Is there God?

reply to post by amazing


I am a Druid/shaman in belief, i was raised as a Catholic and threw out the belief due to over use of other religions beliefs. Whales is where christians and pagans have lived together the longest and most people there would tell you that a few of the catholics/Christians in the begining didnt trust the morals of the old science involved in Druidism/Shamanism, Most people believed if you were to be healed it would be through a hand of god or though a merical not throught the medicines and Salves made with alchemy, Also there is a god called the horned god or the sun god. if i were to ask you what poped into your head when i said Horns+Massive heat? Satan. Alot of this is just a diferent way of explaining it, Also a posibility that Jesus was a Eastern seer/Masiah that spoke in 1/2 truths? unless we are able to go back to BEFORE history was recorded and re-record it so we knew exactly what happened and exactly what he was talking about seeing what he saw things like that we will never know the true truth. Because it has been yet that anyone dies and comes back and says "Hey i talked to god in heaven and he sent me back to let you know" and its everyone in the past waking up that hasnt *Sorry bout this* lost there body to decay and having mass ammounts of zombies telling us god exists.

reply to post by Solsthime331


Also until something is proven it can not be disproven.

Originally posted by UB2120
reply to post by IamBoon

 

I think you would agree that you exist, right? How did you get here? I don't mean just you physical body, but your mind. It just happened? To me it is much more plausible to have one uncaused cause than billions or trillions. Where God came from is the one unanswerable question. I think it would be much more difficult to answer the question, where did everything come from if you don't have a creator? The Big Bang theory is a joke. Everything in existance reeks of intelligent design.

Physics and chemistry alone cannot explain how a human being evolved out of the primeval protoplasm of the early seas. The ability to learn, memory and differential response to environment, is the endowment of mind. The laws of physics are not responsive to training; they are immutable and unchanging. The reactions of chemistry are not modified by education; they are uniform and dependable. Electrical and chemical reactions are predictable. But mind can profit from experience, can learn from reactive habits of behavior in response to repetition of stimuli.

Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance — liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property. Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn.

The name we give God is unimportant. It matters not if you call him Ra, God, Allah or whatever. It's all the same God. The only thing that changes is the persons concept. Early religions believed God was superhuman in a way and had emotions like us. The more advanced religions realize that we were made in God's image and I don't mean our phyical bodies I mean our spirit.

In a generic way, yes God is everything in that he caused all of creation. He created the mechinisms and established the laws that enable reality. That doesn't mean God is your computer screen or chair. He just made it possible. Cultures have always used a word that embraces their highest concept of the creator. For us that work is God.

The attributes of God: Omnipresence, Omnipotent, Omnificence and Creatorship.


Something else to consider:

The uncertainties of life and the hardships of existence do not in any manner contradict the concept of the universal sovereignty of God. All evolutionary creature life is beset by certain inevitabilities. Consider the following:

Is courage — strength of character — desirable? Then must man be reared in an environment which necessitates grappling with hardships and reacting to disappointments.

Is altruism — service of one’s fellows — desirable? Then must life experience provide for encountering situations of social inequality.

Is hope — the grandeur of trust — desirable? Then human existence must constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.

Is faith — the supreme assertion of human thought — desirable? Then must the mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever knows less than it can believe.

Is the love of truth and the willingness to go wherever it leads, desirable? Then must man grow up in a world where error is present and falsehood always possible.

Is idealism — the approaching concept of the divine — desirable? Then must man struggle in an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surroundings stimulative of the irrepressible reach for better things.

Is loyalty — devotion to highest duty — desirable? Then must man carry on amid the possibilities of betrayal and desertion. The valor of devotion to duty consists in the implied danger of default.

Is unselfishness — the spirit of self-forgetfulness — desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake. Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.

Is pleasure — the satisfaction of happiness — desirable? Then must man live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities.

By what evidence do you think that there was an un-causal effect? The only thing that scientist say about the preclusion of the Big Bang is that time and space began here because nothing before it can be measured. Not taht "nothing" existed everywhere before it at all times.

One the mind.... Matter is separate from mind because the mind has no "physical connection EXPLAINED yet, It is a new science and again I would tread carefully.

The science of the mind and how it develops (yes it develops) in accordance to ones environment, needs, senses, and practices. The mind cannot be claimed to be totally separate nor can it be claimed as totally integrated by our understanding of it.

Read some Decartes. The mind, without getting metaphysical, is reliant upon the body just as much as the body is reliant upon the mind.

Originally posted by VreemdeVlieendeVoorwep
reply to post by amazing

 

God is there for you to discover. Asking these questions, will not get you any closer to the answer, it will most likely just confuse you even more.

God is different for everyone. It is each persons POV that determines what God is for him or her.

But in the end, only YOU can discover God for yourself. I wish you godspeed on this search, and hope you find what you are looking for. Look inside yourself, for that is where the truth lies, that is where enlightenment lies, and indeed, it is where your quest must begin, and end.

VvV

Very well put!

reply to post by Solsthime331


A believe without sufficient cause or evidence can be dismissed without sufficient cause or evidence. This is how we know peopel are a bit crazy. Most, almost all religious "theories" are the same except the "crazy" call it religion and refuse to accept they may be deluding themselves.

I am for spirituality, but to bring somehting that cannot be felt , nor is required to feel emotions attributed to religious experience is not only absurd, but hindering in human progress. History is my evidence for this.

IamBoon, you stated: By what evidence do you think that there was an un-causal effect? The only thing that scientist say about the preclusion of the Big Bang is that time and space began here because nothing before it can be measured. Not taht "nothing" existed everywhere before it at all times.

One the mind.... Matter is separate from mind because the mind has no "physical connection EXPLAINED yet, It is a new science and again I would tread carefully.

The science of the mind and how it develops (yes it develops) in accordance to ones environment, needs, senses, and practices. The mind cannot be claimed to be totally separate nor can it be claimed as totally integrated by our understanding of it.

Read some Decartes. The mind, without getting metaphysical, is reliant upon the body just as much as the body is reliant upon the mind.



My response: You base your belief on what science tells you instead of searching within you for the truth! If you travel within yourself, you will find what man refers to as God.

Since the knowledge of science is based on the material universe, it can only prove matter; and religion on the other hand is based on the non-material universe, therefore its validity can only be proven by the energy that affects the psyche, which being invisible is susceptible to guile.

As science currently perceives it, the universe began from a compact state as a singularity that continues to expand, hence the term Big Bang; and prior to this singularity nothing existed: not space, time, matter or energy: as space was formed inside the singularity. So then how did the singularity become, and how can an expansion occur without a cause? What drove the expansion? Where did the original heat come from? And what generated the light elements of hydrogen and helium? And if you say that it all became by the explosion of creation, then what caused the explosion? Something cannot become out of nothing!!!

An intelligent universe and intelligent man cannot become without an omniscient source; and omniscience cannot be quantified, being illimitable, neither can it be qualified: for there is none above it to qualify it. Omniscience is Life; and Life is pure Energy/Spirit in which all things exist, having neither beginning nor end; he is without a name, in that there was no one before him to give him a name: he is referred to as God, in that there was none over him to lord over him. He is the pure Energy in whose light all things are quantified, qualified and glorified; yet whom no creature knows as of yet to glorify, in lacking his essence. And, being life itself, God cannot be limited to a self-righteous religious supposition, nor degraded to a substance formed of matter: for matter is formed by omniscience. Religion is subjective, and thus it is easily swayed by the subtlety that dwells in the wilderness of the mind; and science, though objective, deals in hypothesis.

As you stated, "the mind is reliant on the body and the body is reliant on the mind"...the reason for this is the mind is a wilderness that needs cultivating, evidenced by the progression of man from his beginning to his current technological state: therefore it is refined through the travails the body experiences in this furnace of earth, without which the mind cannot be challenged and develope; and without the mind the body is a vegitable that cannot function.

If you look only to that which you can see, then you deny the existance of the mind, as the mind is of the invisible sphere/world/universe/realm known as heaven. But in that you do acknowledge the existance of the mind, you cannot deny the existance of its source, which source is the Omniscient Energy/Spirit referred to as God.

reply to post by Olise


If god is the universe, then science is the best way to know god.... in an Enstein sense of the word. Saying god is everything doesn't explain anything, it complicates. IF something complex screams of creation then the creator must be more complex. Therefore, does the "creators" complexity need a creator itself? Circular logic.

I am not attacking, merely drawing logical arguments. There is nothing logical about saying "The universe is complex, and we do not know why it came to be. This must mean "god" did it.
Absurd logic.

reply to post by IamBoon


I would like you to look up the story "the egg" its about every life fourm in this universe being one child of "God", and that we are a god and that we must live every life before we can be a god ourselves, and he explains to the man that he is eveyone in the mater that there is no time where he is from so you are reborn as everyone and you pass yourself in everyone you see. i dont remember all of the story but its a realy good story and a very interesting aspect on God.

reply to post by Solsthime331


if there is no time than how does change take effect?

reply to post by IamBoon


if you read the story you would realize that WE ARE A FETUS! thats how change happens...its not time its growth.

reply to post by Solsthime331


How does growth occur without change and how does change occur without cause and how do causal effects occur without perceived time?

reply to post by IamBoon


Time is the change...the Cause is that you are a child being grown...what more cause dose something need as a fetus if its only TRUE purpose is to grow...Time is longer in other places but it lasts the same ammount to us...time in a way was crated by man to measure when to do things and when things will hapen...its a measureate of a baby....each Month a baby grows more...Every millenia we grow...its a # to show how far this part of the fetus has grown...once earth ends...or comes to a stop we have stoped growing...but as the human body changes, we will change still if you read the story rather than being IGNORANT you would understand this and get all this information from reading it...its on ATS look it up...if you can waist time complaining and wanting explanations then you have time to get them all from a source rather than a memory of sed source.

reply to post by IamBoon


In science, God is the First Cause; in religion, the universal and loving Father; in philosophy, the one being who exists by himself, not dependent on any other being for existence but beneficently conferring reality of existence on all things and upon all other beings. But it requires revelation to show that the First Cause of science and the self-existent Unity of philosophy are the God of religion, full of mercy and goodness and pledged to effect the eternal survival of his children on earth.

We crave the concept of the Infinite, but we worship the experience-idea of God, our anywhere and any-time capacity to grasp the personality and divinity factors of our highest concept of Deity.

God is the only stationary, self-contained, and changeless being in the whole universe of universes, having no outside, no beyond, no past, and no future. God is purposive energy (creative spirit) and absolute will, and these are self-existent and universal.

Since God is self-existent, he is absolutely independent. The very identity of God is inimical to change. “I, the Lord, change not.” God is immutable; but not until you achieve Paradise status can you even begin to understand how God can pass from simplicity to complexity, from identity to variation, from quiescence to motion, from infinity to finitude, from the divine to the human, and from unity to duality and triunity. And God can thus modify the manifestations of his absoluteness because divine immutability does not imply immobility; God has will — he is will.

God is the being of absolute self-determination; there are no limits to his universe reactions save those which are self-imposed, and his freewill acts are conditioned only by those divine qualities and perfect attributes which inherently characterize his eternal nature. Therefore is God related to the universe as the being of final goodness plus a free will of creative infinity.

Religious tradition is the imperfectly preserved record of the experiences of the God-knowing men of past ages, but such records are untrustworthy as guides for religious living or as the source of true information about the Universal Father. Such ancient beliefs have been invariably altered by the fact that primitive man was a mythmaker.

The people of Earth continue to suffer from the influence of primitive concepts of God. The gods who go on a rampage in the storm; who shake the earth in their wrath and strike down men in their anger; who inflict their judgments of displeasure in times of famine and flood — these are the gods of primitive religion; they are not the Gods who live and rule the universes. Such concepts are a relic of the times when men supposed that the universe was under the guidance and domination of the whims of such imaginary gods. But mortal man is beginning to realize that he lives in a realm of comparative law and order as far as concerns the administrative policies and conduct of the Supreme Creators and the Supreme Controllers.

The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath.

The Hebrews believed that “without the shedding of blood there could be no remission of sin.” They had not found deliverance from the old and pagan idea that the Gods could not be appeased except by the sight of blood, though Moses did make a distinct advance when he forbade human sacrifices and substituted therefor, in the primitive minds of his childlike Bedouin followers, the ceremonial sacrifice of animals.

The morality of the religions of evolution drives men forward in the God quest by the motive power of fear. The religions of revelation allure men to seek for a God of love because they crave to become like him. But religion is not merely a passive feeling of “absolute dependence” and “surety of survival”; it is a living and dynamic experience of divinity attainment predicated on humanity service.

The great and immediate service of true religion is the establishment of an enduring unity in human experience, a lasting peace and a profound assurance. With primitive man, even polytheism is a relative unification of the evolving concept of Deity; polytheism is monotheism in the making. Sooner or later, God is destined to be comprehended as the reality of values, the substance of meanings, and the life of truth.

God is not only the determiner of destiny; he is man’s eternal destination. All nonreligious human activities seek to bend the universe to the distorting service of self; the truly religious individual seeks to identify the self with the universe and then to dedicate the activities of this unified self to the service of the universe family of fellow beings, human and superhuman.

Religion is not grounded in the facts of science, the obligations of society, the assumptions of philosophy, or the implied duties of morality. Religion is an independent realm of human response to life situations and is unfailingly exhibited at all stages of human development which are postmoral. Religion may permeate all four levels of the realization of values and the enjoyment of universe fellowship: the physical or material level of self-preservation; the social or emotional level of fellowship; the moral or duty level of reason; the spiritual level of the consciousness of universe fellowship through divine worship.

The fact-seeking scientist conceives of God as the First Cause, a God of force. The emotional artist sees God as the ideal of beauty, a God of aesthetics. The reasoning philosopher is sometimes inclined to posit a God of universal unity, even a pantheistic Deity. The religionist of faith believes in a God who fosters survival, the Father in heaven, the God of love.

Moral conduct is always an antecedent of evolved religion and a part of even revealed religion, but never the whole of religious experience. Social service is the result of moral thinking and religious living. Morality does not biologically lead to the higher spiritual levels of religious experience. The adoration of the abstract beautiful is not the worship of God; neither is exaltation of nature nor the reverence of unity the worship of God.