Thoughts About God

Devlin,

Which God, exactly, are you hoping will save you from Darwin's sigs? <grin>

B

Devlin,

No - atheism isn't in my opinion a 'belief system' unless you wish to twist semantics to the extent that belief=non-belief.

Bhodi. Any god that wants to volunteer.

Seladore. I would say that you are believing in the non-existance of something. Thus still a belief.

I could equally say that the religious person disbelieves in the non-existence of God, and is therefore a sceptic.

Exactly, ir=t works both ways.

That's the wonderful thing about beliefs: you can argue them forever and never come to a conclusion, since there aren't enough facts to hold importance in the discussion. Of course, the wonderful thing about facts is that not everyone believes them.

Darwin Appleby --



Ha-Shem Darwin, Ha-Shem!!!

Agnosticism, I believe, is the philosophy that God may or may not exist, but that it is unprovable and that others should be allowed to believe as they desire.

Atheism is the absolute belief the God does NOT exist. It is a belief, because it is an opinion that has not been proven.

Other religions are generally based on the belief that some God or divine force DOES exist. It is based on the tenet of faith, but is also a belief because it has not been (cannot be) proven.

I have used this analogy before - televangeli$m, political power, church corruption aside, this is about true faith. The Church, whichever church that means to you, is undeniably responsible for great acts of evil and selfishness in history. It is also responsible for huge acts of benevolence, kindness and beauty. I am discussing whether or not someone is religious, not whether or not they follow a particular faith.

Imagine you are standing on a corner where you see a blind person about to step into rushing traffic. Would you just watch, or would you try to prevent it? Now, imagine that you believe in immortal souls, heaven and hell. You see someone "blind to this truth" about to "step" into a way of life that will lead inevitably to eternal damnation. Would you just watch, or would you try to prevent it?


Both the religious and the atheistic argue that they are correct and the other is wrong. But I'm not certain the motivation is the same. By the analogy above, I can see a religious person attempting to convert others as a service. Alas, my imagination fails me at this point. Can someone come up with a similar analogy to explain why an atheist might want to actively dissuade others from belief in a Supreme Being (other than Angelina Jolie )? I'm not religious myself, but I do wish to understand both sides.

Darwin, you are correct in stating that facts are pretty much irrelevant in discussions of religious philosophy. Alas, I have seen this logic used improperly as a tool by those who deny the existence of God as proof that their own arguments are logical and reasonable, and that the beliefs of the religious are unreasonable. They do not realize that their denial of the existence of God is equally unreasonable, because it is not based on evidence that God does not exist, but rather on the lack of evidence that God does exist. It is much like considering extraterrestrial life: you can believe it is out there somewhere, but you have no facts. You can believe that we are alone in the universe, but equally without facts.

In formal logic, you can prove a theory incorrect by providing a counterexample. ex. I am an atheist. You prove me wrong by having God sit down and talk to me (But you might have to prove it is God)

You cannot, however, prove a theory correct by providing an example. You you have to prove it correct by providing ALL possible examples, or by disproving it's antithesis.

Yes Dusty, I agree. There is no fact in the unknown, and for that reason, the only thing that is definate on earth is the unknown, therefor that is what I believe in. I believe that somewhere in the unknown there is the unknowable/incomprehensable. Beyond that, all there is to know is fact, science, and the reality of "nowness" and the postcomprehensive "afterness" that follows

I think you're right Dusty. I think part of what makes the question of whether or not atheism is a faith, is that the word faith can take on very broad connotations or very simple ones depending on the context. When people speak about having faith in god, it generally means a lot more than simply stating "I believe there is a god." It usually also means "...who will judge me and who my morality is based around and who will sheperd me into the afterlife or into damnation." When the same word is applied to atheism it generally just means "I think the existence of god is so unlikely that the minute possibility isn't worth bothering with." They're a bit apples and oranges.

Belief in god by itself is not a belief system any more than atheism is. You have to subscribe to the rest of it... accept the particular brand of morality, culture, ritual, etc. Those things might be mainstream or they might be highly personalized. There's a million flavors of every religious belief system, and a million more within each of those because people tend to taylor it to themselves a bit. Most atheists I know are somewhere between humanism and universal pantheism. My point is that it's all that other stuff that constitutes the belief "system". Belief in god or not is simply that... belief in god or not. Just like If you believe in life on other planets then that doesn't constitute a belief system. It only constitutes a single belief.

Soooo... if you're ONLY talking about faith in terms of accepting your conclusion about a single question, then yes, religious belief and atheism are both a kind of faith. In every other respect they are light years apart.

Except, of course, for Buddhism, which is based on the conviction that nothing should be accepted on faith. And that, in this impermanent universe, God is irrelevant where Love abides. "All phenomena are as a dream, an illusion, a bubble and a shadow. Like dew and lightning." -- Buddha


Genjo Koan (excerpt):
Firewood turns to ash, and does not turn into firewood again; but do not suppose that the ash is after and the firewood is before.
We must realize that firewood is in the state of being firewood; it has its own before and after.
Yet despite this past and future, its present is independent of them...
Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash; so after one's death, one does not become life again...
Life is a period of itself.
Death is a period of itself.
They are like winter and spring.
We do not think that winter becomes spring,
Nor do we say that spring becomes summer.
(Written in mid-autumn of the first year of the Tempuku Era, 1233 A.D. by Dogen Zenji)

I don't believe in God, nor Atheism, nor Agnosticism.
I believe that I'm sleepy, and therefore I'm going to bed.

There is, in fact, a God.

My very existence proves it.

Oh! And it's good to see that you kids work out your deep theological issues in a video game forum! Very healthy. I've been discussing the work of Renoir in a "Microsoft Monster Truck Madness 2" forum. Those guys are really insightful, too.

-Grimmy Moonflower

Dusty,

<<Atheism is the absolute belief the God does NOT exist. It is a belief, because it is an opinion that has not been proven.>>

I do not believe that there is a pink, pipe-smoking alligator at the bottom of my garden. I do not believe that George Bush is really Rasputin risen from the dead. I do not believe that eating onions will make my nose turn upside down so that every time it rains I will get a nose-full of water. Do you call *those* beliefs? Likewise, I do not believe there is a supernatural being in control of our destiny.

All opinions that have not been proven.

Sorry, but you are wrong about GB He IS Rasputin risen from the dead. And GWB is his clone.

As Chip pointed out, we are dealing with words that have both dictionary definitions and broad contextual connotations. I, too, do not believe that there is a pink, pipe-smoking alligator at the bottom of your garden. One could argue that there is a tiny, negligible possibility that there is, although you could easily step outside and disprove it (for the moment that you are outside, that is - maybe he got the munchies and just ran down to McDonalds ). You could eat an onion, and see that your nose doesn't turn upside down. I am not sufficiently well versed in eastern religions to offer an opinion on the Rasputin/Bush connection or which direction of reincarnation signifies karmic advancement.

These are things that may or may not be proven, but which could in theory BE proven. And provability is so important. An omnipotent God who wants faith and not fact? Only provable by the decision of God to make Himself knowable and known as fact, and I'm not holding my breath for that one. Never disprovable. Like you, I do not believe that there is a supernatural being that cares what I eat, what I do on Sunday morning, or if I worship him. But, honestly, I cannot come close to disproving such a being's existence.

I say that I believe in the Big Bang theory. This "belief" is based on the reasonableness of the assertions of knowledgable people. But if someone else came along with a better theory next year, I could easily abandon the Big Bang for the new theory. If I speak with someone who believes in the Steady State theory, I do not consider them ignorant. In a hundred years, both us will be dead, and our opinions will have become meaningless. If someone were to come out with scientific proof one way or the other, I could accept that and go on without any real changes in my life.

But if I were to say I believe in God, that is a much more profound statement. Just as with the "Big Bang" scenario I have described above, my belief is based not on personal insight, but on considering the reasonable arguments of knowledgable people on both (all) sides of the debate. But my religious beliefs (and/or lack thereof) affect my perception of my place in the universe, my interractions with other people, my thoughts when I am soaring blissfully or sunken in despair. A hundred years from now, my religious beliefs could be of immense importance to me if I am wrong. Admittedly, non-existence won't be such an issue for my religious counterpart.

My eloquence, or pretention of being so, is beginning to fail me. What I am trying to say is that most "beliefs" are truly no more than strong opinions. Religious beliefs are different. When speaking about something with such implications as immortality and the nature of God and creation, everyone needs to make or understand a quantum leap - getting from one place to another without actually crossing the intervening space. Religious "beliefs" by their nature must be treated as hermetic facts by each individual who holds them.

OMG LMAO................a pink, pipe-smoking alligator????? ROTF....... shooooo.....that was incredibly funny....heh

well....you know what I think (I know jimmy cracked corn too, but Ima gonna tell yas) I think most Atheist are recovering
Christians........lol........yep......ats what I think.....***pink, pipesmoking alligators....heheheheheh****



a cry out from just one of the ones in the so called "huddled masses".....(do we huddle?)

I'm not gonna really touch on the religous part of this since I'm a taoist, wiccan, samurai, make it up as I go along kind of religion person. So... on to time travel!

Weee science!

First off, ever hear of John Titor? Supposedly he was a time traveler that posted on some forums, even if its total BS it brings up some interisting thoughts. The method he/she/it described was used for time travel had to do with a bunch of technical stuff I don't understand, but the concept was the same one where if you go back in "time" it isn't really *your* "time" its a different reality all together, but only changes dramaticly as much as far back as you go, so lets say you want go back and meet Jesus, if you attempted to go that far back most likely you'd end up in a reality where Jesus didn't even exist (if he did exist i nthe first place), or maybe you'd end up in one where he *did* exist and he *didn't* in *your* reality. Confusing eh? So you would have to only go back as far as it would stably allow you, back or forward, or sideway, whichever. Also this leads to an interisting point John never covered, lets say you "stabely" go back in time and are still within your "time line" everythings fine and good right? But according to the time travel laws John was talking about, every time you go back in time and appear in that time you are creating a *new* reality, because after all you originaly weren't supposed to be there, or were you? anyway, so you create a new reality, so now you go back forward to what you think is *your* reality, but if you went forward wouldn't you be creating another reality in which you returned? Thereby if you time traveled you could never really get back to your time line because you create a new one as soon as you leave and then arrive again. Thats just my figuring of it.

Also, String Theory is a good theory to read up on, there could be as many as 15 or more different dimensions, some which we travel through constantly (they're so small, when you move your hand you're actualy going through many different dimensions). String Theory is an attempt at a Unified theory that would bring Realitivity and Quantum physics together and explain everything in the universe.

Another thing, it could also be said that we time travel when we sleep, because after all time is passing differently for us than observers, its also passing differently for our body and our brain, you could have many dreams in many different scenarios that transpire for many different lengths of times, all while you sleep for only an hour, yet it felt like two hours to your body, and to everyone else it felt like an hour.

I personaly don't really know if I believe if time travel (in the sense of back to the future style) is possible or if it happened in some point of time already. The whole John Titor thing brings interisting ideas into it and explains why we don't see more time travelers walking around, but of course that could all be BS. Would a time traveler really go on tv and say "hi i'm a time traveler" if one existed? Cuse as John braught up, any publicity is bad since the government would have some seriouse questioning to do.

I'm still waiting for an evil time traveler to come and dominate the world and take it over. But if the whole multi dimensional thing is true and if theres an infinite amount of different dimensions... it would be like shooting in the dark with a pea.

Uhm, Oz? In the future please refrain from posting when you are drunk, stoned, or suffering from lack of sleep. Or when I am suffering from lack of sleep. Thanks.

For someone who devotes every post he makes to pointing out what a waste of time SL and its community are, you sure spend a lot of time reading the forums and posting inanely about it.

Your very existence proves only that your parents had sex.

Thanks though for calling me a kid. Being 47, I don't hear that often.

Well, I occasionally discussed such matters with people at my Zendo, but mostly they were more interested in swapping cookie recipes.

No amount of science can prove or disprove the existence of God. Just as no amount of religion can prove the existence of science.

And now a word from Schroedinger's cat...

"Meow."

I personally don't believe in time travel for at least two reasons.

1. The "branching reality" model of time implies that upon changing a single event in history, you would create an entire new universe based on that change. This is worse than Schrodingers Cat; at least kitty had the grace to be neither dead nor alive until you opened the box - it wasn't both. Quantum theory does allow for minor changes to be subsumed by greater ones; a sufficiently minor change might not lead to the formation of a new universe. Too many people took the "butterfly effect" as more than a theoretical model with very limited scope, more applicable to strange attractors than to super-quantum events. A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, and a tornado touches down in Oklahoma, but in reality, if that butterfly had been splattered by a windshield before getting to Tokyo, the tornado would still have touched down. The effect of its flapping wings was negligible compared to the multitude of other forces. But even if you expand your model of time-space to include multiple time lines, there is conservation of matter and energy to consider. You could not go on creating entire new universes out of scratch. In the realm of fiction, the Richard Meredith "Timeliner" trilogy addressed this issue by stating that the mass-energy of the universe continued to thin out up to a critical point, at which time the branching multiverse collapsed into a simpler structure.

2. Time travel (and to be accurate, even spacial travel) is not as simple as it seems. When someone goes back to a place they were a few minutes ago, they are acting only in reference to a small part of the universe. That person, no matter how carefully he has retraced his steps, is still in a very different location in reference to all of the particles of the universe. Similarly with time travel, in order to return to the past, you would have to return the universe to a state in which every bit of matter and energy was in the same state as it was in originally. Retracing our steps is an adequate approximation of having returned to a previous point in space - we are not truly in the same place but for most intents and purposes we are close enough. Not so with time travel. For example, the photons reflected by terrestrial events propogate throuough the universe at the speed of light, affecting everything in their immediate vicinity. In order to change a historical even 100 years ago, you would have to change at the very minimum everything that had been so affected, in a 100 light year radius. Quite an expenditure of energy, to say the least.

3. If I were to go back 24 hours in time, every subatomic bit of my body would have to be duplicated since 24 hours ago, they were in air, water, food or even my "original" body for that time. Quantum theory does allow for the location of subatomic particles to be indeterminate, but not for simultaneous existence in two locations. Once again, we run face-first into conservation of energy and matter - even if I do not have to create an entire universe, I do have to create that portion of it which I am sending back. I could imagine conservation of energy and matter to be expanded to allow this, say that energy could become non-existant for a while balanced by the fact that at some point in time it also exists twice simultaneously for a while. But I am unaware of any current theory to suggest this as more than imagination.

I have not specifically researched these statements, but I do follow theoretical physics with some interest and expertise. If anyone reading this spots something I have stated that is wrong, I would honestly appreciate being corrected so that I do not continue to propogate misinformation or build upon it within my own thoughts.

In vitro fertilization has been around for decades. Your existence doesn't even prove your parents were ever on the same continent.

He could have had geneticly engineered sperm. Whoever said he even has multiple parents? Genetic engineering has only been around for about a decade, which would mesh with his age just fine

God does exist...everything could be considered an example really...some people might say "oh if God created everything in 7days then howcome it took billions of years for the earth to be molded?" the bible dosent say anything about what time itself is too God, since he created time, (therefore being outside of time) 7days could be anything...(who even knows if that this is even the FIRST time the world hasexisted? or there was one before this?) and when it comes to tragedy occuring, why would God interefer with what is happening? he wouldnt, that would be intervening free will and sidetracking the theory that everything happens just happens. also, what if the universe collapses and expands every so often reseting what we call time? the world may never know 0_0


(excuse my spelling...i suck ass at typing )

In *your* opinion.