Why fight over the existence of a being that can't be proven or disproved? Any evidence supporting the christian god can be dismissed by critics as simply hallucinations at worst or overinterpretation of a personal experience. Evidence against the christian god cannot be proved. It's simply a matter of faith. Even evolution doesn't disprove a Christian god, because an almighty power could have used evolution as a tool for creation. The Bible doesn't prove anything because it is an archaic book written by man who couldn't see past their own world, and instead added stories that made sense to them. After all, 4,000 years ago many of the facts we take forgranted did not exist to society, such as gravity, roundness of the earth, the sun being the center of the solar system. Hell, they didn't even know what a solar system was! Personally, I believe that "god" is the divine essence contained within all people and sentient beings. Humans have self-awareness, a gift from evolution, that allows us to feel the divine within. Was it the work of a Christian God? Was it the natural flow of the universe? I have to go with the latter of the two. After all, we cannot know how self-aware earlier species of hominends (sp?) were although we can know the size of their brain matter. It's a mystery of the universe, and I don't know if anyone can properly understand it, besides the total enlightened, like Jesus and Buddha. But even then, their words can only make sense to those who have the proper preperation and understanding. Let me digress. Jesus spoke of a personal god. Was he refering to the divine within? Or was he simply using terminology that Jews of the time would understand? Buddha never mentioned god because he believed that knowledge of a god would not help one escape suffering in this life. So what to believe? Perhaps there is a creator power that the Jews described in the old testament or perhaps there is just a flow to the universe that, for a lack of a better term, is god? I guess that is up to the individual to decide, as long as their belief system is tolerant and not based upon delusions of grandure and pomposity. After all, "god" loves everyone, not just those who believe.... Peace and love
It's pretty easy to disprove god actually. most of the attributes people give to it are incompatable and downright irrational. and it's fun to argue about religion, that's why we do it. PS neadrethals (not an ancestor of modern man btw) burried their dead. this meant that they felt that the body was still alive in some sense, and they didn't want to see the wolves eat it.
Personally I'm not sure that it's God that is causing violent crusades. I think people would find a different reason to fight. God can add fervor I guess... But I think you could find the same passion for a cause in the absence of God. Love of country, for instance...people would fight just as passionately. When Jesus spoke of a personal God, he could have been coming at the issue from a classical pantheist perspective, which does tie in with Judaism. Google it. Basically, because everything is God and interconnected, and the individual is as personal as personal gets, God is absolutely personal. It's pretty much impossible to disprove the existence of God. Perhaps certain people's ideas of God, but not the concept altogether.
But those are attributes people give to it. That doesn't necessarily mean that there is no god, it just means (S)he doesn't have some of those attributes Never having talked to or observed any Neanderthals, I wouldn't want to comment.
last night i tuned in a religious talk radio station - and went to sleep to see what sense dreaming would make of it . what i got is still very curious . i'll describe it best i can ... it was a dream about logic . a progression of logical thinking presented itself as something spatial and oh so far from linear . it's like some kind of fancy alien geometry - convolutedly tho gracefully point to point - and only would actually be confusing if transcribed into such a language as english . english would make a circular logic of it at best , which is then the worst nonsense and , ya , worthy of rejection . so here i am writing of it in this insufficient language . sorry . in thinking of it as i awoke , i thought about the christian idea of eternal life in a blissful heaven . it's easy enough , you might know , to end a christian's effort at converting you (through the standardized circular logic) by declaring that you don't care about personally living forever . still , there exists the emotional imperative of survival . it's got a reality . ya , i want to live to be 800 . in god - here is an idea in motion : existence/non-existence . mmm...perhaps once upon a time there was a non-existence . i think the logic of my dreaming would round about conclude existence will endure or it'd have already blinked out . can this account for the really smart kids in black sorrow who profess to be the living dead ?
to believe that existence is ordinary is pathos . FUA makes up an even more tedious story than the one he reacts to . what is really unknowable ? probably alot . probably you don't know exactly . like hippychick will think of god as a cosmic wave , ok , what's better than flowing along like the fishies ? surf's up ! ride that wave , babe .
You seem to believe your understanding is definitive. Why? How do you even know what it is you reject? The thing is, you may actually be absolutely right to reject whatever your thoughts tell you about your imaginary phantom malevolent authority. Far too many people embrace some variation of it, along with the horrors it accompanies. Just like you, I also want them to awaken from the ignorant, fearful, hateful, destructive nightmare that they insist is "reality." But, sooner or later, you may find your knowledge has little or nothing to do with the conversation of the Enlightened . . . you know, the Mystics, the Rishis, Roshis and Rabbis. Your conclusions may have the same relationship with God (Whatever God is) that a security blanket has with a Nobel Peace Prize. It's just a thought, I won't be offended, or surprised if you reject it. Peace and Love
. like a repubican to the devilcrat , fed up gives the traditional no-sense reply . an understanding of god is necessarily an intersection of self and god . how to see ? is human imagination inseparable from seeing a creative god ? may self trust self-seeing , oh , and be adventuresome too ? it's reasonable to figure there is a natural human limit to understanding . one fool draws the line , another is hopelessly careless of it . .
Actually folks, the mind we experience as "self" is a divine filter created deliberately by God to screen the very reality of its existence from itself, in order for the evolution of finite embodiment to occur. Our mental self, that thing we laud over all other life forms, is the one thing that effectively blocks our awareness of God, other than as a mental projection of a faith based cognition. If by some chance you remove, involute or sublimate this veil or filter of mind, then a strange awareness looms forth. The awareness of consciousness you then possess is not "where is God", but where is there not God, for then your awareness is that all reality, everywhere, is totally all divine, all God, everyone, everywhere, the rocks, the sky, your face, all existence. Now, you don't have to believe this, but get rid of the filter of mind, and you will see, all of you will see, the same reality, that all is sat-cit-ananda.
Maybe. But I think it's wise to accept the existence of a world beyond your horizons. Yes, but you also denounce all devout Christians as delusional. If you believe your own experience is based on flawed or distorted information, then doesn't that inherently negate your authority? I think the question remains unanswered. You don't necessarily have any legitimate claim to "the Truth" just because you've rejected an incomprehensible experience. Oh, Please . . . Reality, for humans, is ruled by "imaginary things." All of the principles by which even the most stubborn materialist lives his or her life are purely imaginary, abstract contructs like Causality, Justice, Respect, Trust, Peace, etc. None of these things has any self-referent sensory identity (you cannot directly see, hear, touch, taste or smell them), but a world in which even the most pedestrian abstractions did not exist would be unrecognizable. It doesn't matter if you "believe" in them or not, such "imaginary things" as Creativity, Wisdom, Inspiration (just to name a few) have a profound influence on reality, and on the quality of one's experience of it. Yes, that lack of Critical Thought is as culturally and intellectually destructive as illiteracy. This doesn't mean that the thing they refuse to think about is categorically wrong, any more than your rejection is categorically right. This is an example of the Critical Thought problem that is currently distorting both sides of every false Dichotomy (Progressive/Conservative, Modern/Traditional, Faithful/Atheist, East/West, etc.) and has effectively brought an end (for now, anyway) to any meaningful national discussion. It works like this. Take a multi-faceted and controversial issue (like . . . the War in Iraq, the Death Penalty, the Rise of Fundamentalism, etc.) and ignore all but those "facts" that validate your prejudices. You may have to deny the existence of a whole interrelated structure of essential information. In simplifying a complex issue in order to make it more thinkable, any real understanding of the issue is distorted. Bush supporters did this with the Iraq War by ignoring all of the very real considerations about the unintended and uncontrollable consequences of war, the malice created by large scale destruction of lives, the self-destructive fallacy of revenge, and a host of other things. They sought to justify the Iraq War by saying it "made the world a safer place without Saddam Hussein." Gosh Mister, when you put it that way, the creative and harmoneous unity of mankind sounds far more heartless than the embittered lives of a hundred thousand disfigured Iraqi orphans. Yes, sometimes religion attracts deeply damaged individuals, but so do politics, the arts, and beautiful women. Does that mean we should abolish Law, Creativity and Sexuality? FedUp, I have all admiration and respect for you. I wouldn't even question your ideas if I didn't. I have to ask, however - Why is there such vehement opposition to an ideal of an undefinably creative, universal good? And why throw that away because some malicious simpleton confuses "Love one another" to mean "Kill the Infidels" . . . ? That makes no sense to me. Peace and Love
