General Questions About Belief

Believing in god is like how kids believe in the boogieman. It's just a story to keep people in check and give them a conscious. The universe is too Massive and random to have been "created" by any higher power. If I was a higher power I'd have many many better and more enjoyable and fulfilling things to do with my time than watch over pond scum.... Just my opinion.

mistaphuck said:

I don't believe that god exists as an all powerful all knowing entity, but I believe "god" technically exists as the universal constants that ultimately control what we as humans in this universe can and cannot do. so basically god would be the laws of physics or nature as well call it.

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also "good" "bad" "Heaven" "hell" "righteousness" and "evil" are all man made concepts

IF there was a "god" I would hope that he would judge us on how we treat all other living things than just what we have been taught by our elders. I can imagine a god that was so stubborn and plain evil to scorn or judge you by what type of worship you provide based on how you were taught to.

Word on the laws of physics, nature.

I am a non practicing Catholic. I was baptized a Catholic but I am not really into religion. I believe there is a God but I don't agree with some things that the Catholic church teaches. I don't go to mass anymore but I pray every night and instead of praying when I'm depressed, I pray whenever I'm happy. I personally believe that hell is reality. Hell is now. We're living in hell right now and when we die, we either go straight to heaven or repent on our since in the purgatory but will eventually get to heaven.

the thought of a heaven has always seemed kinda silly to me, I was raised a christian, and even as a child I thought it seemed like a mere idyllic musing, used as way to keep peoples minds off mortality. I see why there is religion, its easier to deal with life's daily troubles when you can just attribute it all to a god, and have faith that after you die you will go to a better place.

@emilyblunt I believe some of us are in hell, but ultimately, we all (even people in third world countries) have the power to change things for the better, there is no reason earth should seem like hell to some people, not when they have the power to alter they're environment. all things good and bad and even good and bad themselves are caused by us and can be fixed by us. as soon as we realize the fact that we are all the same, then and only then can things start to get better.

I think every one is looking at heaven and hell the wrong way. Heaven is just being in the presence of God and hell is the total absence of God. People tend to think that in order get into heaven they just have to love God. But it is more than that. Its about wiping away your sins. God is so pure that he can not stand to be in the presence of Sin. So he requires that your sins be cleansed by a sacrifice. Someone must pay for those sins and thats why Jesus came to earth. He died as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. When you choose to except Jesus into your life and ask him to forgive your sins he will transform your heart and mind. You are to live like Jesus. God definitely effects your personal reality. He shows you a new reality. Once the spirit dwells inside of you, you will feel compelled to change the way you think and live your life. It is a choice that you make. You choose to live in the presence of God or without. But it is still a choice.

crackerboy said:

I think every one is looking at heaven and hell the wrong way. Heaven is just being in the presence of God and hell is the total absence of God.

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lol well then.. hell seems pretty good on my end!



btw I'm not trying to come down on you or anything, but in a theological debate, discussion or otherwise it is customary or polite to use terms like "I believe" or "In my opinion" rather than actualization's such as "is" and "will" etc. Its not a bad thing really, its just you believe so hard in your god, you have such strong faith, that to you its fact, and that may lead you to forget that there are people out there that don't, and when you say things in that manner, well that's how wars start : )


I tend to think about it in this aspect, I am a huge pothead and legalization advocate, so are all of my friends, my parents and most of my friend's parents, so I tend to forget there are people that don't smoke weed out there, and these people tend to react differently when you tell them things like weed should be legal and it has many health and economic benefits, even if you really believe its the truth and even if it is the truth, personal views and opinions should be worded real carefully. no offense intended as you did not offend me at all, just a word to the wise.

1. Yes. I don't think the "why not" question really needs any justification besides having no evidence of god. I know most people are raised to believe and it's ingrained in them, but at some point do they ever stop and ask themselves if it even makes sense? If there is any evidence. If I ever doubt evolution, or chemistry, or biology, or most anything I believe in I can find factual information and evidence to back claims up. Once you doubt your god though, how do you ever satisfy that?

2. I think anyone that believes hell and heaven exist it would be ridiculous to choose any option to get you into hell.

3. Interesting concept. pretty much irrelevant though.

4. No.

Padawanbater2 said:

Do you believe it's a choice to believe in God?

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pad-

maybe it's time to let it go. with so many more important matters to deal with in this world, maybe we should stop trying to tear down one of the few things that gives the hopeless something to look forward to. maybe we should admit that we are not so enlightened as we wish we were and that many of us need some crutch to help us carry the load.

of course belief is a choice. the ultimate rewards and punishments inherent in most religious philosophy are merely a goad to convince the faithful of the benefits of righteous living. the torments of hell, originally vague and only later more clearly defined by the vicious designs of the church, are merely a means of swaying the populace away from their baser desires and toward an existence that is more beneficial to society. what better way to convince the amoral masses to give up their heathen and often violent ways than to invent an all-seeing presence, judging them on their conduct and powerful enough to both create and destroy everything they hold dear? what better way to grab hold of the attention of the ignorant masses than to play on their emotions and their fears? though reason may often fail, our emotional selves are always ready to take control. religion has done its job well, it has shaped law in every corner of the world and tamed the beast of our most primitive desires.

your vendetta against christianity and the other abrahamic creeds, an attitude that is shared by many who cling to science for their unanswered questions, seems almost counterproductive. unlike eastern religions with their tendency toward denial of self, these western religions actually promote individual achievement. of course they try to channel our industry into productive and socially beneficial avenues, but this is the same purpose for which our secular laws were invented. of course religion has been used by the powerful toward their own ends, but so too are our secular laws often perverted for the enrichment of the few. aside from the obviously childish nature of believing in invisible men, i see nothing too terribly detrimental in the belief systems surrounding these mythologies. you may claim that they are brainwashing our children into this fantasy world, but it is no more hazardous than the indoctrination that goes on every day in the name of a variety of secular ideologies. men go to war every day over such petty differences as language, origin or affiliation. how much different is that than warring over who's invisible man in the sky is better?

religions have shaped the cultures of this world and they will continue to do so. society has shaped our concepts of religion and this will continue as well. no matter how advanced our science or how extensive our understanding of the universe, there will always be unanswered questions and there will always be those who seek divine guidance to provide the answers. you have claimed that our morality can be shaped entirely through scientific means, but that science is merely defining what religion has done through more primitive and natural means. i have often said that science is a fantastic at telling us how things come about, but lacks the insight to explain why things are. for folks like me there is no necessity such grand reasons, but i find no insult or harm in others seeking a grand design in these fantasies. realize that the mindset of even the most ardent atheist has been shaped by thousands of years of religious change and be humbled by the fact that such fantasies have survived every onslaught to become a viable force even in the most scientific and logic oriented of ages.

crackerboy said:

I think every one is looking at heaven and hell the wrong way. Heaven is just being in the presence of God and hell is the total absence of God. People tend to think that in order get into heaven they just have to love God. But it is more than that. Its about wiping away your sins. God is so pure that he can not stand to be in the presence of Sin. So he requires that your sins be cleansed by a sacrifice. Someone must pay for those sins and thats why Jesus came to earth. He died as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. When you choose to except Jesus into your life and ask him to forgive your sins he will transform your heart and mind. You are to live like Jesus. God definitely effects your personal reality. He shows you a new reality. Once the spirit dwells inside of you, you will feel compelled to change the way you think and live your life. It is a choice that you make. You choose to live in the presence of God or without. But it is still a choice.

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[youtube]e4dANEsd5so[/youtube]

maybe it's time to let it go.

This is something I'll oppose as long as I'm alive.

I refuse to sit silent and take the punches organized religion delivers to our society without fighting back.

I don't care if people feel comfort from their religion because the truth is it comes at a price. It costs lives to believe in these fairy tales. That's simply unacceptable and I'll do everything I can for as long as I live to get as many people as possible to reject unrealistic, unsubstantiated claims that get innocent people killed and maybe we can finally then move things in the right direction.

with so many more important matters to deal with in this world, maybe we should stop trying to tear down one of the few things that gives the hopeless something to look forward to.

How is this healthy? How can you support this position? A perfect analogy is a drug addict. They feel comfort from using their drug but sometimes they harm society in their pursuit to get high. We criminalize this behavior because we all recognize it's negative for society at large, yet permit it with outrageous beliefs that do the exact same thing, on a much grander scale.

And like I've said before, I think it's this false foundation that so many people start off with that is the root cause of most of the other issues we face. Solve that and the rest wouldn't seem so impossible to fix.

maybe we should admit that we are not so enlightened as we wish we were and that many of us need some crutch to help us carry the load.

We should ALL admit we don't have all the answers.

I don't understand how lying to oneself is comforting, or why anyone would support someone lying to themselves. The drug addict analogy works here too. Would you continue to support a drug addict using heroin simply because it gives that person comfort?

Life is hard, everyone has to learn to deal with it. As an atheist, I would never imagine shifting the burden of dealing with life off onto someone else simply because I'm too weak to deal with it myself and take it head on and realize that one day I'm going to die and this will all be over. I don't have that right nor the ability because that's not how reality works in my head. Logic doesn't work that way in the real world. The comfort believers feel is false, not that that really makes a difference, but I can't trick myself into believing something, not even if I wanted to.

of course belief is a choice.

I don't understand. How is belief a choice? Isn't reality independent of anyones belief?

what better way to convince the amoral masses to give up their heathen and often violent ways than to invent an all-seeing presence, judging them on their conduct and powerful enough to both create and destroy everything they hold dear? what better way to grab hold of the attention of the ignorant masses than to play on their emotions and their fears?

How is scaring people into submission acceptable?

What about educating them?

Like you mention later in this post, organized religion has most often been used by select people in power against the population at large for their own benefit.

unlike eastern religions with their tendency toward denial of self, these western religions actually promote individual achievement. of course they try to channel our industry into productive and socially beneficial avenues, but this is the same purpose for which our secular laws were invented. of course religion has been used by the powerful toward their own ends, but so too are our secular laws often perverted for the enrichment of the few.

One is disguised as morally acceptable, the other is morally reprehensible, think Enron v the Catholic Church. The execs at Enron raped that company, investors and employees of all their financial acquisitions, everybody and their mother wanted Lay's and Skilling's blood. The Catholic Church has been found guilty on many counts of child abuse yet millions of Catholics remain faithful.

aside from the obviously childish nature of believing in invisible men, i see nothing too terribly detrimental in the belief systems surrounding these mythologies.

They lead people to deny science. You don't think that is detrimental?

Before you say "not all religious people deny science" - enough of them do to cause huge problems in the way research is done and what programs get funded.

This passive attitude of letting people believe whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt anybody has indirect effects on people who are already hurting with conditions that could be treated with modern medicine.

men go to war every day over such petty differences as language, origin or affiliation. how much different is that than warring over who's invisible man in the sky is better?

Not every day, and not much different at all. I oppose all war that isn't defensive.

Is killing someone over land any better or worse than killing someone over a lover?

In the end, the person is just as dead and which one is better or worse is meaningless to him.

i have often said that science is a fantastic at telling us how things come about, but lacks the insight to explain why things are.

Perhaps asking "why" about the universe isn't an applicable question. It doesn't make sense in our reality. There is no why. There just is.

Padawanbater2 said:

This is something I'll oppose as long as I'm alive.

I refuse to sit silent and take the punches organized religion delivers to our society without fighting back.

I don't care if people feel comfort from their religion because the truth is it comes at a price. It costs lives to believe in these fairy tales. That's simply unacceptable and I'll do everything I can for as long as I live to get as many people as possible to reject unrealistic, unsubstantiated claims that get innocent people killed and maybe we can finally then move things in the right direction.

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you really make me laugh. you're more of a fanatic than any fundamentalist i've ever met. i wonder how anyone can consider such fanaticism a good thing. you act as if religion is the cause of so much suffering and death in this world, when it is merely another excuse for the sins we so readily commit. religion has never done anything more to you than insult your intelligence. it has done more to build and organize society, to bring together communities, than science could ever hope to do. it is the jealousy and greed inherent in the human condition that tears us apart. though it is rooted in our savage past, it attempts to transcend our primitive urges and gives hope to billions. though it is based on the ignorance of our forebearers, it has allowed so many the means to dig themselves out of that ignorance. its only cost is the overweening pride that has no place in the enlightened individual anyway. you say that the answer to the question "why" is of little or no importance and to folks like you and i that may be so, but it is an all-consuming question for the majority of mankind and one for which science can never provide an answer.

your fight is an idle conceit. your rage is misplaced and it serves only to strengthen the resolve of the faithful. your logic is faulty and merely adds ammunition to the very institutions you would bring down. your campaign is a fool's errand, as religion's reign will end only when its time is finally due.

My opinion, if a kid had a view like, "Damn, 2012 is going to happen and were all going to die."(example)
Then he wouldnt really care about life no more. And ALL interest will be lost in his everyday life. Like.. waking up, brushing his teeth, making his bed.. etc

The human would be just so depressed in realizing that it has 'No Future'. That 'Were Not Needed'..
Thats how the 'fresh,newly' human mind works. Its in our blood that we WANT to survive.
But when you grow up, smoke the ganja, and catch a glimspe of life.
ALOT changes, you learn to "ACCEPT" death, cause you been around the edge for so long and been thinking about it you got used to it.
Like getting up with a alarm clock at the same time everyday, soon enough your body will be used to it and wake up everyday without the tone going off.
We 'adapt' to everything.

Me.. My Other Opinion.. So I have a motive.. I honestly think we have a soul. We continue on in another body.
I think their is something other then this. Something better, and better, and better..

But then again.. Who The Fuck Knows.. We Dont..
Lol..

- Nice Ol' Bud.

Padawanbater2 said:

1. Do you believe it's a choice to believe in God? Why/why not?

2. With the alternative option being (whatever general idea of) Hell, is it then a choice to love God? ie. choose to love God and go to Heaven or choose not to love God and go to Hell.

3. Does free will exist in Heaven? Are we free to do as we please?

4. Does God interfere in our reality in any way?

Thanks guys.

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God is nothing more than the figment of human imagination.

1. No. Believing is not something that we "choose" to do, but rather it is a product of the knowledge we possess and our brain's processing of said knowledge. You could tell someone that if they were to start believing in Santa Claus that you would give them a million dollars, but even with that incentive a person couldn't choose to just believe because that belief would be in conflict with reality and the facts that they know. As an atheist, I couldn't willfully decide to believe in God, because said belief in my view is unfounded on evidence and contradicts with the way I see reality. Belief is not chosen but realized.

2. I don't believe in an afterlife and obviously this question is somewhat in conflict with my views about belief as briefly outlined above, but I'll answer anyway. If heaven and hell were to exist and the only criterion for admittance to either was whether or not you chose to love God, then yes it would be a choice in the strict sense of the word. This choice, however, would be the same type of choice that (prepare for stale example) a Mafia boss would present to a store owner: pay us money for "protection" or something bad may just happen to you. Obviously, no one wants to be murdered, so paying the money is the only sensible "choice", but this choice isn't really free and the obvious choice of doing neither is excluded. I've heard people say that atheists choose to send themselves to hell by choosing not to love God, but this is the same thing as a robber saying, "Give me your wallet or I'll shoot you. Don't make me shoot you." God set up the conditions for being admitted and humans have no say in them and are effectively having the gun held against their heads. Technically it is a choice, yes, but I don't see how anyone could honestly say that it is a fair choice.

In addition to this, the omniscient quality of God that most believers espouse would cause problems. Someone could easily claim to love God and believe in him, but surely an omniscient god would know if the motive for his belief was merely to save himself and wasn't genuine. This is a reason that Pascal's Wager fails as well. Yes I could profess belief in God as insurance against hell, but I wouldn't truly believe because you can't make yourself believe and an omniscient God would know that.

3. Don't believe in afterlife, so irrelevant to me really. Speculation on what heaven is like is really pointless and I am amazed by how Christians will speculate about and claim that we know what heaven is like. Our teacher once held a discussion in class and was asking a fellow student about what he thought, so I asked whether or not you could have sex and heaven. He was stumped at first then said, "Well, once your wife dies you can have sex with her but before then no." I was mainly amused at how he said this obviously having no idea whether or not you could. This reveals another tendency of believers that I have noticed which is being uncomfortable with not knowing. People rampantly speculate on what heaven is like with absolutely no evidence and everyone will vouch for their own ideas, but wouldn't it be best to simply say that we don't know?

I could discuss the implications of this question if God were to exist in much greater depth, but this post is long enough as it is.

4. I don't believe in a God, so in my view your question is flawed, but again I'll answer anyway. I wouldn't believe in a God who interferes in the universe because there simply isn't any evidence that he/she/it does. Everything attributed to the hand of god is explainable by some other means. The only type of god I see as even remotely plausible is a deistic god who basically started the universe then moved on. If there is a God who intervenes in the world, he/she/it goes to great lengths to make sure that said intervention is virtually undetectable. In my opinion, when you free yourself from prejudice and impartially look at the world it is clearly untouched by supernatural hands, and I see no reason to try and distort my perception of reality to make it seem that it is. This is a good video somewhat related to this, and this guy makes great thought provoking videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrX__ILDd3w.

dumhole327 said:

In addition to this, the omniscient quality of God that most believers espouse would cause problems. Someone could easily claim to love God and believe in him, but surely an omniscient god would know if the motive for his belief was merely to save himself and wasn't genuine. This is a reason that Pascal's Wager fails as well. Yes I could profess belief in God as insurance against hell, but I wouldn't truly believe because you can't make yourself believe and an omniscient God would know that.

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Reminds me on how Hitch answers Pascal's Wager

[youtube]mbrpR7gVbeQ[/youtube]

mindphuk said:

[youtube]e4dANEsd5so[/youtube]

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This is what real Christianity is. Please watch the whole thing to see how God views religion. Mark Driscoll does a great Job explaining the true gospel.


[video=youtube;WXKT8IPdvzA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXKT8IPdvzA[/video]

another good one for you



[video=youtube;7Rk0tctmedA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rk0tctmedA[/video]