God or no God? I really don't know anymore. (page 2)

RAYZORBLADE

Many great responses here.

bobld: gotta hand it to ya, a short & sweet response says plenty.

Thanks for your input. "I" appreciated it.

wobble

Thanks Inkling ! All is revealed, Richard Dawkins is the creator God !

Not hard to understand(as in WT speak "some may find what the FDS write hard to understand..".),just hard to swallow.

love

Wobble

Witness 007

I now know that God is on Hoildays in the Bahamas and won't be in for afew "days" {thousands of years} so you can leave a message and he will get back to you.

jaguarbass

I suspect we are children of God, parts of God, Spirits having material experiences.

We come to the pleasure planet, or the planet of pain, but earth is like an amusement park. Some of us get scared to death and some of us have the time of our life.

But when we were spirits we fixed it so we could never figure out positively were we came from.

Or God did.

The meaning and origens of our lifes are like peeling an onion each layer you think your on to something but its all just layer after layer you never get to the core.

At least your honest, you dont know. Nobody knows. But a lot of people think they know.

Watch out for them.

Thats were we all came from a place where everybody knew what was going on. What a suprise.

Easyreader1970, I struggled with the same question myself. The answer I arrived at was not the result of culture or my parent's opinion. It was DEFINATELY not arrived at from my friends advice either. I wanted to know if the supernatural existed ( not based on someone's opinion ). If I was going to believe I had to know for myself, from a personal experience. I studied and dabbled with every kind of spiritual belief I could get information on. While going through this process I discovered that the black arts didn't apeal to me because of the murderous and vengeful people that I ran into not long after I began to study it. I did have some experiences that let me know there was something at work beyond the visable world though. I then shifted to wicca and the eastern religions. These too brought some strange experiences, but left me empty. Also in my studies of world religions I began to discover that in their earliest histories and texts there were common threads. Of all the major religions I studied, and there were many, they began with animal sacrifice as atonment for the sins of man. Not only that but they, almost without exception, had a flood story and one good god with an evil or rebellious advasary. I started to develope a theory that the sons of Noah, as they settled different parts of the world might have took their religion with them. After a while they were changed, added to and so on, until they became what they are today. After this I decided to respectfully aproach the God of the Bible to see if He would reveal Himself to me. I started listening to the Bible on cassette tape and praying. As I started applying the principles of the scripture to my life something strange began to take place. My life began to improve. I found that my prayers were getting answered and an undeniable presence was at work in me. I am now a born again christian ( by my own choice ) and I have had personal times in the presence of a Holy God. I cannot prove to you or anybody else that what I say is true. I cannot prove my theory that the world religions are deviations and offshoots of Biblical teaching. I can testify to you though that I have been in the pressence of the true and living God. I, personally, was caugt up in His presence on one occasion. He has spoken to me in a way that I was convinced was supernatural in nature. None of this came easily though. I came to Him beliving that He was. He built my faith in Him slowly... line upon line, precept upon precept. I came based on His promise that He was a rewarder of those that dilligently seek Him. He is. I am at a place now where no words can seperate me from my belief and faith in Christ Jesus. If you had known me twenty years ago you would NEVER have believed I would be where I am now. No man made organization showed me God. I met Him myself. I hope you do too. God bless you.

Open mind

caliber:

consider the following self-evident and universally recognized truth:

Well, when you put it like THAT, it's so simple.

Thanks.

om

Gopher

Caliber --

Even if I accepted your arguments about order being proof of God -- how does that lead to YOUR God in particular? That's a large leap of faith.

And that's what belief in an unseen and unknowable persona or force is -- a leap of faith.

Religion has long had a problem with self-centeredness. Example: The teaching (prior to Galileo) of the main Christian church of the time that everything revolved around the earth, and the earth is the center of the universe. For Galileo to suggest that our planet revolves around the sun -- why that was heresy! The Bible "proved" otherwise. And here's the point -- you could see with YOUR OWN EYES how obvious it was that everything whirled around us.

This is the same argument being made for a God here. "You can sense it, you can just observe it." No you really can't. You can imagine it, you can deduce it. But contrary to what the website says you cannot PROVE it.

The same self-centeredness goes for a Christian-style deity. If he made the earth and universe, he had a purpose. And what was the purpose? It was all about mankind. And really specifically about mankind who believes in a first-century carpenter who was God manifest in the flesh, or the son of God -- or whatever you believe about him.

But we are not the center of the universe. We're tiny specks on a speck, on the edge of a spiraling galaxy with billions of stars.

Now as to order and complexity. Here's where it gets a little tricky for the believers. Any deity which would create the universe would itself or himself need to be infinitely complex. The principle that applies here is that nothing created or designed is more sophisticated than its own designer. So if the universe and human body is too sophisticated to have come about merely by accident, what about this god? Who or what created god? Did this god just pop up out of nowhere?

The response from theists is that you must assume the pre-existence of god, that he is a 'necessary being' and does not require a creator. But how can this be 'proved'? It cannot. They do not hold the existence of an infinitely complex creator to the same standards that they hold for the existence of a less complex universe and human body, i.e., that it must have a creator.

This shows how little knowledge we really have about origins, and shows that anybody (including a Christian website) claiming to "prove" the existence of God is overreaching.

caliber

you could see with YOUR OWN EYES how obvious it was that everything whirled around us.

All this shows is that whether you are a Christian or anything else obvious eye conclusions must

be updated !

Any deity which would create the universe would itself or himself need to be infinitely complex. The principle that applies here is that nothing created or designed is more sophisticated

We are very early in the learning curve of the universe... we don't understand time and space." The finite simply

cannot understand infinite"

This shows how little knowledge we really have about origins

I agree we have such little knowledge... that is the problem we have in making statements that something cannot be !

Caliber

inkling

Not hard to understand(as in WT speak "some may find what the FDS write hard to understand..".),just hard to swallow.

If you notice, I didn't ask which part of that explaination you didn't understand.

I asked which part you can't accept. (swallow would be also be a good word)

You didn't answer my question in your comment. An answer would require you to
point to a particular step in the theory and say "that right there, I don't think could
happen. Therefore the chain is broken and I don't swallow the theory."

After making a statment such as that, you would then have to explain WHY you
think that thing happening is implausible enough to reject.

(sheesh, this "debating" thing is starting to sound complcated and stuff)

[ink]

snowbird

(sheesh, this "debating" thing is starting to sound complcated and stuff)
[ink]

A la Sarah Palin. That should do it!

Sylvia

God or no God? I really don't know anymore.