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Do you believe on god?
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TurnerGuyFree Member
if people believe in god and it makes them a better person and happy who am i to argue.
monkey_boy?
joolsburgerFree MemberAll believers in a god are essentially adopting a view of the universe that is based on faith and not proof or at least the proof of what is known and the ongoing quest to know the unknown..
However moderate your belief may be you are still in that camp like it or not. People in the camp but nearer the front, as it were, will be involved in things you may well disapprove of however your membership still sanctions those actions no matter how distantly. If no one believed, if belief was ridiculed as I feel it should be, then all their power is lost and they become loonies on the fringe instead of the heads of state or the main arbiters of morality in a society.On god and certainly religion I feel you have to make a call, either you’re in or out. If you’re in you have to accept some responsibility for the actions of others who also believe. It’s not enough to say “I don’t believe what the fundamental loonies do” because in the most important way you do.
RealManFree MemberAll believers in a god are essentially adopting a view of the universe that is based on faith and not proof or at least the proof of what is known and the ongoing quest to know the unknown..
However moderate your belief may be you are still in that camp like it or not. People in the camp but nearer the front, as it were, will be involved in things you may well disapprove of however your membership still sanctions those actions no matter how distantly. If no one believed, if belief was ridiculed as I feel it should be, then all their power is lost and they become loonies on the fringe instead of the heads of state or the main arbiters of morality in a society.On god and certainly religion I feel you have to make a call, either you’re in or out. If you’re in you have to accept some responsibility for the actions of others who also believe. It’s not enough to say “I don’t believe what the fundamental loonies do” because in the most important way you do.
crikeyFree MemberSo, awkward question time for theists; how do you deal with religious fundamentalism, the people who actually follow the teachings and laws of a religion to the letter?
Are they wrong?
Are they misguided?
Are they just a bit keen?
Are they the keepers of the one true way?
How does their interpretation of the religion measure up?
Are their beliefs as worthy of consideration as yours?In your own time…
jackthedogFree MemberThe concept of God backs up my belief that humans are an evolutionary dead end.
IanMunroFree MemberAll believers in a god are essentially adopting a view of the universe that is based on faith and not proof or at least the proof of what is known and the ongoing quest to know the unknown..
I don’t think that is entirely true. From the probabilistic point of view it’s entirely possible to construct an argument that there is a greater chance of there being a creator than there isn’t.
The problems with this are such arguments are based on conjecture, and the nature of the conjecture means no further rational basis can be built upon it. I.e. the conjecture in itself doesn’t give us a basis to produce further testable conjecture. The initial conjecture is entirely rational. The belief structures then constructed around them rarely are. But it is important to realise that they can be two separate entities.If no one believed, if belief was ridiculed as I feel it should be, then all their power is lost and they become loonies on the fringe instead of the heads of state or the main arbiters of morality in a society.
So are you asserting that if only the world was ruled by people who didn’t have religious belief systems the world would be a better place?
And will you be using Stalin as your gold standard as to what can be achieved using this premise?seftonFree Memberwhen science doesn’t have the answers humans turn to god
where where the Dinosaurs in all these religious manuscripts????
rightplacerighttimeFree MemberThat’s fine, until the logical extension becomes kill the unbeliever because the man who knows about God said so…
That’s not a logical extension. That’s you scaremongering. I don’t think that most of the despots of history who promoted genocide were particularly driven by religion. Some of them might have used that as an excuse, but generally speaking people go to war with people of other races, not people of other religions. It’s not the same thing.
rightplacerighttimeFree MemberSo, awkward question time for theists; how do you deal with religious fundamentalism, the people who actually follow the teachings and laws of a religion to the letter?
There aren’t that many of them. Probably only a similar proportion to the proportion of nutters in the non-religious population. How do you deal with them?
CaptainFlashheartFree MemberI don’t think that most of the despots of history who promoted genocide were particularly driven by religion.
Indeed.
Stalin. Hitler. Pol Pot. None of them, as far as I know, particularly of a religious inclination. All vile, though.
Atilla the Hun probably wasn’t doing it for religion either. It was just because he never really felt loved as a child or something.
crikeyFree MemberAre you going to answer the questions with regard to fundamentalists?
The ‘nutters’ in the non-religious population are subject to the same laws as everyone else, the difference being that they do not claim to be following the word of any god.
Notice that I do not class religious fundamentalists as ‘nutters’, merely people who believe in a particular religion in a more fundamental interpretational way.
So, the questions?
joolsburgerFree Member[/quote]So are you asserting that if only the world was ruled by people who didn’t have religious belief systems the world would be a better place?
And will you be using Stalin as your gold standard as to what can be achieved using this premiseYes I am asserting that.
In response to the Stalin thing, no, oddly enough I do not hold him up as the gold standard.
I hope that over time religous belief will erode aginst the tide of non believers. You can’t extinguish something as well established as religion with brute force, that’s even worse than religion.
With the increase in secularism and an increase in people not indoctrinating their children into faith, I hope as time moves on faith will become increasingly less important until it fizzles out. It will take a while but I think it will happen eventually..
gonefishinFree MemberStalin. Hitler. Pol Pot
Hmmm 5 pages before Godwin gets a look in. I’m impressed.
Not sure about numbers 1 or 3 but Hitler was most certainly a Theist.
Edit. Oh and that’s a massive strawman argument by the way.
PhilAmonFree MemberI believe in God, but it would take more than a few lines on here to justify it. I would have to tell you my story, how God reached me in depression in my teenage years, I would have to tell you the stark changes that have happened in my close friends lives as they have accepted Jesus as Lord in their lives, freeing them from drug addictions etc. I would have to explain prophesies in the bible that have come to pass, and go into detail about ‘shadows’ and ‘types’ in the bible that show a constant theme of the coming savior right from the beginning of Genesis, even through it was written by many different authors covering a huge span of time. If you study the bible you’ll find a deeper significance in every item in the Jewish temple, every feast, even in the lives of men who were living in Gods will. But all these things take time to see, and you have to be interested, if you don’t want to see God, you won’t. the bible says that “if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul” Deuteronomy 4:29
vinnyehFull MemberIf you’re in you have to accept some responsibility for the actions of others who also believe. It’s not enough to say “I don’t believe what the fundamental loonies do” because in the most important way you do.
You know you can renounce your citizenship, don’t you? When do you intend to take up that option?
seosamh77Free Memberif from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul”
In other words, if you look hard enough you’ll find what you want to find.
PeyoteFree Member…reached me in depression in my teenage years, I would have to tell you the stark changes that have happened in my close friends lives as they have accepted Jesus as Lord in their lives, freeing them from drug addictions etc
It’s nearly always the vulnerable who are the evangelical converts. Interesting in a cod-psychology* kind-off way…
*Can’t claim to be a professional.
PeyoteFree MemberSuppose I should chip in with my thoughts too:
I always thought we couldn’t be the smartest species in the universe, so my logic followed than anyone smarter than us could be seen as a “god” to us (being as we couldn’t comprehend them). Yet I was raised as a Christian and always taught that God (big G) was a good chap, all loving and stuff. Seemed a bit untrue even in the bible he’s pretty vengeful and angry, his son seems sound, good socialist leanings, nice and forgiving on the whole (okay so the fracas in the temple was a bit off, but if you can’t rail against bankers who can you rail against?) but he’s a nutter. This also led to my conscience telling me that actually no, a lot of the stuff I’m being taught is wrong, homosexuality isn’t a disease, sex before marriage isn’t an issues etc…
Anyway, my conclusions. God, god and gods don’t have to be supreme beings, just a bit better than humans. They also don’t have to be benevolent. So actually, yeah, it’s pretty easy to believe such entities exist, what relevance it has to me personally is a whole new thread (which I can’t be faffed with and would probably bore everyone silly).
MrsToastFree MemberIn other words, if you look hard enough you’ll find what you want to find.
I found bacon! \o/
rightplacerighttimeFree MemberThe ‘nutters’ in the non-religious population are subject to the same laws as everyone else, the difference being that they do not claim to be following the word of any god
But you were saying that it is their religion that drives them to do “evil” things.
If there are the same proportion of people in the religious and non-religious populations doing “evil” things, then it seems unlikely that religion is the cause.
rightplacerighttimeFree MemberWith the increase in secularism and an increase in people not indoctrinating their children into faith
Which country are we talking about now then?
jonahtontoFree Memberi believe in god. it is the collective consciousness of humans. i also believe in tables and funnily enough feel no desire to worship them either.
TurnerGuyFree MemberIt is a good job God chucked a meteor at the earth a while ago, thereby killing off all the dinosaurs and letting humans get a look in 🙄
StoatsbrotherFree MemberIt would be nice thinking there was someone out there, a father figure if you like.
But there isn’t.
ElfinsafetyFree MemberIs that right that a forum moderator expresses onions that might alienate potential forum and magazine subscibers?
Just an idea, like, y’know, how STW purports to be somewhere where the views and onions of all regardless of race, religion and culture should be treated fairly and equally.
No posts which, in the Moderators opinion, are likely to cause offence to either an individual, or group, whatever their gender, sexual inclination or ethnicity.
No posts, including links to other sites that are deemed to be of a sexual or distasteful nature, incite racial or sexist behaviour or are in any way discriminatory and/or offensive towards individuals or minority groups.STW forum mods in hypocrisy shocker…
🙄
RustySpannerFull MemberBut religious belief or non belief is just an opinion Elf.
We debate opinions on here every day.
Sometimes, some people call others stupid because of their opinions they hold. 🙂The belief that religious opinion is somehow special and deserving of protection from challenge is to many, me inclded, ridculous and dangerous.
All opinions should be challenged and debated.
Sadly, human nature means that along with challenge & debate comes mockery and ridicule: It’s the unpleasant side of the same coin.tyredbikerFree MemberAre you studying the way cancer strikes down seemingly innocent young children?
Perhaps you are looking at the high rates of infant and mother mortality due to birth?
Perhaps you are looking at spiders that paralyse their pray then lay egges inside them then the eggs eat their way out the still living pray?
Perhaps you look at the effects of the earthquakes and the tsunamis that follow and see gods love in it.
Perhaps you look at drought and famines and plagues and see god love in them
Nature red in tooth and claw as your reference for an all loving god …interesting.
PS how do you square evolution and fossils with biblical time lines?Is this the kind of thing that makes you beleive in god?
I am a scientist, I see that said spider is a highly adapted creature, that there is the ‘selfish gene’ policy, that infant/mother mortality is due to sexual conflict on our DNA (something I am studying for my dissertation actually- its beneficial for men to have smaller hips for better gait (therefore running for survival etc)and women to have larger hips for childbirth, as the sexual conflict is between the genes for large and small hips there are intermediates; men have wider hips than would be ideal and women smaller.)That death happens to innocent and the guilty and cancer will unfortunately touch us all (directly or indirectly) and is due to inaccuracies of DNA replication.
Droughts are caused by changes in weather conditions due to changes to the earth’s orbit, tilt, ENSO events, tsunamis and earthquakes shows the Earth’s power on the surface, yet without this power life would have never existed as it was the volcanoes epochs ago that first gave rise to important molecules needed for life.
At no point have I suggested I believe in the Bible and from glancing at the thread it would appear no one else has said they do either. The Bible provided explanation for those that asked the important questions all those years ago when the technology available could not give scientific, factual answers. It also provided a means to suggest ways of living that were ‘good’ in that they were more harmonious.
Junkyard. Perhaps I look at the fact a drink driver killed my boyfriend and I see ‘god’s love in it.’ Strangely not. I suggest you look at my prior posts instead, and give suggestion to how everything came from nothing.
joao3v16Free Member“if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul”
In other words, if you look hard enough you’ll find what you want to find.
In the context of the Bible the meaning is more along the lines of “if you sincerely search for God, He will make sure He is found”. The key being sincerely.
James Ch 4 v 8 says “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”
iDaveFree Memberor if you’re desperate enough you’ll construct something from nothing if it makes you feel better?
ElfinsafetyFree MemberWhy do you strive to pour scorn on the activities of others so much? Why the apparent need to ridicule, belittle, denigrate?
Why not just live and let live?
RustySpannerFull MemberElfinsafety – Member
Why do you strive to pour scorn on the activities of others so much? Why the apparent need to ridicule, belittle, denigrate?
Why not just live and let live?
Elf, the ‘God’ question is surely one of the most fundamental questions we ask ourselves and others. It would be pretty unusual if we didn’t compare opinions.
As to the scorn, ridicule etc, it’s part of human nature.
Some people are capable of discussing such things without resorting to them, but it’s pretty rare isn’t it? 🙂v8ninetyFull MemberShock news: elfin confuses opinion (onion?) with fact. Again.
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