Belief in god and an afterlife makes death more palatable forthe survivors and those contemplating their own inevitable death.
Belief in god and an afterlife makes death more palatable forthe survivors and those contemplating their own inevitable death.
Not picking on your comment directly but it reminded me of this interview...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=124582959
..this was interesting too..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mFRUGDY8Ao
Gnostics do believe the god of this world is the demiurge..dominate over this world but not the ultimate force in thie universe
Last edited by elian; Sep 30, 2014 at 10:52 PM.
Hi Fran. I'm not arguing for or against belief in god(s) (just to be clear...as I implied in my first post, I don't believe in such arguments).
But I stand by my comparison. What matter if *somebody* claims to have seen atoms or have evidence of subatomic particles or colorless odorless gases? People also claim to have experienced evidence of god(s), or even experienced god(s) directly. So some bloke says he saw one particle in two places at the same time. Lanotme says it's illogical to believe in things he hasn't sensed...I daresay *he* hasn't seen, heard, smelled, tasted or felt these things. Nor have I, granted, but I believe in them, and don't consider it illogical not to...precisely because of the evidence you speak of. Similarly, I don't consider it *illogical* to believe in god(s), because of the evidence others cite (again, to be clear, I also don't consider it "only logical" to believe because of someone else's experience...just not illogical...the fact is that there are things in this universe that we cannot sense...or at least cannot yet sense...just like carbon monoxide existed even before humans were aware of it).
I hope my achievements in life shall be these: that I will have fought for what was right and fair, that I will have risked for that which mattered, that I will have given help to those who were in need...that I will have left the earth a better place for what I've done and who I've been. (C. Hoppe)
..the logic of one is anything but to another, Annika I will give u that. It makes me wonder sometimes if logic, or lack if it, really exist..
Do not think so little of me as to grant me your tolerance. Allow me your acceptance and understanding of who and what I am with the love, respect and dignity with which I do you.
You have a point. Unfortunately, we live in a world full of extremes. In the US, we have atheists who want to impose their will on institutions which have a Christian bias via the court system. In the Middle East, we have fanatics who want to impose their will by cutting people's head off. This is a politically incorrect opinion, but I believe that savagery in the name of Islam is a cancer in this world. Our Western Culture of fights via Rule of Law is far superior ethically. Sure, in the West, we have our squabbles, but I haven't seen the Atheists out killing folks or the Christians mutilating and subjugating women on a scale beyond the occasional sociopathic nut job. In the West, we have the luxury of debating the fine points of Gay Marriage or Civil Unions. On the scale of extremes, they are a debate about opinions. For gays and women in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc., the debate is real and life or death.
their is no god ,never was a god ,young people are taken to church by parents is the way they are brainwashed. in the early days of civilization man created a so called god. people are real fools ,they believe crooked politicians & dictators .
Sure, there's been natural disasters, wars, disease and suffering, tragic accidents and all manner of evil people and institutions doing evil to others throughout humankind's existence. In addition to being a God of infinite love of His creations, He is also a God of chaos. It began at the instant He set off the Big Bang. He knew before He did it everything that was going to happen throughout eternity, but still pulled the trigger. Would we be better off if He'd changed His mind and said nope, not gonna do it? Hell no....we would never have existed. He stepped back and let nature take its chaotic course, but our design was such that we all have free will and wondrous brain to avail ourselves of our free will. He does intervene on a daily basis for His own reasons. When He does, it's called a miracle. Millions of miracles occur every day for millions of people. If you are a positive, optimistic person who believes you make your own luck and happiness and see a glass as half-full, you most likely see miracles every day even if you've been thru times when you or a loved one needed a miracle and didn't get it. If you are a negative, pessimistic person and believe that it's the responsibility of God or other humans to make you happy, you see the same glass as half-empty. A miracle could bite you on your ass and you'd be oblivious to it or complain it was about time one was sent your way. It makes no sense to say you don't believe in a higher power because that same higher power that you don't believe in lets bad things happen and has never done anything for you. He did everything for you. My vision of an afterlife is a combination of traditional Christian concept of heaven and doing unto others with the Buddhist and Hindu concepts beliefs of nirvana, karma and reincarnation and (again) doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. I don't believe in hell because I don't believe God punishes his beloved creatures with everlasting torment after death. I rather think He reclaims souls, keeps some in heaven or in a perpetual state of nirvana and send others back for another try at doing good and being happy rather than doing wrong or evil and being miserable.
People claim to be rational but I have seen even the most logical people "reason" any conclusion they want to.
Something strange happened to me, I used to be very logical. Once I realized there was a whole world of social causes out there I became a lot more driven by empathy.
I choose to partially experience this world through transcendent feelings but I am also pragmatic...and I have just as much interest in what agnostics, atheists and humanists have to say because my belief is open ended, I draw inspiration from many things.
My idea of a really interesting dinner conversation would be to sit across from Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson and Jerri Ryan all at the same table.
I still laugh a lot at the scene in the movie Dracula 2000 where Jerri Ryan plays a reporter in a backwoods town - she says to the camera man, "Are you SURE you're getting my TITS!!?" ...like you just know wearing spandex for the entire run of Star Trek Voyager that is exactly what she wanted to say out loud but probably couldn't..LOL.
Last edited by elian; Oct 1, 2014 at 9:55 PM.
Religion is a human construct firstly to allay the fear of what happens after death, and as a path to power.
"The most powerful person in a religious society is the one who says, I can speak to God (or whoever) - you can't."
I've been a total non-believer since before i was 10, however I usually avoid religious based arguments. I have my belief, I'll let others keep their's unless they try to foist it on me.
Like some of the founding fathers of the USA i am a Deists
that pole-smoker has been smoking to much wacky tobacco.
When it comes to the existence of "god"---I fall in that state that god is something that cannot be either definitively proven or disproven.
I do not believe that the nature of god, should "it" exist, is very much different from the way that most religions state that god is. I don't think that god is some being sitting up on his cloud throne making all kinds of declarations, demands and what not and he really doesn't demand total blind obedience to him----I am more of the mind to say that "god" did not create the universes, but came about as a result of the universes developing a sentience and an is underlying, unifying energy force. "God" has no gender, no ego--it simply is.
I can say I am not at all a religious person--in fact I have come to reject all religiosity and am fast coming to view religion as a mostly negative element, not a positive one. I think that in the times that our modern religions came to dominate all facets of life----life was pretty damn nasty for all but a few and it seems that we have elements of the three main Abrahamic religions, that want to go back to those nastier, brutish times.
At times, religions have been forces for good, but like so many things in today's world---they have been warped out of shape, into something that is actually a negative thing and if we were to go down the path that some want by going back to some very radically fundamentalist ways of being---it will be the end of us all.
Life for most people in such a dystopian theocratic future, as philosopher John Hobbs might have said, would be: "Nasty, brutish and short."
I don't want any part of a world of this sort, one that would be much along the lines of what Margaret Atwood described in her novel, "The Handmaid's Tale."
No thanks--to me that will be hell, not heaven.
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