»Is there a god in our world?«

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This is just a poll to check out what visitors of this website think.

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I like to believe that there is an immense, highly evolved intelligence that is everything - We are a part of it and not separated from it...
I believe that we are the very thoughts that it thinks....It can give form and shape to it's thoughts and bring them into being...
I really don't know what it was thinking when we appeared !!!! Must have been having a bad day!!!! ( I'm only joking dammit!)

The Universe is just a huge Machine

With lots of moving parts

We are just small parts of that machine.



The Machine Operator is away to lunch

As a practing neo-pagan (see hunter.apana.org.au... it'd be hypocrital of me to suggest that there was anything other than multiple divinty in the multi universe.

An article in a recent Scientific American ("Parallel Universes", May 2003, pp 31-41) suggested that alternate universes not only may exist, but must exist! That being the case, somewhere out there is a universerve that has the god (or goddess) you believe in. Maybe it's this one

Just found out that there's an online version of the article at sciam.com... and other links at the author's website at hep.upenn.edu....

Dear Laura S:

SCARIEST.

AVATAR.

EVAR.

Love, Hyphen

Of course there is a god... i'm surprised u haven't met me already
Just kidding ya'll... i believe there's a god, only one...
The god of the hebrews from the bible...

Take Care all

Another Smith wrote:

I like to believe that there is an immense, highly evolved intelligence that is everything - We are a part of it and not separated from it... I believe that we are the very thoughts that it thinks....It can give form and shape to it's thoughts and bring them into being... I really don't know what it was thinking when we appeared !!!! Must have been having a bad day!!!! ( I'm only joking dammit!)

yeah, I believe a liittle like you... There is a god, but he is everything and we are a part of it.
We can think like we were human cells in a human being, and the whole being is the God, so God needs us and we need HIM, cause we are the same.

My beleifs are more or less the same as firekeepers, there is one God and he is part ( inside ) us all, When we are happy he is happy because in the bible he tells us to enjoy lives and live prosperous and by doing this we are making him and ourselves happy.

Jinx wrote:

My beleifs are more or less the same as firekeepers, there is one God and he is part ( inside ) us all, When we are happy he is happy because in the bible he tells us to enjoy lives and live prosperous and by doing this we are making him and ourselves happy.

Where in the Bible are we called to enjoy life? In fact we're called to do the opposite; to suffer for the sake of Christ... I'm just curious to see where in the Bible you're getting this...

Yep, it's the very premise of the bible that WE HAVE TO suffer, since Adam sinned. And this is why the Deus ex Biblia is so great: He made others (= non-Jews) suffer.

But probably I shouldn;t write this because it may seem that I am prejudiced. It's not true. 1) I am judiced 2) The-angels-told-me religions have such "flaws".

There is one God, who at any time can seperate from the original consciousness to take care of things that need taking care of. Therefore, i suppose one could say i fall under both monotheism and polytheism; since the original conciousness of God can be in two places at once, governing two totally different things. The easiest way for me to put this is this: Where some mythological religions see a god of the sun and a god of the sea, i see the same conciousness governing the two seperately.

As for sin, there is no sin.

(was unable to vote!)

Hmmm lots of talk about the nature of god and no talk about the reason WHY you believe in any god at all.

The traditional god is omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful, capable of anything - except perhaps the logically contradictory) and omnibenevolent (wholly good).

Since I recognise that I am none of these things I cannot be god although I feel that underneath my corrupt nature I have a connection.

The world shows many signs of design. It has a structure and follows many complex patterns to keep an equilibrium. It is beautiful and complex much like a created thing. This is why I feel that what we live in is a corrupt version of the world which was intented for us.

Buddhists do not believe there is a God because they feel that this world is too full of suffering for this to be the case. Buddhist gods instead are people who have become deified by gaining enlightenment.

Any thoughts on why you do or don't believe in god(s)?

Quote:

Hmmm lots of talk about the nature of god and no talk about the reason WHY you believe in any god at all.

I believe what i believe because its in me. The Oracle says something in the first Matrix that can be compared to this.

Oracle, when talking to Neo- 'You don't need someone to tell you you are the one, you just know.' (or something similar to this)

I believe religion and faith are along these same lines. If you believe, you believe. If you don't, you know you don't. There doesn't have to be reasons, as long as you are true to yourself about your beliefs. Personally, i think this is a statement made by the movie. Morpheus doesn't know why he thinks Neo is the One, neither does Kid. But they believe, and have faith. And put themselves on the line for this believe, with no real factual basis.

Strangely enough I've found something similar to this. Hume was an atheist in a time when it was looked down upon. He wrote a dialogue in which the main character Philo refutes the design argument and claims that there is no reasoning which can prove that god exists. However, having done so Hume hid his own beliefs by having Philo conclude that belief in God should be based on faith rather than reason.

Since then it seems to be the norm to believe that our faith in God cannot be backed by reason and must be based on faith alone. Many people at the time took this to be a good conclusion and accepted it, not realising that Hume did not accept it himself.

Even though I think it would be a great view to have if the design argument didn't work, I still stick by my good ol' divine designer belief.

religions never explained anything except "God did it".

Faith is what creates god, I can't explain how the universe has been created but I do believe we're like particles... electrons graviting around neutrons, planets around sun, systems around galaxies... and so on. I do not believe in God for the pure and simple reason it's not an answer, it's a way to avoid the answer. To say God did it means you don't have to look over things because God did it, pure social disengagement. We'd do a Nuclear War and we'd simply say: "It was our faith".

Man has the power to create and to destroy, he's no god though. Man can kill us all and save us all. Depends how you see things, that's my own point of view.

According to me, believing in God is like to be living in the matrix, no matter what you do doesn't matter because God decided it. I take the Red Pill and see what is my truth: There is no afterlife and we simply are the results of electro-chemicals reactions.

I'd say there is one God. The Christian God...and saying God existis IS an legit answer, not an easy way out. Sometimes, a simple answer like "God Did It" is the right one. I don't care whether we evolved from apes, or that primodial soup crap or what, either way, those particles had to come from somewhere. Ditto for the big bang theory, ok, so where did those little particles come from? In the end, it all comes down to, something made us (or something made the things that made us). But who made God? Has God existed for all time? I guess so, but how in the world can we figure that out? If we could figure those questions out, we wouldn't need God, would we? We need God, he doesn't need us. He chooses us. We're all the ones! ha ha.

Akatsume Ryuu wrote:

According to me, believing in God is like to be living in the matrix, no matter what you do doesn't matter because God decided it. I take the Red Pill and see what is my truth: There is no afterlife and we simply are the results of electro-chemicals reactions.

According to me, your faith in this statement shows me YOU are avoiding the truth.

'Why', the theists on this board believe in god has been skirted so far. A lot of people have said that we are a part of a collective consiousness that may or may not be directed by an omnipresecent god, but our collective consciousness constitutes a living deity because we have some sort of supernatural connection.

Why do people believe in this?

As far as I can tell, there is no phyiscal proof or evidential basis for believing that humans share a collective consiousness. So, if there is no proof, then why do people believe it? Because they want to.

The fundamental flaw in this line of thinking is that by willing something alone, it does not create its existence. From this, it seems to me that believing in a collective consciousness, or anything unable to be proven by fact, is akin to intellectual dishonesty: aka. believing in bigfoot, the tooth fairy, a god, gods, the devil etc.

Just to add the conclusion I missed before, the reason why believers believe is because its nice and maybe emotionally central to their person, so giving it up to reason would be too hard to do.

And they might think, well god cannot be disproved, so why not believe in him anyway? This is compelling, but at least for me, I can't sell my intellect out to a nice fairy tale. Better to enjoy what makes sense according to the world around us, and progress and enjoy our lives.

Through all of your options, you still haven't put enough down to encompass my answer. However, you didn't need but 3 options.

1) There is 1 God who exists outside oneself and will judge every person according to their actions

2) There is a god but I am a part of it in some way, or am it.

3) There is no God.


Kazuji... pm me if you want to discuss the obviousness that God exists and exists outside yourself. I would reply here, but some people hate hearing opinions which differ from their own and get offended... and thus the conversation never gets anywhere.

What about:

(4) There is a God who created the world, but he has abandoned his creation and no one shall ever find that God.

or

(5) There is a God who will NOT judge people by their actions (eg. a god who will judge people on whether they trust in him - intentions not actions)

All of those options need some sort of evidence, or data to prove them true. Yet, none of them have a shred of it. Save the atheist position to an extent, because its based on the baseless conclusions of theists.

Many theists believe that the universe shows signs of intelligent design. They also believe that God is the only adequate cause for the entirity of the universe (big bang included). Anthropic principle is another reason.

Anthropic principle is that the big bang had to be a certain power in order to produce a universe with anything in it. Little bit more powerful and everything goes flying away and cannot form anything. Little bit less powerful and gravity pulls everything back together and the universe ends immediatly. There are also other features after the successful big bang which make it possible for planets to form and for any single one of them to contain life. Mathematician Roger Penrose has estimated that the probability of a universe with our particular set of physical properties is one part in 10 to the power of 10 x 123 (i'm not a mathematician - they wrote both 10 and 123 as indices - i can't show it like that here) This is incredibly improbable. You can't get much closer to impossible without a lot of effort

Alan Guth has pointed out that the principle only works because of the laws of physics - but that seems not to notice the point of the argument. It seems that the physical laws exist with the intention and purpose of producing life.

Some people might point out that if you weren't here then you couldn't argue about how unlikely it was that you got here. The unborn cannot ask "why?". However, imagine you are put into a machine that will kill you unless it randomly picks the ace of spades from 4 different decks of cards. You come out of the machine alive. You ask "did something go wrong?" and even wish to thank the operator for rigging it so you would survive. The operator merely shrugs and says "you only want to thank me because you survived and if you hadn't, you couldn't." A reasonable man would still be justified in thinking that there was something fishy here.

Is that not a reason to believe in God? Is it more rational to believe that universe came from nothing? Do the amazing complexities of nature and the beautiful mathematical patterns it produces and even the incredible efficiency of adaptation through DNA not show signs of design?

To see this happening by chance alone as rational seems completely out of my grasp. What do you think?

So, kazuji, atheists have evidence because they pronounce theist evidence to be baseless.... makes sense....