Is god real?
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Zachy (
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May 20th, 2009
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109 Answers
Pray sincerely in Jesus name to God each day for one week as an ‘experiment’ if nothing else. What have you to lose?
@Crusader
Do the same to Thor. What have you to lose?
Nietzsche answered this question a long time ago.
Define your terms please.
@Ivan
The Norse pantheon is very appealing to me, I must admit. Thor, in particular facinated me as a youth, with his Mjolnir in comic books, and, later, as the son of Odin, the All-Father, and brother of Baldur and Loki.
I believe they may represent a powerful angelic/demonic family, respectively capable of rendering a form of blessing(s), yet the practitioners of such a faith continued with human sacrifice long after most others ceased doing so…And, though Baldur was the God of Beauty and Love, it was not a completely selfless Love. Jesus was like Thor and Baldur and Loki combined—their best qualities a warrior/priest/rogue champion, (needed to be a rogue to outwit the devil while spending the 3 days,...centuries equivilant… in the Abyss prior to ressurection.)
Clever as the snake and gentle as the dove. And Not requiring in His name sacrifice of members to other members, or sacrifice of non-believers by members-incidents of the contrary are Mans/demons co-opting of Christ messege from God. So, while appealing superficially, and vicerally engaging, and important to acknowledge, the blessings of such Nordic worship do have consequences…
If he is really god, then he is.
@Crusader what i have to lose is one day per week wasted on useless prayer.
1 day per week, 52 weeks per year and ca. 75 years of life amounts to 3900 days or ca. 10.5 years.
and then i might also be worshipping the wrong of the 2500 known gods in human history. which the real one might not be very fond of.
So god exists because there’s no evidence to say he doesn’t exist?
That’s WMD in Iraq logic right there.
IF there is a ‘Supreme Being’ of some sort, this ‘Being’ certainly bears no similarity to the “God” of the Christian Bible or the Muslim Koran, a “God” which does NOT exist. Both the Christian Bible & the Muslim Koran are simply a collection of myths written for the intent of controlling human beings thru fear of ending up in hell.
When will these questions die? Seriously.
@asmonet
The question of God dies when people stop seeking answers. Why even post on the thread unless you are threatened by the messege? The opposite of Love is not Hate, but complete indifference, what arethe answers you are seeking here?
What is it you fear asmonet? Their is forgiveness for true repentance, in Jesus name, though pride is a mighty obstacle indeed…
Why do people keep asking questions in the answers? Why ask a question if the answer(s) contain questions?
@Steven0512- Wasn’t that a question? Actually, wasn’t that two questions?
@Steven0512 Yes, why is that? Why answer with a comment that has one or two questions in it? Or three questions even?
@Crusader: My dear, I left the Catholic Church years ago. I knew it to be irrelevant to my life and my actions by the time I was eleven. There is no saving me, and I’m much better off this way. Pray for me, damn me, do whatever you like – it changes nothing. I’ll be a heathen until the very end and I’m tickled pink about it.
And the way to convert others to your faith is through living your life and leading by example, not mild interrogations, declarations of your beliefs and accusations of ‘sin’.
Proud I may be, but I have no plans to change.
…when i look out up into the night’s sky, i see God’s face- spirit and body as one- just like me…
@asmonet- not too long ago i asked a fellow jogger the question, “are you following me?” to which she replied, “yeah!”
WOW! i liked it…
…tell me more about seVen and Crusader…
@Linda_Owl- there is only One God…multi-faceted, multi-manifolded, eternal…
Yes, God exists. The God of the New Testament. The God of the Old. He is real.
hides behind shrubbery with a shotgun waiting for Fyrius
@BookReader: Do a search. You’ll find everything you need to know.
Even as a very firm believer in evolution and science and the big bang and all that jazz…. I have a hard time believing/accepting that there isn’t some higher power behind it all.
Seriously, dude? The search feature is the fricking Caspian Sea. Take a gulp, or five million. Or you know, click the links I provided and stop the complaining that I left you with nothing.
@westy81585
Well, the universe doesn’t really care about what we find easy or difficult to accept. The best we can do is go by the evidence. Currently there isn’t any evidence for the existence of any gods.
@Ivan Well granted….. that’s why they call it faith….. By the same token there’s no evidence saying a god doesn’t exist.
@Ivan
You and me should have everybody clear the room and show em’ how it’s really done…:)
@westy81585
And what is the benefit of faith, actually? Of course there isn’t evidence that God doesn’t exist. There isn’t evidence that unicorns don’t exist. It is up to the person making the claim to back it up with evidence. It is not up to everyone else to find evidence that their claim is not true.
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies
Haha! Indeed.
@westy81585 There may be no evidence that God doesn’t exist, but it would be wrong to assume that each explanation is of equal worth. The onus is on you to show why he does, not others to show why he doesnt
@Ivan The benefit of faith is whatever you make it. If you don’t need it, then so be it. But lots of people do need/want it. Besides, if you want to play this game….. ok we’ll assume that no god had any part in creating the Universe and whatnot, no god initiated the big bang…... So what did then mr smarty pants :) . (I believe you’ll find no evidence of anything).
@westy81585
Woah dude… no name calling. Jesus doesn’t approve of that. Argue your point from a stance of love, or mock the god you assume to follow.
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@brettvdb I think the onus is on everyone to care or not care as they see fit. I don’t make it my mission to prove or disprove the existence of god to anyone (in fact if you wanna be literal, I consider myself agnostic). My point is simply that I find it hard to believe that all of the amazing things of our universe were completely of chance, and since no evidence exists saying otherwise, i’m gonna go ahead and believe that. You feel free to continue believing what you do.
@BookReader
YO! Friends in hi places… I actually have one!
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@westy81585
Currently we don’t know how the universe was initially created. However, simply saying that “God did it” is not an acceptable answer. That answer explains nothing and merely brings up even more questions that need to be explained. Any possible explanation must be supported by evidence, so it is not logical to posit a solution simply because it is the only one we can think of or because it’s the one we want to be true.
But I can say this: Man has used gods to explain just about everything they didn’t understand. Eventually, as we learn more and more about the natural universe, we explain things with natural phenomena, not supernatural beings. Why should we believe that this trend should stop with the beginning of the universe?
“since no evidence exists saying otherwise, i’m gonna go ahead and believe that.”
But that isn’t a logical conclusion. You can believe what you wish, but that belief isn’t well founded. You need positive evidence to support your beliefs. You can’t just believe whatever you find convenient or satisfactory. Why not say that leprechauns created the universe? That would be equally as valid. How about a Flying Spaghetti Monster? As soon as you open yourself up to the notion of choosing one particular supernatural entity and calling it the creator of the universe, you open yourself to all possible solutions.
All Science wants is one free miracle. They call it the Singularity (i.e. WTF).
I give it another name… God
Who’s miracle worker is to be trusted most?
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Absolutely (in every sense of the word)
@Ivan You just don’t get what I’m saying man. I believe that some higher power (whether it be leprechauns, god, spaghetti monster, cows, whatever) created the universe through the methods we know (via science) that it came to be. It’s not provable (or disprovable)... that’s why they call it faith.
I don’t have to prove it, I don’t have to justify to you or anyone. It doesn’t have to be based on sound scientific reasoning. I believe that some higher power is behind the Universe and the existence of life…. and there’s really no way to prove one way or the other.
Even as a person about to graduate college with a Chemistry degree, I can tell you that science does not have the answers to everything.
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Really? Still with the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
That’s so 2005.
@Ivan One thing I think you have to remember (and it’s a point every science professor will try to instill in your head from day one)... is that Science/chemistry/physics/etc are the answer to HOW… not the answer to WHY.
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@westy81585
No, you don’t have to base your beliefs on sound scientific reasoning. But if you want them to be viable, you should. You can believe whatever you want, but we are not talking about who has the right to believe what. We are talking about determining what is true. Simply believing in some random supernatural force is not a viable method of determining what is true.
And of course science does not have the answers to everything. No one claims that. Science’s limitations are not justification for believing in unscientific things.
@The_Compassionate_Heretic
Fine, how about the Invisible Pink Unicorn?
@westy81585
In science, “why” and “how” are the same question. There is no ultimate meaning for why things happen. The apple falls because of gravity. That is both “how” and “why.”
@Ivan They are most definitely not the same thing my friend…. I promise you that… I have lost points on labs, tests, and homework assignments for assuming/saying they were the same thing. Why and how are two VERY different things.
Your very example of gravity doesn’t answer why…. In fact we don’t know WHY things have gravity. But ok, the how would be that gravity pulls things towards one another based on their mass…... but why? Why do things pull one another towards themselves… and for that matter, how did it come to be that those things that make them pull towards one another, started to pull towards one another?
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I can tell you HOW they are inert…. not why.
The how is because they have full stable orbitals/octets and no charges, so they don’t need/want to interact with other molecules/elements.
But that doesn’t answer the why of how did an element get set up with so many orbitals. Why is 8 electrons the “stable” number? Why not 6? We have no answer to that.
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@westy81585
We might not have an answer to that yet. But science will eventually answer all of those questions. What seems like an unanswerable philosophical question today is just another natural phenomenon tomorrow.
Flying Spagetti Monster: Pastafarianism.
His noodliness abounds!
Have you noticed the increase in pirate activity?
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@RealEyesRealizeRealLies
That link didn’t say anything about anything. I have a feeling, however, that science didn’t “lose,” since it’s not competing with anything.
@Ivan
Just pokin at ya… but really,
It’s really interesting. It’s a very long article. Scroll down and start with the section called “The End of Theory”. All models are wrong.
@Ivan That 8 is the stable number is one of those science things that just IS…. Like how certain wavelengths of the spectrum give of what colors, or how the boiling point of water is 100 degrees. It just is.
@Ivan
It talks about the “Cloud of Information”. You know that I believe that God is Information. Jesus said that upon his return, “You will see me coming on the Clouds of Heaven”.
Hmmm… Clouds of Information… Huh
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@westy81585
But there is an underlying reason for why those things are true. We might not understand them yet, but they are out there.
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@Ivan I think you’re missing the concept here. We know HOW water boils/evaporates at 100 degrees. At that temp the molecular bonds have been given enough energy to split, causing the water to break apart into smaller high energy groups of water (steam).
What we don’t know is WHY 100 degrees is the amount of energy. why not 99 or 50 or something? Why is the set the limit that THIS bond can take only this amount of energy? We don’t know that, and there’s not really an explanation behind it. I mean we can tell you which bonds and molecules will hold out to more or less energy and how they do it… but we don’t know what makes those specific bonds have their properties… they just have them.
There isn’t a “why” behind everything. There’s only what is. That’s what science is about. I prefer to ask “how” rather than “why”.
@The_Compassionate_Heretic
I’m always amazed at the Atheist. They will as “why” about God when it comes to earthquakes and starving children. But they never consider asking “why” about God or anything when it comes to boiling water, or flowers, or just regular stuff.
The How is the medium. The Why is the message. Both are important.
@westy81585
I understand. I am saying that underneath all of the stuff that seems like it “just is,” there’s another “how” that we just haven’t found yet. There is a reason why water boils at 100C, we just haven’t figured it out yet.
Of course God is real. You wouldn’t have asked the question otherwise
@tinyfaery
Nietzsche also lost his mind, had a psychotic break and was a miserable human being.
@SeventhSense
I define Tom Cruise to be the creator of the universe.
Of course Tom Cruise is the creator of the universe, you wouldn’t have asked this question otherwise.
He was good in Vanilla Sky. He can carry a picture but not the universe. Now Morgan Freeman, he’s a good God.
@SeventhSense
Lengend has it that Nietzsche shook his fists at the heavens in his last moments of life. What was he shaking at?
I’ve read Nietzsche extensively enough to have a completely different take on him. I don’t believe he was anti God at all. I think he was anti Church. I think he shook his fist at the heavens because he was mad at God for giving him that lot in life. For assigning him the duty of confronting long standing dogma, and knowing that he would be looked at as the enemy of the Theist for the rest of history.
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies
Probably so, as many agnostics and atheists are anti dogma and equate certain ideas alone with a higher intelligence.
Which god, as there are approximately 2,500 known gods in human history? If you mean Evelyn, why yes she is. How could a 300 foot tall black woman with six boobies NOT be real?
It’s threads like these that give me the most chuckles. Oh God, I love Fluther!
@westy81585 it is 100 degrees because humans set it to be that number. some guy in the past one day came along and said “water freezes, this is now 0 degrees. water boils, this is now 100 dregrees. because i like it that way.” also you should know that the boiling temperature also depends on the air pressure.
also colours do not physically exist. they are interpretations of the human mind of sensory input.
@ragingloli You completely missed the point of my statement. No I mean… COMPLETELY. It wasn’t to list the arbitrary numbers humanity has given to physical constants. It was to point out that in many cases we don’t know WHY those physical constants are what they are, just HOW they work.
@SeventhSense I’m agnostic, and I believe that there is a higher power. And in fact the large majority of agnostics and atheists I know have never done anything I would consider anti-dogma… In fact it tends to be the overly dogmatic who seem to want to impress their ideas upon others…
The most effective deception Lucifer has perpetrated upon the world is that he does not exist, until now, the deception has proceeded further, including God himself.
No, God isn’t real. Certainly not the one God that you likely believe in, certainly not the thousands of gods that have existed in people’s minds during humanity’s existence.
Anyone with one inch of skeptical brain can realize that most religions exists to indoctrinate, control, and gain power. Furthermore, our continual knowledge of science allows us to answer all the questions religion attempted to answer, and science allows us to understand much much more where religion attempts to squash the thoughts and indoctrinate more.
Even if there WAS a god and a heaven, I’d rather hang out in Hell than spend eternity with religious folk who get into heaven (including those who follow their holy book to the tee and are bigots and haters because of it)... THAT’S torture to me. Does that mean Hell will be filled with them too though, by that logic? Oh, and whose heaven is it exactly? Wait, sorry, logic and religion don’t go together.
I have no issues with people having faith, so long as it doesn’t affect me. Ah, golden rule, you are so kind and true.
@westy81585
I never suggested that they acted in some way against dogma although that would be a good thing from my perspective.
I’m firmly against anything that forces people to think or believe anything over their own conscience.
My karma ran over my dogma :)
@dynamicduo
What makes you think that religious folks are going to be in heaven? You’ll have a lot more of them to keep you company in Hell friend. Best rethink the afterlife plan… Heaven is where the open minded love thinkers will be.
The question isn’t really whether God exists – it’s whether you believe in one.
If you do or don’t believe, you don’t need to ask, and if you don’t…well, the best thing you can do is look at the arguments people on both sides are putting forth, and spend some quiet time alone asking yourself what you believe.
After that, if you still don’t know what you think, you have company: a whole agnostic community!
Perhaps a better question is, if God is real or not, does our belief or disbelief make any difference? Do you have faith that I exist? Does your faith in my existence have any bearing upon my continued existence?
All is simply an imagination or an agreement of the collective save the origin of thought and consciousness which is a mystery. So perhaps the idea of real is not the question because real is concept. But the original thought may be the most real.
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