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Why do you believe in god?
- Thread starter BTRA
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The Take Out Bandit
Member
fistfulofmetal said:
Unfortunately GAF would decree she has no behind.
fistfulofmetal
Banned
The Take Out Bandit said:
Unfortunate, indeed.
fistfulofmetal
Banned
Juice said:
I think we're approaching critical mass.
Relix said:
I'll throw another on to the pile
face > everything else.
I think that may push the needle into the red zone.
The Take Out Bandit
Member
Door2Dawn said:
I concur, and I don't find her attractive. I suspect the problem is she still has the same body she had in The Professional. :X
It's like being Gary Coleman, only in a bad way.
SouthernDragon
Member
It's comforting.
Prime crotch
Banned
Because I can? I don't know, I like having a bit of spirituality on my life, although I see God as more of an abstract concept, or as nature itself. And I like traditions.
slidewinder
Banned
Well said. But where is the church that has any kind of REAL respect for and appreciation of this fact? Plenty of them pay lip service to it, but then roll around endlessly in the filth of the opposite thanks to Paul.unifin said:
AkuMifune said:
Slightly off topic but there wa a paper in Nature about this recently. Phosphates readily form bubbles due to surface tension. Nucleotides can pass through the bubble's walls. These then (readily) form double-helix structures - ie DNA. The DNA molecules are then too big to pass out through the bubble. Basically it is a simple and observable model for the formation of a cell, with no need for exotic conditions and/or materials.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7200/edsumm/e080703-16.html
Read that if you're interested
rollingstart
Banned
I just think there had to be something in the beginning. Even looking out into the vastness of space and perfectly understanding all the scienced used to explain it, I still believe that at one point there was nothing, then there was something.
A serious young man found the conflicts of mid 20th Century America confusing. He went to many people seeking a way of resolving within himself the discords that troubled him, but he remained troubled.Ela Hadrun said:
One night in a coffee house, a self-ordained Zen Master said to him, "go to the dilapidated mansion you will find at this address which I have written down for you. Do not speak to those who live there; you must remain silent until the moon rises tomorrow night. Go to the large room on the right of the main hallway, sit in the lotus position on top of the rubble in the northeast corner, face the corner, and meditate."
He did just as the Zen Master instructed. His meditation was frequently interrupted by worries. He worried whether or not the rest of the plumbing fixtures would fall from the second floor bathroom to join the pipes and other trash he was sitting on. He worried how would he know when the moon rose on the next night. He worried about what the people who walked through the room said about him.
His worrying and meditation were disturbed when, as if in a test of his faith, ordure fell from the second floor onto him. At that time two people walked into the room. The first asked the second who the man was sitting there was. The second replied "Some say he is a holy man. Others say he is a shithead."
Hearing this, the man was enlightened.
I'd like to flip this question around for a moment as I believe the second half of the OP was questioning this as well (in a round about way), and pose it to those who don't believe in God..
Why do you not believe in God?
What, if anything, could you show that contradicts the legitimacy of a belief in God?
Why do you not believe in God?
What, if anything, could you show that contradicts the legitimacy of a belief in God?
Greatness Gone
Member
<3 LostPhoenixDark said:
<3 Ben
<3 Sawyer
<3 You
TheHeretic
Banned
M3wThr33 said:
Childbirth is disturbing to watch. First of all many women soil themselves during the process, and secondly without drugs (and most women drug themselves up big time now adays) the screams from inside the room are absolutely horrifying. The amount of blood and shit everywhere is disgusting, before modern medicine many women died just giving birth. The only thing miraculous about child birth is how fucked up the entire process is.
I'm not sure if I believe in God, but..
God, coupled with the human capacity for self persuasion/delusion, is a good comfort blanket against death. It's difficult to come to terms with inevitability of death, and God is a great heal-all.
Some biologists think there is or was an evolutionary advantage to 'faith' and a disposition toward belief in a higher being is actually wired into us.
God, coupled with the human capacity for self persuasion/delusion, is a good comfort blanket against death. It's difficult to come to terms with inevitability of death, and God is a great heal-all.
Some biologists think there is or was an evolutionary advantage to 'faith' and a disposition toward belief in a higher being is actually wired into us.
akachan ningen
Member
I believe in god, but not in the sense that he is always watching and taking care us or anything like that. more like he exists in an impersonal way, that's impossible for us to understand.
I just can't believe that there was absolutely nothing and then all of a sudden, nothingness exploded and out of that the universe began. that makes less sense than us being created by a force that we cannot comprehend.
I just can't believe that there was absolutely nothing and then all of a sudden, nothingness exploded and out of that the universe began. that makes less sense than us being created by a force that we cannot comprehend.
RandomVince said:
Well personally i think it's just as difficult to disprove God's existence as it is to prove God existence.. thats why i posed my question, so that people asking the thread question could consider that it's not a simple answer that can just be given for others to understand
akachan ningen
Member
Kipz said:
why was it dense and hot? and how do they now that it was?
akachan ningen said:
So a disordered and unorganised universe which tended toward order on the basis of basic maths and logic cannot come from nothingness but an infinitely complex being, perfect in conceivable way, can?
That's the problem with God, the whole notion raises more questions than it solves.
TheHeretic
Banned
akachan ningen said:
If you are geniunely interested in the origin of the universe, there is plenty of material explaining the prevailing theories. Asking "why was it dense and hot" isn't doing much to your credibility as an educated individual on the subject.
akachan ningen
Member
TheHeretic said:
so you don't know either right? :lol Last time I heard anything about this, they said they actually had no clue hat caused the big bang.
RandomVince said:
Okay, i guess thats a fair enough call.. i know i can't scientifically prove the existence of God, simply because i don't think i have the capacity to do so, nor do i think any regular human could.. but to go down that road in this thread is what you were concerned with earlier (taking the thread in another direction)
TheHeretic
Banned
akachan ningen said:
What do you mean "I don't know". Its a very complicated process involving quarks, matter, antimatter, and a whole lot of physics related shit you'd have to study to understand, which I don't. We don't know what "caused" the big bang because by definition the big bang was the origin of the universe.
akachan ningen
Member
TheHeretic said:
You mean stuff that doesn't exist, except in theory. Every theory of what was around before the big bang is speculation and nothing more. I don't see how those wild guesses are any more valid than believing in the possibility of a great force that we cannot begin to understand.
It's just human arrogance to believe that we can understand everything given enough time.
icarus-daedelus said:
That's an interesting thing to highlight actually. I mean, there were still tonnes of people labelled fathers of the enlightenment who were full-blown believers in some sort of Abrahamic form of God like Descartes, Locke, Reid, Berkeley but it's as if at the first sight of a scientific method and a more skeptical way of doing philosophy deists like the founding fathers, Spinoza, Rousseau and Diderot were produced.
I don't like the idea of labelling someone a fence-sitter for being agnostic but I do feel it's a stultifying stance that doesn't do the individual any good. The same goes for deism to a lesser extent. Wondering about whether or not there is a "higher being", a deus, out there can be a source of wonder which does add depth to human life but its also so vague and nebulous that there's a point where I personally think personal preference takes over and starts forcing interpretations. For example, in an interview the mathematician/cosmologist Brian Swimme described God as "the all nourishing abyss" and "a pervasive whole" and "the way in which the quantum fields feel given the opportunity", this coming from a guy who really knows the cosmos as well as we can. He was obviously struggling to describe what he feels "god" to be but I can't help but feel there's an element of futility here, so people can claim to have some "spirituality" jive in their life.
The issues of a first mover is all well and good..i.e. what made the big bang happen, what made that tiny super dense, super hot particle..we can keep going back and back and back, science can keep pushing back the boundary and people will probably always be able to ask 'but what came before that?'
The thing is, answering with 'God' isn't really satisfactory either, because a scientist can then turn around and ask what came before God. Saying 'nothing' is as useful as saying nothing came before the big bang. If it's not a satisfactory answer wrt the big bang, it's not a satisfactory answer here either. We're stuck in a loop then of what came before that, and came before that, and came before that, and came before that........
The thing is, answering with 'God' isn't really satisfactory either, because a scientist can then turn around and ask what came before God. Saying 'nothing' is as useful as saying nothing came before the big bang. If it's not a satisfactory answer wrt the big bang, it's not a satisfactory answer here either. We're stuck in a loop then of what came before that, and came before that, and came before that, and came before that........
TheHeretic
Banned
akachan ningen said:
Except these aren't "wild guesses", they are based on a multitude of evidence, including the fact that the universe is expanding. By reversing the pattern of the expansion they come to a single point in the universe. If "god" designed the universe why would it do so from a singular point?
gofreak said:
People say it a lot, but in terms of logic, there is no contradiction derived from saying there was no "before" if you assume time is not something that marches on regardless of matter, as Newton saw it, but something that actually depends on matter, as we now see it. The ardent believer can always just appeal to some kind of meta-time anyway, parsimony doesn't seem to be a concern for them lol so why the hell not.
akachan ningen
Member
TheHeretic said:
why not? That's how I'd do it.
but yeah, I'm talking about before the big bang. Everything before the explosion IS speculative and there are several theories that guess about how it happened, even though none of them have any idea where the energy to create it came from.
Mash said:
Sure, if space-time began with the big bang, one can argue there was no 'before', on a timeline. But people will still ask how the circumstances arose to create our concept of space-time. Can that come out of nothing?
I don't know what the most respected current theories are on that..
But believers can still, in the vacumn of knowledge there, point to God as the origin for our universe's fabric of space-time, that there can exist things independent of that, including God.
But I'm just pointing out that if you appeal to God, then people can equally ask what came before him. If nothing can't exist before a tiny infinitely dense particle, you'll have a hard time explaining how nothing could exist before what is presumably a very complex and sophisticated entity (God).
For all we know, there was a creator-being in an independent reality, that created ours..but for all we know too, he may just be one part of another infinite reality, composed itself of many entities (sentient and inanimate), the nature of which we can't comprehend. And they themselves may be wondering what came before them..
gofreak said:
First, I'm not arguing against you really, I agree with your point of view but nonetheless: your idea of simplicity and complexity is more open to interpretation than I think you realise. As I guess you probably know, quantum physics is something that we literally can't intuitively grasp yet it could be considered so basic and fundamental that it isn't "complex" just not something totally comprehensible to us, the same idea could be applied to someone's concept of god. That said, the Christian and Muslim idea of god is indeed a complex entity, I don't think there's any getting around that. It has a personality at the end of the day lol.
True, God, or the true origin, could be very very simple elegant things that we just have no comprehension of (yet). But yeah, the Gods we're taught about don't really fit that description :lol
Who knows, maybe that tiny super dense particle was 'god' in so far as being an absolute origin.
The argument of what came before, if anything..I hope we can one day resolve it absolutely, unlikely as it seems.
Who knows, maybe that tiny super dense particle was 'god' in so far as being an absolute origin.
The argument of what came before, if anything..I hope we can one day resolve it absolutely, unlikely as it seems.
Basically, the point of Christianity is to have faith that what the Bible says is true. That means that there will likely never be overwhelming evidence against Christianity because either A) God exists and wants us to have faith or B) God does nt exist and the Bibe is all made up.
Even if the Bible were all made up, its core ideals would help a society to function well. Before my view gets attacked on by someone quoting something about homosexuality or something like that, I'll say that that is not a main theme of the Bible.
Even if the Bible were all made up, its core ideals would help a society to function well. Before my view gets attacked on by someone quoting something about homosexuality or something like that, I'll say that that is not a main theme of the Bible.
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