1. If you can go back to the original language and determine that "Thou shall not steal" is literally what it says, then maybe I will accept that.

2. Moral codes teach you what is right and wrong, not good and evil. They are not the same thing.


I hope you realize Jesus didn't even found Christianity. Paul was the one who first started to split Jesus' teachings from Judaism.

Also, there is no proof that the Garden of Eden existed, so you cannot consider "Adam and Eve" to be Christians. I'm also relatively sure Noah and Abraham were not Christian.

If you truly believe in an omnipotent God, wouldn't the one God be all the gods? Which means that both Yahweh, Allah, Zeus and Shiva are the the same God? A TRULY omnipotent God would not be limited to one form, but would be EVERYWHERE and EVERYTHING, right? Or do you not believe in an omniptent God?

Hinduism is one of the oldest, if not the oldest religion in the world. I know its way more ancient than Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc... so I agree with your statement about the age of religious text and so forth.


Read my statement above.. I also do believe that trying to claim that certain individuals were a specific religion without being there is kind of short-sighted... Also, if by going by what you've said about Judaism, would that not make Noah, Abraham, etc... Jews?


This is the main reason I do not believe, or affiliate myself with Religion. It doesn't make sense logically, to put so much faith into something that was written by man and has been tampered with to push forth agendas, throughout the millennium. Even though the Vedas could have technically been written by man, it makes much more sense than The Holy War Book of Satan (The Holy Bible, and Satan used to describe the omnipotent Negativity of the Universe) does. I also don't believe in the fact that "God" is the only deity..You hear all this talk about the Father.....What about the Mother??!

It also doesn't make sense to me, to give up personal/spiritual responsibility from ones self, and giving it over to Jesus and/or God under the guise "they will save us!".....The only person who can save you, is yourself.....Anyways.

If I were to affiliate myself with a Religion, it would have to be Brahmanism or Hinduism. Because it makes the most sense logically to me, and ties in with most of my beliefs that have come forth from the expansion of my consciousness through various things the Christian Religion tends to deem 'bad'.

Brahman is absolute. The absolute "God"/Reality of the Universe which transcends all that is, and ever will be, but also is all that is, and ever will be. In my beliefs, I'd call Brahman, Creator Source.

Brahman gives forth Hiranyagarbha, which is the manifested cosmos. Hiranyagarbha could also be called Brahma; The Creator. In my beliefs, this would be our Creator.

Brahma is part of a 'triad' of three 'gods'; Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the maintainer or preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer.

Vishnu according to what I've researched over the years, is the 'supreme god'. I don't believe that there is an almighty, one, 'supreme god' but in my belief systems, we are all part of Creator and we go through multiple lives trying to gain all the knowledge of the Universe, and become one with Creator again.

So, yeah....Brahmanism is older than Hinduism, but Hinduism stems from Brahmanism...Which are both older than Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc....

If you believe that god protected his word, then you wouldn't need to worry about that. It isn't that it doesn't make logical sense, it's just that you don't want to believe in that, for whatever reason. Try not to confuse choices and beliefs with something being illogical or not.

Why not? If there were an omnipotent and infinite god, he would be well more than capable of saving you from anything. Personal and spiritual responsibility? What do you mean? You mean you don't like the idea of not having direct control over what happens to you?

Maybe you didn't read this, but it provides a viewpoint as to why only a single almighty god could exist. http://www.staredit.net/193633/

I believe that The Holy War Book of Satan is a book of fiction with historical accuracies, and that Christianity is has an extremely tainted and distorted view as to how the Universe really works. So, I don't believe that 'god' protected his word because to me the word of god is not The Holy Bible in my beliefs.

How is it not about how it doesn't make logical sense? Its illogical (to me at least) to think that Man (the term, not men) was created in god's image and that god is a 'man' and the father, when there are male and females on this planet and to disregard any possibility of there being a goddess or mother because a book says so.... Being raised Christian (the sect of Latter Day Saints) has given me insight as to how obscure the Christian religion is, and how hypocritical it is. Take a look at the Crusades. In The Holy War Book 'god' says: "Do unto others as you'd do unto me" (or something like that) so how can you logically defend Christianity when they were 'freeing the holy land' and in turn, killing god? Not literally but if you follow what The Holy War Book states, killing others is killing god because 'as you do unto others, you do unto me'...

Also..How am I confusing choices and beliefs? I have a choice to not believe Christianity. My choice being that because it doesn't make sense to me, logically. Looking at what Christianity preaches and looking at what they do, makes it illogical to me. My beliefs are that Christianity is a tainted religion used for control.. How am I confusing choices and beliefs? Is it because you don't agree with them or something? I'm just asking, because I don't see how one could claim someone is confusing choices and beliefs when their choice to not follow a religion stems from the belief that religion is a tool for control of weak-willed/minded individuals..Care to elaborate on why you claim I'm confusing these two things when my choice to not believe something, stems from my beliefs?

That's the thing. We DO have control over what happens to us. There isn't some 'predestined plan' that is put forth for us. In my opinion, that's a term used to put Jesus and God as the scapegoats to what you cause yourself and do to yourself through your choices and actions. Every action, has an equal and opposite reaction. To put it into Scientific terms if you must. Why can one not accept what they've done to themselves? Why is it unfathomable to think that maybe because when you were younger and a dickhead to someone that the negative energy put forth by you then, will come around and cause something to happen in your life that isn't positive? Why is it beyond belief to understand that if you're going to go physically hurt someone, you will be physically hurt in return? That's not 'god's will', that's Karma (if you believe in it, which I do). You do something for your parents and expect to be rewarded for it, right? What makes it so 'unreal' to think that maybe you can also be punished for doing something? I mean, your parents do punish you if you do something they consider 'bad', so why does it have to stop on the three dimensional mortal plane? Why can it not surpass human perception and cognition, and reach levels of Universal to where if you put out the 'bad', you'll receive bad in return?

You're right. I don't like the idea of making scapegoats out of Jesus and God for something I did to myself through Cause and Effect. Why should I throw away my personal/spiritual responsibilities and make Jesus and God scapegoats for what I did to myself? Just doesn't make sense to me at all, and seems like a very selfish and cowardly thing to do (much like suicide).

I just read through that and I agree on one thing:
That isn't fair at all. But, it doesn't happen that way. In my opinions and beliefs, we are all put here on this earth to do one thing: Gain knowledge to take back to Creator. We willingly come into this lifestream to learn things, to experience Creation. If you believe The Holy War Book we were 'created in gods image'. I believe that to be true. I mean, look at humanity. Look at all we've created. Look at the Map-Makers on this website. They create. I myself, create Art of all forms (Music and Literacy are the best ones I'm at). Others create technology. Others create buildings. Food, so on and so forth.

So by going by the definition of The Holy War Book, we are all in fact 'gods' for the sole reason that we were created in gods image. In my beliefs, we are all a fragment of creation (as is EVERYTHING in this Universe, including the Sun and the googleplex of other stars) sent forth by Creator, to experience his creation (The Universe) and bring it back to him.

One could go as far as to claim that our Sun is in fact God. Many ancient civilizations believed this. The Sumerians believed that 'gigantic' humanoids were their gods (which leads me to believe that the Sumerians had contact with humanoid life-forms not of this world.), the Egyptians believe that some of their 'gods' were Serpent-like humanoids, which also leads me to believe that the Egyptians were in contact with humanoid life-forms not of this world as well. I could go on all day about this, but the point I'm trying to get across is:

I believe in a Creator that stems from Creation Source (Brahma the Creator and Brahman the 'entity' [for the lack of better words] that transcends time and space itself, but also remains within time and space, in my Brahmanism/Hinduism example). I believe that God is also a child of this Creator, and that God is just at a higher understanding of Creation than we are at, and at a higher frequency. Hell, one could go as far as to say that the Sun IS God because of the life-giving rays it produces. I believe we are all here on this prison planet known as Earth to experience Human mortality and life, in the Creator's Creation. To experience all the different aspects of three dimensional life.

Not thinking about a belief is pretty easy to do for most people. A single thought, like in mathematics (a single refutation), destroys an absolute. Sometimes the logical way of the mind asks Why, even though it knows that the answer isn't logical. What do we do as emotional human beings? Keep the belief and stop asking questions.

I remember in psychology learning about religion being a reinforced habit as a child (depending on the circumstances). Children repeat favorable actions, in this case, many children repeat religious actions. Some being volunteering themselves to be "saved", or "baptized". I remember how proud my grandparents were when I told them that I had asked to be saved. Haha, its kind of funny. I am an atheist but I have been saved. So... is it like insurance? If he does exist, i am still good? I mean, i have the policy signed

This is in response to all the "I'm an agnostic because you can't prove it either way" going around in here.



So are you all saying that you would put yourselves at 4 on that scale?

When someone like myself says they are athiests, we're technically agnostics in theory, but in practice we are basically athiests. (sixes)

I'll try. Here is what I will respond to to elaborate:
Well you assume here that books like the bible weren't protected by an almighty God, so that human agenda and bias wouldn't distort the original message. Then you called believing in a book of that sort illogical. I meant don't mix, don't muddle, don't confuse the meanings of "I think it is illogical", and "It is illogical". I didn't mean to say that you yourself were in confusion, but that you weren't making a necessary distinction. It is very different to say that something is illogical, and to say that you think something is illogical. One is making a claim to a fact, while the other is making a claim to an opinion.

Nope, that's not it at all.

I don't believe I ever said that this sort of thing was unfathomable; this is irrelevant when directed at me alone.

As for Karma, there are some arguments that go against Karma itself. Here are a few of them: Karma itself is a belief in which consolidates the idea that people can get away with wrong-doings, or go unrewarded for good practice. Although, if Karma were true, then that would mean that every single bad thing that happens to anyone is a direct result of their own choices made in free will. If this is true, then that means that I could justify myself in not helping others, because others wouldn't be in need of help if they didn't deserve the situation they were in. Similarly, I could abuse the system, and help others out of their troubles expecting someone to do the same in return to me.

Another argument is that a belief in Karma only sets the believer in a state of awareness, in which they notice things that happen to them and apply Karma as the purpose behind those things. For example, if I bump someone in the hallway rather hard and rudely, and I am expecting something equally bad to happen to me sometime soon, then the next time something unfortunate happens to me I will notice and apply what I believe to be the purpose behind that action; it will make things more noticeable when they happen to you.

I don't mean to try to prove you wrong about your belief in Karma, I just want you to read what I said above, and consider those points.

It may seem like something selfish to do, but you have to base that judgement call on what you believe will happen to you in the afterlife, if you choose to believe in an afterlife. It's very safe to assume that you have never experienced the afterlife, and as such don't have anything to base your beliefs and judgement calls, like this one, off of. You may think now that wouldn't want to take Jesus as a way free from your wrong-doings, but you don't know exactly how harsh punishments would be. In order to make the claims with some solidity, you would have to know what heaven is like, and what hell is like, and I don't think you know what either of those places are like.

Allright, I understand, but you can't pass off pure opinions about religions as a solid argument. Merely asserting your beliefs as true without any sort of backing besides "because I believe it so" is just disruptive. I know that you were just explaining things in your response, but you really do need to stop. Your statement in bold is a good example. You needed to have said "But I don't believe it happened that way.", instead of saying what you did. Again, there is a difference between making claims to facts and making claims to beliefs, and you need to be clear on whether you are making claims to facts or beliefs.

That is very interesting, and I don't mean to say that you are automatically wrong, but this quote above does violate my earlier post that I linked to. In order for a god, in my opinion, to be worthy of my worship, he would have to be perfect and infinite. I don't believe that any human is perfect, so I don't believe that any human is a god. Also, if two (or more) perfect and infinite gods were to exist and be distinguishable, one would have to be different from the other. In order for a difference to be noticeable, at least one of them would have to be lacking in some way. If one of them is lacking in some way, then it isn't perfect, and therefore, in my opinion, not worthy of my worship. For these reasons, I don't believe that any belief that claims to the existence of more than one god is true. This is just something that I wanted you to think about, and again, I didn't say this to try to disprove your beliefs or show you to be wrong.

@CAFG
I'd label myself as a 3.

I am not sure if there is a 'higher power' or a 'god'. I've never had any proof of there ever being one, so what makes you all believe there is one? What is the main purpose of this thread anyways, to bicker about who is right, and who is wrong because of religious beliefs?

I feel like I'm in Church again

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 2 2010, 5:57 pm by Draven.

What are you talking about its called an argument. Smarter humans tend to do this to expand their own knowledge and beliefs. Either to be convinced to believe in something different or strengthen your own beliefs.

Example: At this point of my life I don't know who to believe in or what. I do feel like their is something out there I am just not sure of what.
My proof= I actually had a "Profit of god" speak into my life. She actually spoke into my life 100 percent. I do know people have their tricks, thus the reason I don't know what to believe in.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Feb 3 2010, 3:08 pm by Ashamed.

Hmmm yeh Richard Dawkins makes a good point on agnosticism, which I am myself; but I will clarify some things he did not articulate.

Agnosticism (for me) is not about belief, it's about knowledge. Since we can neither prove/disprove God - saying "i know* God exists" or "i know* God doesn't exist" is just flat out lying.
For me, its nothing to do with probability at all, as Dawkins said - its illogical to say there's a 50% chance just coz we can't prove or disprove - we have no empirical evidence to make guesses on the probability of God.

So reiteration, knowledge and belief - they are on a different scale. Agnostics are often incorrectly regarded as "fence-sitters", this is not true. How can one not have a belief either way? You either believe in God or you do not believe in God, there can be no middle ground. What agnosticism says is that these beliefs can't be proven and people should not try and fight either way with them.

I am a temporal agnostic, meaning I believe that we can't prove or disprove God now; but perhaps sometimes in the future we will be able to, when we gain new technology or whatever.
However, when it comes to RELIGION, the concept of doing all this stuff on something we can't prove or disprove; I'd have to say I'm a very strong athiest. We can't go around acting on beliefs we can't prove or disprove.

Define: Agnosticism

Sure we can. Whenever a belief is reasonably accurate, or the margin of error is reasonably low, it becomes reasonable for one to subscribe to said belief. There are plenty of examples. Just because something isn't proven or disproven doesn't make believing in the belief itself illogical or irrational.

I haven't read this whole topic, because such a discussion is pointless to argue to me since neither side has compelling evidence towards any belief. However, I will point out that Science does not prove or disprove the existence of a god, however string theory and advanced physics do point to facts that could mean the existence of a god. Just in case there's any: "No, god doesn't exist because science says so." in here that I see all of the time on the internet.

Further explain how string theory and advance physics point to the existence of god(s). It is an odd statement especially after saying "science does not prove or disprove the existence..."

If I understand string theory enough, there is the possibility of multiple universes with each their own God(s)...

Or an omnipotent god that encompasses all universes.
But that is just a speculation. Now, you can choose what you want to believe.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 16 2010, 11:15 am by BeDazed.

We cannot prove God exists with our current technology.
We can only infer he exists by attributing the things we see around us as the work of a divine being.

Since we can't prove it, there is no real need to ask the question, because it has no relevance. Do we ask ourselves if the Pink Unicorn exists, or the Flying Sphagetti Monster? No.
Are we asking it because we fear eternity in Hell?
We do not know if hell exists, or if God will send us there. We have been told we know by people we don't know; and that doesn't mean jack shit.

Ultimately, until we find evidence, the question of the existence of God is of little relevance.

/lock

Do you classify proof of God at the same level of importance as proof of the spaghetti monster?

God is very relevant, and much more important than any unicorns. I can't prove that stars are burning balls of gas, but does that mean that others shouldn't believe it, and look for evidence of it? Are you saying that if something is unproveable, it is irrelevant?

Bad example. Stars being burning balls of gas is provable. I get your point, though.

First, there's a matter of technicality. Jack simply might not be capable of proving it, in which case he is right. If we extend the idea to mean humanity is incapable of proving it, I would still agree on the grounds that our current technology is not sufficiently advanced to extract samples of these stars to compare with gases we find on earth. The current theory that stars consist of giant nuclear balls of radiating gas rests on the data we have gathered from light emitted by the stars, which we compare to the data we have on light emitted by earthly materials, which would seem to imply what the stars are made of.

There are however, a number of ceterus paribus assumptions made during these comparisons, which include simple things like "these stars must only consist of materials we have on earth" and "the materials inside the stars will obey the same laws we have here on earth" and probably a few minor other ones. It is extremely likely that the stars are simply made of what we think they are made of, but it's also possible that at such high temperatures and gravitational pressures there are effects on the material unlike anything we have ever seen on earth, and they are not in fact made of the gasses we believe they are made of. So until we rip off a chunk of star and bring it back and find out what it's made of, I would hesitate to call such a thing "provable." "Likely" is another entity entirely.


As for the relevance of this to God, consider the similarities between God and a star. Both are so immensly different from ourselves that we have no means to truly grasp them at the moment. Sure, we can see the light from a star, but is that really "grasping" all the intricacies of it? If God exists, then is simply watching an act of kindness or goodness truly grasping "God"? There are other, more earthly reasons for why God is relevant, however. Consider all of human civilization, from the present back 5000 years or so and the effect of religion and God on humanity is staggering. Wars, peace, charity, hope, and even the government of the United States were founded on this idea of God. I do not think its relevance should be doubted so greatly.


Your contempt for our thoughts and arrogance in posting such a thing is unbecoming to this forum.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 21 2010, 9:00 am by Vrael.

Finding evidence is not the only way of knowing something. If finding evidence, aka the scientific theory, were the only means of knowing, then the only means of knowing that the scientific theory were valid would be by validation via the scientific theory. How about once you find evidence that finding evidence can give you reasonable proof on a particular matter, in order to make a viable decision, you can continue to post the same response while ignoring others' retorts to your arrogant remarks.

Ultimately, until we find evidence, the question of the validity of your statements is of little relevance.