why i don't believe in god, but kinda do, it's not my fault though

One is what is around them. so what choice do you really have in the first place. even if we can make the decision to believe or to disbelieve in god the choice would have been already been a prerequisite based upon where you live, or how you are raised. The genetic mentality that coincides with this upbringing, is why one does anything. The choice is there, and not all the time, but most of time, the choice is already chosen for you. Once one becomes unbiased, then a right choice can be made. Locke's truth, Plato's cave, Nietzsche's super man, they all rely on the simplistic nature of understanding fully before choosing, the idea of full enlightenment.

I believe this is correct, but i believe it is impossible to live by it fully. There are so many things that sway are decisions that we're completely unaware of that it just becomes a confusing bunch of numbers.

I don't really know anything, but at least for now, i change my opinions quickly, i believe that i am a product of society and i got thrown up into it without knowing and now i don't know how to get out. Think of everything from school to what you were allowed to watch on television when you were three. How could I ever rack my brain up to defeat everything that was brainwashed into me from so many different unknown sources. I understand brainwash is a harsh word, but it is in a round about way.

With this mentality right now i think there's more proof for aliens, but yet for some reason i still wake up and believe there's a god, and by night i don't believe any existence of spirituality whatsoever. how can you when you just watch what people do, it's like i'm stuck in between on some rope swing.

I'm hoping because i am a young man that stuck is something every person from the ages of 18-30 feels, but i'm hoping more so that i keep trying to escape it, even if i never can.

is it bad to believe in or to try to do something that is impossible or improbable, that is the question

 

You are correct in assessing that most people fall into their religion of their upbringing. You are also correct in assessing that most people fall into their religion based on their location. While its not true in all cases, it can be said to be true in most. These are not, in my opinion, valid reasons to believe. Some will make unverifiable claims of personal experience as a reason to believe, but again, how can this be a valid reason to believe when people of completely opposite faiths have similar "personal experiences" that they relate to their god and not yours? It appears that Theists totally ignore these other experiences from other faiths or they just don't care. If they were intellectually honest, they should at least conclude that there is a possibility of many gods that participate in personal experiences. Do people honestly believe that their god participates with them and not others? Do people honestly believe that they are some how more special that they get a personal experience while others who may be in more need of a personal experience get nothing at all? For instance, if the Christian god really wanted all people to follow him/her/it, wouldn't it make more sense for this god to give atheists a personal experience than to give one to someone who already has faith in his existence?

Another question to ask yourself is why is it that people who believe in one god, totally reject other peoples gods? In a sense, this makes them atheistic towards all other gods except their own. Where is the intellectual honesty in that? Atheists just lack belief in one more god than most for pretty much the same reasons they reject other gods.... lack of evidence.

Here is some food for thought.... Could you describe god (any god) without their associated holy books? What evidence is there for your god(s) without these books? Lets say that one day, we all woke up and discovered that all science books had disappeared. Could we recreate these science books? Sure we could, using the exact same evidence that was used to create them in the first place. Without any holy text, would the same books be recreated resembling the originals? I can't prove it, but I believe the answer would be a resounding NO.

 

As I Christian, I can still relate to what you're going through. I've come to the conclusion that it's impossible to escape completely from cultural-social conditioning. The best we can do is read widely, think critically, travel, question what we're told and listen to different points of view. We're lucky to be living in a country that's pluralistic in its traditions, and to have the Internet. The challenge is to filter out all the crap and figure out which of the inconsistent messages we're bombarded with is true. We have to use all the tools at our disposal--reason,experience, intuition, judgment,faith--and realize we'll probably be wrong a lot of the time. But it's fun, isn't it? I think it's what life as a human is all about.

 

im an agnostic and i dont see how i can be wrong. in death, either i will meet god or i will not exist.

if i dont exist well i wont have any problems.
if i meet god then i meet him.

to be one sided in any controversial topic i believe is d.u.m.b.

question everything.

question everything. nothing is set in stone.

 

I agree with you on the questioning part, but your conclusions about the afterlife could stand some questioning, too. You put forward a version of Pascal's wager with an agnostic twist, but in the original form, if you meet god after death and haven't been a believer, you'll have a major problem. You may dismiss that alternative as unlikely, but you should recognize you've made a choice based on that assumption.

 

pascal's theory stated that logically due to the afterlife being unknown, believing in it would benefit you more so than not believing in it, and doubting for the sake of doubting is stupid (descartes), if you constantly doubt everything, you will never know anything, even if it is true you will doubt it to the point in which you won't believe, you have to doubt first in order to understand anything, but then the need arises to cross that bridge that you've built with doubt, understanding what you've learned from life, and to apply that to how you live your life


for broony

doubting to doubt is just a cop out, doubting to understand is enlightenment,

and if you doubt everything, than how are you so sure your right,

there are a couple things set in stone, think mathematics

 

^^also, cogito ergo sum

doubting to understand in my mind, is why most of us come to this forum in the first place. all we have to work with are a few branches of man made meaning in a universe that is relatively unknown. But unknown is far from unexplainable.

you can either explain it through the basis of what explains our existence through simple words and logic-

Or you can explain it with divine forces and things of that nature, something that isn't completely devoid of logic, But is instead logic built on assumptions.

the irony of it all is that it would take the creator of said universe to decide who is truly right. And that's why we always talk about it.

 

Very interesting thread. I just posted a repsonse to another thread by jared34ricky and thought I would look at his profile and saw he on he was on this thread, so here I am.

Come on guys---its Sunday night. I am supposed to be watching the Simpson's, Family Guy, and American Dad! Now I've got to respond to yet another thread???

Seriously, here is my question to you guys. What happens when you are presented with an experience that is beyond what we can explain through science and common sense?

I did not want to resign myself to believing that when I die, that's it. That everything I was and did is gone. But the existential leap of believing something that I had no proof in, as offered by religion, was not good enough for me either. Especially when the history of the world's religions is filled with hypocrisy, manipulation, and political contrivances.

Scientifically, if you considered the billions and billions of years of age for our universe, and infinite expanses of space it covers, with an almost infinite number of stars spread through countless glalxies---it seems inevitable that somewhere, sometime, the conditions for life would emerge. That eventually organic structures would evolve that allowed for electrochemical reactions within that structure to take place. As evolution continues, at some point you would have a living organic structure with the thinking and reasoning qualities of man. Evolution would have incorporated the spiritual searchings and experiences into mankind as a survival technique. Even the Near Death Experience would have been a programmed response to enable man to strive to survive. Thinking, feelings, living, these were all just repsonses from bio-electrochemical reactions between brain neurons, through nerve fibers, and in each and every cell in our bodies.

Death occurs when a breakdown occurs that does not enable nutrients to reach key centers that enables continuation of the critical electrochemical reactions. Once all electrochemical activity has ceased the body breaks back down into the dust of the universe.

This is far more likely to me, than a God who sits on a throne in a heaven up in the sky, looking down upon and judging us. It seems a likely conclusion from the objectivistic empirical sciences that have hundreds of years of research and development behind them. (Quantum physics, with its strange particles that can appear and disappear from the nothingness of a complete vaccum and all its other strange aspects once again questions the validity of such an objectivistic empirically-based supposition, but...)

However, I did not want to end my life as the mere cessation of electrochemical reactions. I felt that there was more---something below the veil of reality, barely beyond what I could identify, just beyond my perception---but I needed proof.

Like many baby boomers in the 60's and 70's, I was fascinated with the eastern paths, and thought maybe there was an answer there. But when I moved to Japan, and lived there, I found the religions of the East to be just another institution. (Not that I was that surprised. I realized as early as in High School that Hinduism, with its caste system, was probably one of the most powerful political institutions ever created. But I was a bit disappointed to see it in front of me).

But living in various parts of the world I witnessed numerous events which I did not understand, and which I had to discredit to explain away as coincidence, or psychological tricks. One event was a miraculous healing of my 9-year old step daughter from a mental illness that occured after her real father's death. It was an instantaneous transformation in a river in a Philippine forest, in which she changed from the animal-like state she had fallen into for the past few weeks, into a human again, with the simple question, "Mama where am I?" Even the scared animal-like look in her eyes had turned back to the eyes of a little girl in that moment. The shaman who performed this miracle explained that her father had taken her soul with him and was using it to cross over to the other side.

That was the craziest thing I ever heard. And obviously we could explain the whole event away by some kind of psychological chicannery, perhaps through the use of cultural archetypes buried in her own unconscious---that is how I explained it. (Though I also knew that the modern Philippine culture was largely devoid of these old cultural motiffs through the cultural destruction of the Spainish and the Catholic Church. But what other explanation could there be?).

But that was one of numerous events that defied explanation.

When I returned to the States, I had more resources to explore with, and soon found myself exploring the ancient traditional paths through the works of anthropologists such as Eliades.

These resources explained a lot of what happened in my various strange experiences. For example, what happened to my step daughter was not some weird unique experience, but a common variation of both psychopomp, and shamanic healing, which occurs in indigenous societies around the world. I could also see in Shamanism and the traditional paths a strange way of reconciling spirituality with the theories of quantum physics. But they did not really answer the question of whether I would die and just turn to dust.

The more I explored, the more I was intrigued. The more things begin to make sense to me. The more I was curious to experiment. (In Christian terms, the Devil had gotten a hold of me and was tricking me into his path of Eeeeevilllllll. Yes, I am Eeeeeeevviiilllllll... ; ) )

Experiences I had on the traditional path were mind boggling. Time and time again I had to question whether it was a figment of my imagination, an amazing coincidence, or something more. Suddenly stories that some of my native American friends told me of the synchronicities that they see made more sense, and were becoming harder to write off as a misinterpretation of a coincidence. But it was all too weird.

Then late one night, after months of questioning the validity of all this wierd stuff, whether or not there really is something beyond our reality, and whether or not these things were a figment of my imagination, or even simply the power of the mind, I had an experience where one moment the ground beside me was empty dirt, and the next moment there was a freshly cut animal tail laying there. I was not insane. I have never cut an animal's tail, nor was there any animals in sight when this happened, nor was there any other way to explain what happened. I still have the tail, so I can't deny what happened. But it was certainly an answer to my questioning---for me.

I don't expect you to believe this. I probably wouldn't believe it myself if it did not happen to me. But it did---and it was an answer to my questioning. So that is where I am. Perhaps there is another similar experience out there for some of you.

In the face of such an experience---would you guys come to the same conclusion? (In other words, for me, the conclusion is that there really is a God).

 

i wish i could say -how god is tied into nearly every unreasonably explainable experience is beyond me....

but its not....

their is an endless array of interchangeable culprits behind all unexplained phenomena

god is apparently a spectrum favorite....why? i could easily argue -because christian armies killed and conquered the most shit

but i wont.

their is more than just god and and the universe.

use your imagination. not someone elses

 

I have already come to my own conclusion on it. I don't need anyone elses imagination to answer it. I was the only one there, it was given to me, and I am the only one that can truly believe exactly what happened since I was the only observer, and I am the only that really knows that one moment there was only ground, and the next moment, when I looked back, there was an animal tail. And this was a direct answer to questions I alone was asking at the time, not exactly that time, but that had weighd heavily on my mind for months and years before that, and even within an hour or two of this event. If anyone wants me to get into more details about what happened, I can. It is something I rarely share, because it was such a strange event, that was meant for me.

It really is hard to find an interchageable culprit of any kind behind this event, there was no time change as if I had blacked out. It couldn't have been blown there by the wind, I know that it was not hidden, and then I just happened to see it. It was freshly cut, and then there were other oddities about it---it smelt like sage, but I was not burning any sage. etc.

I ask the question not to solve a puzzle for myself, but simply for you to ask, how would you interpret the same type of experience for yourself---one that you really could not find an explanation too.

And when I use the term God, I do not refer to the Christian God----Rather the god of all religions, the Great Spirit---whatever it is. For if there is a spirit world out there, then there must surely be a great spirit that permeates through all things.

 

last post was an indirect statement with regards to your post. i wasn't insulting your intelligence or anything in case that's how it came off.

i probably would have convinced myself of some kind of stress related primal breakdown even though that probably sounds lame

lol

itd take an extremely obscene anamoly for me to claim witness to gods work

it just seems like just another idea to me.....

an over elaborate fansiful idea.....

but i could be wrong....and im fine with that

 

No offense taken, heeh2.

And that is a fair and logical response. I had gone through so many synchronicities that I could explain off, even when the explanation was somewhat lame---that this one was for me unexplainable. And I guess that is why it was meant to happen to me.

But there is still a part of me that cannot fathom how that happened. And sometimes I go through the events again so that I can try to figure if there was any mistake, but even if there was, it is still a hell of a synchronicity.

Certainly the excessively large hit of acid and the mushrooms I took a few hours before that had nothing to do with it. : )

------Just kidding!!!! Nothing like that happened. And I still have the tail so I can't deny that.