Which God do you love?

Nature.

I AM

I pray at the altar of rational thought.

God. There can be only one.

None.

I am, however, in awe of the universe, nature, the human condition, puppies, and homemade chocolate chip cookies fairly often.

Me.

There is only one God.

All the rest are idols, celestial bodies and such.

My understanding is that God is not a being. I believe a transcendent creative force is responsible for the continuing evolution of the universe and life. That force is not conscious though it could be consciousness itself. The human instinct to survive coupled with sentience seeking a sense of security created concepts of one or more deities, the reflection of the healthy childhood experience of being protected, nurtured and taught by seemingly powerful and all-knowing others.

I don’t care what they may say
I don’t care what they may do
I don’t care what they may say
Jesus is just alright, oh yeah
Jesus is just alright with me

-The Doobie Brothers

There is no “God” to love.

The Spirit within each thing, person, being, the spark of the cosmic creation.

I don’t believe or follow any God.

If a person believes or follows a God and that helps them be centered, happy, loving, giving, and all other nice things that help build a good society and bring individual peace and happiness, then I am all for that God they believe in.

Rational thought with a heavy dose of empathy and compassion

My God’s better than your God
My God’s better than yours.

My God’s better so… oh, wait, that was Ken-L Ration dog food.
That’s for all you rational types.

$
All bow down.

I’m pan-theistic.

Nature (various forms), Love, the universe, Isis, Bastet, Heimdal, Odin, Freya, Hella, the Norns, Athena, other benevolent people and spirits and gods.

Even the Christian trinity, etc, though I interpret those as metaphors for Love, the universe, and spirits, as I believe the historical person represented in the Bible by Jesus (and other early and later and modern Christians) did too.

(Not $ nor Republican Jesus nor Mormon Space Jesus nor homophobic evangelical Jeesus though.)

Physics. It explains everything.

@Dutchess_III Wish that was the case. We are not even to how and can’t even comprehend “why” if there is such a thing at all.

I worship America’s true god – Mammon.

I never think in terms of a god i count on myself, my friends, some of my relaives and my own strong sense of morality.

Real answer, though: Thor.
Went through some pretty rough times.
His brother died, his home blew up, half his people got dusted, had to kill his sister, Natalie Portman broke up with him, became a depressed, fat alcoholic with PTSD after killing Thanos did nothing, but still finally found himself in the end, going on an adventure with the Asgardians of the Galaxy.

@Dutchess_III I’m a big fan of physics and science in general. But physics doesn’t explain everything.

It’s humankind’s attempt to translate what nature does into patterns that are simple enough for our dinky human minds to comprehend.

Same thing can be said of God. Personally, I think science is the better translation.

All religions are interesting, yet none are worshiped.

Not sure if there is even one. But I will go loving that one God who accomplishes things not by being cruel but by being compassionate.

Can you give me an example of something physics doesn’t explain @raum?

The existence/non-existence of God has no impact on what I do. There are no consequences, so by definition it is inconsequential, and things that are inconsequential are not worth thinking about.

Physics is ever-evolving. There are always unsolved problems

And when they find answers to those, they will also find new questions.

Well sure. But I was looking for things that humans invented gods to explain. I don’t think anyone uses God to explain string theory so I wasn’t going that deep. Sorry I didn’t make myself clear.

Not wanting to speak for her, but I believe that @Dutchess_lll is probably referring to the “God of the Gaps” idea.

Never heard if it but sounds right somehow. Is “gap” referring to our original gap in knowledge?

I just looked it up. Yes that’s what it means.

I have no feeling at all for an insubstantial being.

@stanleybmanly answer was the most honest one.

Well…we have one side that says God disproves science. Another side that says science disproves God. And a third side that says the gaps in scientific knowledge proves the existence of God.

Can’t say I agree with any of them really.

Nature exists whether we understand it or not. Science is one way of codifying our understanding of Nature. But gravity existed before we gave it a name.

But that also doesn’t mean that if you don’t know why an apple falls to the ground, that it must be because of God.

I’m still waiting to pledge.
I’ll worship whatever god should take away my pain and let me again live my life.
I hope she comes along soon.

I didn’t see any where that suggested God disproves science, @raum. Can you link me to it?

I am an atheist…

@Dutchess_III Are you referring to God of the Gaps?

So many gods and so little time, I could love them all.

But nothink too kingy, I’d prefer a nice anthropocentrically friendly being.

Something akin to who the sisters of perpetual indulgence adore, without any of the genuflection.

@raum, I had not heard of it until just a bit ago but yes. That is what I was referring to but didn’t know it.

God of the Gaps is a theological theory. Basically says that science doesn’t disprove God. But rather because there will always be unanswered questions in science, actually supports the idea of God. That God exists within the gaps that science cannot fill.

Like God is the asymptote.
And science is the curve.

Yes. I looked it up @raum. I was there, as a born again Christian when religion realized “If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em.” So they started publishing pseudo scientific written stuff to uphold their theory of God like “God of the Gaps.”

Most days I feel like there is an all-powerful benevolent force that has produced the circumstances of our existence. I also recognize that this belief cannot be justified with reason.

My feeling is that if there’s is some Great Creator who constructed the Universe and everything in in and is not bound to its physical laws. If such an entity exists then it is far above taking any vested interest in this planet particularly, and gives no thought nor concern to the pitiful creatures on this rock. And it certainly takes no notice of, nor care for our pathetic prayers, devotions, petitions or grievances. We are of no more importance to it than an individual speck of dust on a dirt road is to us.

I ask again, @raum, what gaps are there that science can not fill? To be more specific this time, I’m asking about those things that humans see, feel and hear, but couldn’t / can’t explain, so they invented gods to explain them, like eclipse. I’m not asking for an explanation for the lofty scientific questions such as black holes and the big bang. Those higher questions played no role in the invention of gods.

Given enough time, science can fill all of the gaps, I believe.
Less that 100 tears ago, Albert Einstein thought the Milky Way galaxy was the whole of the universe, and we know now that the universe contains over a billion galaxies. What will science discover tomorrow?

@Dutchess_III ”...what gaps are there that science can not fill?”

Consciousness, free will, abiogenesis, origin of the laws of physics all come to mind.

The big one for me is the reason for existence itself. I can appreciate that once the stuff is “here” science can account for the workings and organization of most of it, with plenty remaining to be catalogued

Consciousness emerges from the electrochemical operations of the brain.

Free will is just a concept. Every animal has “free will.”

Abiogenesis functions through the specialized chemistry of carbon and water and builds largely upon four key families of chemicals: lipids (fatty cell walls), carbohydrates (sugars, cellulose), amino acids (protein metabolism), and nucleic acids (self-replicating DNA and RNA). “The classic 1952 Miller–Urey experiment and similar research demonstrated that most amino acids, the chemical constituents of the proteins used in all living organisms, can be synthesized from inorganic compounds under conditions intended to replicate those of the early Earth. ”

The laws of physics are just words written by men to describe what’s going on. For example, Newton’s 1st law is “An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an equal and opposite force.” That’s just physics. In the absence of gravity it will just keep on truckin’.

Why does there have to be a reason for the existence of life? Is there a reason for the existence of an ant or a worm or a bacteria?

@Dutchess_III “Consciousness emerges from the electrochemical operations of the brain.”

That’s not an answer. It is my understanding that there has never been an actual scientific proposal for how this mechanism works in even simple organisms.

“Free will is just a concept.”

Science cannot explain how this is possible. It appears to violate causation and scientific determinism.

_“Abiogenesis functions through the…”

There has never been a study that can synthesize a cell from macromolecule constituents. This is a current gap in Scientific understanding. To make an analogy, the Miller-Urey experiment showed how you could get bricks from mud, but nobody has shown how you can get a castle from the bricks. The current theory is “it just happens eventually.” That may very well be what truly happens, but it’s still just an unsupported hypothesis until it can be demonstrated in controlled, repeatable circumstances.

“The laws of physics are just words written by men to describe what’s going on.”

The “what’s going on” is the part I’m talking about, not the textual description. The big bang behaves according to rules, but those rules come from somewhere, right?

It’s an interaction between gravity, atoms, electricity and chemicals, all of which are naturally occurring.
Magic does not account for this.

@Dutchess_III I’m unclear about what (and why) you’re asking me.

Are you asking me to clarify some point? Or are you asking me to defend a theory I don’t agree with?

I’m not really sure which direction you’re trying to take this.

@gorillapaws and I were discussing it most recently.
This is the last thing I responded to you about.

Yes, I got that. Still don’t get what your intent is though.

Well, I asked for an example of a gap that science can not fill. You responded with this link to very deep, (as of yet) unsolved science problems. When gods were invented to explain things, they didn’t have the faintest glimmer of that kind of science. They invented gods to explain volcanoes and earthquakes and eclipses.
So what I was asking for were gaps in the every day things around us, that we can see or hear or feel or touch, that science can’t fill.

“Consciousness emerges from the electrochemical operations of the brain.
Free will is just a concept. Every animal has “free will.””

PROVE IT

Read this.
“The functions of the two hemispheres are to a great extent different: whereas the left hemisphere is responsible for speech and abstract thinking in most people.” Free will is an abstract thought and so is the concept of “consciousness.” Philosophy is an abstract concept.

And this
“Although a memory begins with perception, it is encoded and stored using the language of electricity and chemicals. Here’s how it works: Nerve cells connect with other cells at a point called a synapse. All the action in your brain occurs at these synapses, where electrical pulses carrying messages leap across gaps between cells.”

@Dutchess_III You’ve simply described the mechanism that carry messages, conspicuously absent is how messages moving around produces consciousness…

@gorillapaws I regret that I have but one great answer to give for that answer.

There must always be gaps. You can always ask why for whatever the current fundamental laws are. The God of the Gaps has been shrinking in the last few hundred years. Before Newton, he moved the planets. Before Darwin, he handcrafted each species. Even if the current gaps can’t be closed, the work done by science is quite impressive.

@Dutchess_III You can’t prove it, it’s unknown at the moment. You’re describing how a vehicle operates without taking the driver onto consideration.
There is no biological need for consciousness at all. Let that sink in for a bit.

There is no “biological need” for anything beyond single cellular life.

Sure there is, it’s advantageous to team up.

advantage=/=need.

It is also advantageous to have consciousness,

Not to mention that babies fail the mirror test, they are therefore not conscious at that point, that comes later as the brain develops, ergo consciousness is necessarily a result of neural complexity.
There are also animals that pass the mirror test, so they are conscious, too.
Which happens to also fall along the line of increased intelligence.
So clearly there is material connection.

And sentience?

But, with all of these sentient and conscious animals, these miracles of God, humans are the only ones who go to heaven or hell. Other animals just…. blink out.

No pets or livestock in hell?

IDK. I just asked a question.

Perhaps, depending on our behavior, hell is being forced to return for tours as pets or livestock with abuse meted out in proportion to our mistreatment of our fellow people (and animals?) when we held the whip.

Are you saying that god created the modern industrial animal farming as punishment?
Someone must have been naughty in their former life

What would trump come back as?

Perhaps he is actually being punished. I could actually be convinced that he is but a dumb animal with a vindictive streak. He’s come back as a pig.

But…pigs are smart.

I would not call current AI sentient or conscious but it can do all those advantageous things. Neither are really that necessary to keep this colony of cells alive.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because something is not proven yet does not mean that it will not be proven.

@LostInParadise “The God of the Gaps has been shrinking in the last few hundred years.”

I completely agree. I was simply responding to @Dutchess_III‘s point that there are gaps that Science hasn’t filled that have been around for thousands of years. It may be the case that we will eventually fill them with Science, or it could be that the mysteries elude our best efforts. Just because we don’t know the answer doesn’t mean it was God. That said, as long as there are gaps, there will be people who think God might live in them.

@ARE_you_kidding_me , It is the ones with consciousness who are programming those that are without it. That setup is not going to change until robots acquire consciousness. As things currently stand, robots are completely dependent on humans.

@Caravanfan GA, exactly.
@LostInParadise I’m not being that specific. There is no sentience required for creatures to go on living and reproducing. They could be pure motorized instinct and raw calculation. Sentience is not needed for that.

But sentience provides an advantage, which allows humans to dominate the surface of the earth.

What if all the humans who don’t believe animals have consciousness or sentience, have an afterlife experience without animals?

Some people used to talk that way about “inferior races” of humans, and of women…

What people believe is not necessarily what their faith teaches.

The Bible describes souls, spirit, life, people, and animals very differently than what is frequently preached.

All living creatures ARE souls (Neshama). Adam was endowed with a spirit or breath of life called a Nefesh—that made him a living soul, or Neshama.

^And a fable…. One that defines how ridiculous, most religious stories/texts/whatever are…

@MrGrimm888 I wouldn’t agree. It seems to me that such religious stories are ways of expressing aspects of the human experience, and useful (when not just ridiculed and dismissed) wisdom, insights, traditions about them, etc.

The materialist perspective that spiritual traditions are merely inferior (to science) attempts to explain things by less knowledgeable cultures, seems to me a far greater mistake and misunderstanding, than the misunderstanding they incorrectly imagine is what the fullness of spiritual traditions are.

I have noticed that @MrGrimm888 acts with extreme hostility whenever a comment regarding God or religion is posted.

The Bible doesn’t have much supernatural or fairy-tale or magical elements. No prayers for things that magically happen. God works through history foremost. As for science, since the middle ages through quantum physics, most have been Christian or Jewish.

Are you serious? The Old Testament is the most absurd concoction of fantastic nonsense in the history of publishing!! A rational God would be embarrassed to have His name in any way associated with the thing!

I guess he does not consider a making a woman from a rib, a talking snake, a global flood, countless wild animals just walking up to a boat, standing in line, a talking burning bush, fire and brimstone, people turning to salt, people suddenly all speaking different languages, frogs falling from the skies, rivers turning to blood, the firstborns to all die instantly, someone parting a sea, food to magically appear in a desert, angels appearing to “virgins”, people walking on water, multiplying fish willy nilly, turning water into wine, and rising from the dead after 3 days to be in any way magical.

Really, this is all magic by definition.

@ragingloli Far more religions with various gods are just as ‘magical’. It is not at all confined to the Christian bible. The Quran for example.

Yes and they too are subject to the same criticisms. It’s the “magic” which renders all the problems, and those problems are considerable.

@Yellowdog , 93% of the National Academy of the Sciences are atheists. As the article points out, the NAS members are a small minority of scientists. But they are considered an elite group. According to this article, in 2016, 190 members out of 2350 were Nobel Prize winners. That is a lot of Nobel prizes from a relatively small number of members.

@stanleybmanly Science was considered magic, too. We are still evolving and may still not understand everything we DON’T know. I think there’s a need for dreamers and scientists, don’t you?

“the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.”

And the warm bag of foreskins @ragingloli. Don’t forget the foreskins

I didn’t get the feeling that @MrGrimm888 was “hostile.” He was simply dismissive of the mythology, just as most people are dismissive of Greek mythology…even though there are striking parallels in Greek mythology and Christianity, such as gods impregnating mortal women and fun stuff like that.

@KNOWITALL you turn a pretty good phrase yourself. Who can turn away dreamers particularly if you’re going to ally them with scientists. Are you telling me these dreamers are the products of faith?

There is definitely a need for DREAMers and scientists.

Science was / is only considered magic by people who didn’t understand it or who can’t grasp the concepts.
I think it’s safe to say that all scientists are dreamers, but dreamers who look for answers.

@stanleybmanly Perhaps. Without faith and hope (two main tenets of religion), why would dreamers or scientists bother reaching for the impossible, the non-existent, the formulas and patterns that created our world.

That’s why the Big Bang theory never seemed to conflict with religion for me, as we’ve discussed before. The utter science of life on earth, points to more than random chance, imo.

Why would they bother? Curiosity. Plain and simple.
And they don’t reach for something they know is non existent. They only reach for things that they have good reason to believe actually exists. It just needs to be found.

@KNOWITALL See that’s where things go astray. I don’t view faith as an inspiration for curiosity and wonder, but rather the primary suppressant of those very goals in the required preservation of rigid dogma.

It is the other way around. Curiosity gave rise to “faith.” “How did we get here? Why are we here? Why does the sun rise and set? What is the moon? Why does the sun get blacked out sometimes? What is this plague of freaking GRASSHOPPERS AND WHERE DID THEY COME FROM, KAREN!!??”

There may very well be a Goddess I desire. Love though? Meh.

@stanleybmanly We’re all different though and I would posit that what motivates you probably doesn’t motivate me, based on the differences in our outlook and pov’s on different issues/ items as we’ve found out here.

Maybe reaching for the stars is a spiritual/ holy thing to me, while it’s science or discovery to you. The point is, we’re both looking. :)

@Yellowdog is,at least partially correct, when he says that I am hostile towards religion. However, in the case of my last post, it was not intended as hostility. Those who know me, know I can get MUCH nastier about religion, if I am pushed.

In addition. I treat ALL organized religion, with the same disdain. Not just Christianity… So don’t feel singled out.

The one True God, the God of Abraham.

What about ”—Isaac and Jacob”?

Yeah Him too.

I love the God of Abraham and of Billigraham

Allahu Akbar.

I always wondered how that was spelled. Thanks @ragingloli

Loli. Doesn’t that mean “God is good, ” or something like that?

I think it’s “All praise to Allah” or something.

@Dutchess_lll is correct. It is what Muslims exclaim before killing someone or committing a terrorist act, in the name of Allah.

A Martyr in most religions is someone who dies for their faith. In Islam, it is someone who dies in the act of killing others, for the glory of Allah.

That is the worst aspect.of religion, killing others in the name of [insert whatever god’s name here.]

“Deus vult!”

Shouldn’t the phrase “religious war” be considered a self-contradiction? All religions say that killing is wrong. The Bible, for example, has Thou shalt not kill is one of the Ten Commandments.

You certainly have a right, maybe even an obligation, to try to convince others as to the superiority of your beliefs, but if they resist your preaching then it is their loss. You did your best. You can feel good about having found the one true way while others will necessarily suffer for their errancy. What purpose is served by trying to kill them?

The Goddess of Motorcycles.

I usually keep my religious beliefs to myself. Somebody usually tries to make trouble and talk shit.

Wise decision, @RabidWolf. Especially in this group.

Actually, @YellowDog “Allahu Akbar is a phrase meaning ‘God is most great’, used by Muslims in prayers and as a general declaration of faith or thanksgiving.” They say it to each other as a greeting or as a form of saying good bye. It’s not only used before they slaughter people.

It’s pretty much the same thing as Christians saying “Praise Jesus!”