does god exist?

This is definitely a case of the EEEEEEEEEEEKs` you are young sounding angry. We will all pray for you. Even though you are entitled to your opinion, I won`t stand too close to you on Day of Judgement, if you still feel this way on that day. I can get ZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPED well enough on my own, without any help,,,small chuckle there kido,

So don`t go getting all uppitty about this reply. Just that we will all find out this soon enough. But I love the "ole guy upstairs" no disrespect to you God yourself. He knows my kidding loving way,,,part of what makes me,,,me

 

Well it wont let us or other forget the wrong we have done, but if we acknowledge what we have done and that is was wrong and asked to be forgived, we will be, as long as we are sincere. You can't be forgiven for something if you can't see it was wrong and against God's word. If we sin against God, only He can forgive us just as if we sin against a friend they can only say that they forgive us, someone else can't say "oh yes he/she forgives you".

 

Burn the priest!, God is a invention of Clinton to manipulate the brains of the stupid people, put if really exists im sure he is black and gay.

 

I do believe that God exists. Most of that belief is based upon experiences. I do sometimes have a hard time with Christianity as a religion though. I wish I didn't. I would like to get saved, but I can only believe with my head and not my heart, as I feel right now.

 

Maybe because in your heart you know that something isn't quite right with the whole salvation scenario. I was the same way once. I thought I believed, but when it came right down to it, there was just too much that didn't make sense and I was only fooling myself.

People will tell you it's just the devil that's confusing you, but I think it's just the rational part of yourself that needs to make sense of things---and there's nothing wrong with needing to make sense of things.

 

which god?

there is thousands upon thousands of gods.

 

You love somebody that killed the entire world? And what kind of evil entity would send somebody to unimaginable suffering for ETERNITY. NOBODY deserves that. God is a fucking hypocrit if he's real. And if he is then this is a big FUCK YOU to him. I could do his job better.

 

lol I don't even know you and I know I would rather have you running the show than the psychotic pissed off old man in the sky who's so constipated with hatred that he creates beings just to judge and punnish them forever. And he's supposed to be the GOODGUY!

How is the devil supposed to compete with THAT on the evil scale?

 

God doesn't want to punish people he wants to save people and have them live in heaven for eternity.

Let's say you created loads of people and gave them the power to choose what to do in life. Would you want to save people who don't believe in you, insult you all they can and live their lives regardless?

If you chose God and live a life by him, then he has is happy to have you in heaven.

 

Many would like to think that God makes judgments and awards those that do his bidding and punishes those that don't. God has no judgments; He permeates through everyone that is willing to open their mind up to the possibility of him existing.

To many, God is someone who concerns himself with particular religions and being praised by as many people as possible. Those are human traits, not Godlike traits.

There are thousands of Gods in hundreds of religious texts, so people think that, since there is so much contradiction, then God cannot exist. Looking deeper into these texts shows that there is a root truth of what God is, but is interpreted differently by different people, according to their culture, while attaching human characteristics to such a being. No one seems to agree what God is, exactly, but many would say that there is a higher power, just don't exactly know what role He plays or in what form that He exists in.

I don't subscribe to the notion that organized religions are inherently evil, but that evil people have the ability to twist anything for their own selfish means. Good people will find use in a religion, maybe as a defense mechanism, and maybe not - Belittling this phenomenon does nothing to help us to understand it - The one thing that I don't like about organized religions, however, is that it prevents each individual to grow further, spiritually. Religions spring up based on good ideas, but then these ideas stay still for too long, as we are waiting we witness these ideas becoming old and it does not grow any further. When you subscribe to an organized religion, you subscribe to advancements in ideas that were only new, many years ago.

As time goes on, ideas change and they advance. And each time ideas advance, the closer we get to understanding what God is. Personal religiousness is very important, in that it advances a personals belief, internally, without restriction. Logic and reasoning are great ways of advancing civilization, but we also need faith. What this faith is, is entirely up to the individual. But it has been shown, many times, and proven, that having faith is a very helpful and useful tool to use to improve on our existence.

If there is no proof, then God cannot exist, but if proof were given, then God would be useless. Proof is, for a lack of a better way of articulating this, a personal proof that is revealed through the act of keeping your mind open to the idea of God. God isn't something that only the ignorant believe in, or denied by the intellectual elite. Intelligence isn't a prerequisite that determines belief or disbelief, but enlightenment and wisdom are.

This knowledge can only be revealed by those that allow it to be revealed to them. The old saying, "Let God in", has always been put down in my mind, until I started to understand it.

 

Who killed the whole world? This is really santans` world but no one wants to believe this which is ok. I am not thrilled with alot of stuff in this world. But we are to learn to do better. And if you feel you could do a better job,,,please do all that "better" that you can. Because suprize!!!!! that is exactly what God wants out of you. It would be great if there were more people with your thinking, to help people. Start now. or keep going. Just be the good and kind person you want to be and try not to let people that are not "together yet" screw up your thinking.

Love is the key to everything. I don`t know why people have to hurt other people. Say what you mean would be a good start for alot of people. Just had a friend try to screw me over, I was pissy about it but, I knew in the end she didn`t have a set of balls, I like people who care and tell what is on their mind. But you do have to be kind, in doing it.

 

Here's what I would do if I were God. I would take each individual to heaven and show it to them and ask them if they deserve to go there and tell them that all who say "yes" will automatically go to heaven, those who reply with any other answer to that question will burn for ever in hell. The people who say yes will be welcomed into heaven.

The people who say "no" will be welcomed into heaven with honors and will hold positions of rulership over those who said "yes".

The people who get very upset and say F*** YOU! or any other expressions of being highly pissed off, to them I will say,
"Welcome to heaven, I lied, sorry,...part of the whole judgement day thing. First of all, no one is really going to hell, second, when people find out that no matter how perfect a place is, good and bad are still two ends of the same stick, they will start finding reasons to pick fights and make problems, because it's in their nature.

They have people to keep a lid on things for a while but those people will eventually become overwhelmed and will need your wise leadership. In the meantime, hang out with me, drink the best beerin heaven and smoke the best weed in heaven...and believe
me this shit is good! That stuff those "yes" people are smoking is actually grown on earth by angels, but THIS stuff is HOMEGROWN!"

That way the most forgiving, caring, and couragious people will be in charge. Might work, who knows.

But the moral of the story is that you can't make a place groovy enough to make everyone happy forever, and no one can or should suffer for ever.

 

Suppose I do as you reccommend and "let God in" what do you believe that would mean for me?

 

No one should ever have to suffer, forever, not even the most terrible people in history. I find it disturbing that the same people that believe in forgiveness and love, are the same people that want to see people in the most terrible place in existence that is full of torture, terror, hate, and ugliness.

"Letting God in" was a concept that seemed very silly to me for many years, but many of my friends gave me their reasoning for this, and honestly, it didn't make sense to me, and I thought that their ideas were sweet, yet baseless. But as years went on, and when I allowed myself to open up to the ideas of God, I also opened my mind up to another way of seeing the world and this allowed me to believe that there are many ways to acquire knowledge, not just one way - It can be a very enlightening experience, and this experience isn't exactly all of a sudden, but progressive; It is pretty much an epiphany that grows from itself.

What you get out of it is different for every person. It is also important to know that the experience that you get is individualized, and person A will have a different experience from person B.

For me, opening my mind to the ideas of God allowed me to realize that there are other forms of acquiring knowledge, not just science. I love science, and I believe science, as well as other fields of thought, are very beneficial for bettering our existence, and to answer the questions that we ask ourselves. I find it a little odd how people limit themselves by holding onto the tenets of science to the point where they completely ignore other fields of thought as being useless. Science should be used to study 'scienc-y' things, but it shouldn't be the end all way of gathering up knowledge. Basically, my mind started to think outside the box, and I started to feel a connection with something higher. Thinking outside the box enabled me to progress in many ways as a person.

I believe that God is ineffable, and this ineffability isn't described for the purpose of convenience, and that convenience isn't the causation of belief. The only thing that isn't ineffable, is the personal discovery that God does indeed exist.

Regardless of what many say, belief isn't based on ignorance, or by delusional tendencies, but on personal discovery that is brought on by opening your mind to the possibility- to even question your own disbelief and belief - Many of the greatest minds have been atheists, but have also been theists (One of leading scientists to evolution is Catholic). To belittle this phenomenon by simply calling those that believe as ignorant, or delusional, does little to understand what is actually happening here.

Overall, it is pretty difficult to describe exactly how this has improved on my life. One of the best ways to truly understand is to see for yourself. I am not saying that you change your beliefs at all. It is just something that I have gone through myself and I am just telling you, honestly, the best way to truly understand this...

If you want a better understanding of these ideas, I recommend reading a few books by Viktor e. Frankl.

Man's Search for Meaning - Not at all religious, but to understand his others works, you have to first read that book. It is a short read, only 120 pages. It has been ranked one of the most influential books by Americans.

Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning - A hard to read because it uses a lot of psychological terminology, but is recommended anyway.

The Unconscious God - Shows how religiousness is part of the human collective unconscious and how it is very beneficial to mankind. This book is out of print, but you can buy a used one on Amazon for about $20? There are all different price ranges.

Man's Search for Meaning is pretty much my bible =)

 

Interesting article =)

Higher Education Fuels Stronger Belief in Ghosts and the paranormal:

http://www.rense.com/general70/smart.htm

 

Thanks for the bibliography. I've read "Man's Search for Meaning". I know already that religion is very benificial to mankind. I also know that it is, at the same time, very harmful to mankind. The benifits tend to come from what is true while the hamfulness mostly comes from the dogmas that are put forth by those who use religion as a tool of government.

As I said earlier in the thread, I don't believe this universe requires relative explanations beyond the simple fact that it is what it is. If the universe demonstrates intelligence, then the universe is intelligent. that doesn't mean that there has to be a superbeing in charge running everything like a monarch.

But even if this super being does exist, existence is existence. It is all one existence, so there is no need to "Let God in", because there is no in or out, there just is.

 

Sorry, my purpose wasn't to spam you. I was just trying to best describe what I have experienced because you asked.

I never said that God is a monarch that controls everything, really. My view is actually pretty similar to your, and I really don't subscribe to the notion that I know what God really is.

It all just falls on my inability to really bring home what I am trying to say, mostly because there needs to be a book's worth of context.

And yes, there is no in and out. My point that I failed to mention is that God is a part of us all, and this is part of the core expression of world religions. Dogma really is the destructive force of organized religion; I agree.

What I am trying to say is that you either acknowledge this existence or you don't, and not acknowledging it can't exactly be good.

I think ackowledging this can serve you better than if you don't. I don't know exactly what it is, either. Acknowledgment is basically what I meant by "Let God in".

 

I wasn't "spammed" at all. I was sincere (in case you read it as sarcasm) in thanking you for the bibliography because the gesture was sincere and so I wanted to thank you.

Choice of words is really the only difference of opinion you and i really seem to have. You don't mind calling existence "God" and i choose to reject that term as one that too often relates to a deity of some sort that christians use to hurt people.

You focus on the similarities instead of the differences, and that's good. I focus on the differences instead of the similarities and that's good too. Both points of view need to be heard.

I think as far as aknowleging the intelligence, creativity and beauty of existence goes though, not calling the universe "God" doesn't seem to lessen it for me, in fact, i've found that letting go of the old idea that that word invokes for me actually makes the universe seem much more awsome.

But if one word doesn't work for you, there are endless words to use, and ultimately any word works since there isn't anything that is not part of the same existence.

I do think it's a dangerous thing though that so many people think that they are somehow linking up to an all knowing all mighty all benevolent entity that tells them what to do. Kind of takes the thinking process out of things and makes people perhaps more certain of what to do than they really should be.

 

I'm shocked you guys believe this crap. How many of you just conveniently chose the religon of your parents? And how many found your religon on your own?

 

My family are not religious in the slightest so there is no way that i 'convieniently' chose the religion of my parents.

Just as you think it is crap to believe, I think it is crap that some people don't even consider the possibility it may be true.