easily be explained away with slight adaptions to the 'Approved God'.

Let us look at God as this, an Intelligent Energy Source. Let us say this energy is renewable.

God became with alot of Energy. God used this Energy to create things. At some point God realized his Energy was fading. He realizes he must create something that can reproduce this Energy for God to feed on. Enter Man.

Now, I have to digress here for a moment to explain a bit of Science. Did you know everything in existence moves, on its own accord. Like the chair you sit in now to read this. No, I don't mean it moves because it sits stationary on a moving mass called Earth. It actually moves, it vibrates at a lowest of frequencies. Let me explain.

What is Water? Water is one Hydrogen and two Oxygen forming a Molocule. Now, water is the liquid state. You can freeze it to create Ice. You can heat it to create Steam (Solid and Gas). It still is One Hydrogen and Two Oxygen. The difference is that when heated the atoms move very rapidly, when frozen the atoms move very slowly.

Everything is made from Atoms joined together. Your chair is actually uncountable atoms merged together. And each is moving right now. Everything is in motion, merely at an unpercievable rate. This brings me back to my Energy theory.

God creates Man. Man has many chemical reactions. Pulse rates rise when we lie, get scared, fall in love, etc. We emit energy. You become embarresed and your face turns red, even gets hot to the touch... same with intense anger.

I propose that a certain something, though not sure what, is produced by Good Will. Doing good things naturally causes something inside us to produce. This production is emmitted and taken in by the Intelligent Renewable Energy Source, allowing it to thus create more things.

Now, the catch here is this. Man is created with this energy. Man may give back in great quantity this energy by doing good. However, doing Evil Acts destroys that bit of energy, never to return to the Creator.

So you have two sides, one that creates energy to feed the power and another that destroys it. God continues to produce. Some things cost more energy than others.

This leads me to an argument against God. 'If God is so good, why did he let Hitler kill so many?' My stance is, he stopped Hitler from killing so many more. The amount of acts he must do to stop evil things is very draining, and the evil acts are very numerous. Simply put, God did not have the energy early on to stop the Rise of Hitler. But as Hitler put more fear in the world more believed in a power and did good acts to aid there fellow man. This was enough energy for God to help bring down the fall of Hitler. Whether he did this on his own (speaking to Hitler of his evils, thus pushing Hitler to suicide) or by manifesting his will on others (aiding people to put the pressure on Hitler, closing in on him until he broke) or through Divine Aid (having the weather bad enough for the Germans not to expect a beach landing but good enough for the Allies to land on D-Day, leading to the War being won by the Allies). All these ideas take power to do.

This goes hand in hand with my Belief Theory (any god can exist, if one believes. Thor and Saturn were all real at one time, they were fueled by belief in them. Minor Dieties do less because they have less energy due to having less followers. As most of the world moved to a One God ideal, those old gods perished. The power of Native American and Abirigonal gods is less because fewer believe.)

It is possible, by not renewing the energy through acts of good, to completely drain this being of all energy. I think it must create, there is not just a need but this is the meaning of existence for the being. It creates. From it all things spring forth. So it can not, when faced with the last measurable amount of energy, conserve to continue to exist. When the last of the energy is spent this being is extingushed and is no more.

Looking at God in that light we can now see why there are less miracles to be seen, much less than reporting in the works of the Bible. We can see why certain horrors can not be avoided.

Simply, one must shrug off the idea that God is All Powerful. Though capable of unbelieveable Power, he has an LIMITED SOURCE of this power. This now makes the being unable to do all things, making the existance much more likely.

Now, this does in fact mean undermining the definition of the accepted God, the All Knowing and All Able. This many will reject. I merely state, through THEORY, that this is a workable scientific model of a God.

In fact, I wrote my paper on this subject entierly. Of all the ideas my instructor shot down... he was actually amazed by this take and stumped as to how I happened upon it as he had never heard this view before (which is amazing, since he gets 50 something kids a semester throwing ideas at him).

I'm not sure if anyone else has came upon this, or if there are books or lectures or what not. I'm also not saying I believe this to be true. Merely that this is my Philosophical Model to explain a Scientically Valid God.

(Philosophically, saying God can Do All and God is Good means that acts like War can not happen, for a good God that can do all would intervene.) So you must either strip Good, or the ability to Do All, to make Philosophical sense of the matter.