high buds i'm havin a real problem with this creation thing. whated to hear other opions on the topic if god created the everything ?then what created god? and please don't say well god just is .because the reply would be well why can't we just be is thanks for your time 8)
i'm a little annoyed at the responses to this so far. The question was about god... not the God of the christian religion. And remember that there are another religious people that worship the same god of the bible but just do not follow the latter half of it (Jews, incase your a bit fik about religion). but despite the blind christianity of his response i think zonedude did the question justice. Digit
Well,first off... I have a huge problem with organized religion. I believe that it divides people. Church attendance seems almost cult-like to me. Keep in mind, that is my opinion. I believe. I believe that there is an almighty "force" or "energy" beyond what I can imagine. I would be foolish to dismiss biological facts that show a design or plan for each and every living being from humans to microorganisms; such as our body right down to the nucleus of each cell in it. Something is behind that. I struggle with the "fact or fiction" aspects of the Bible. Historically, so much is backed up while so much is not. People who are in religious affiliations are quick to quote the Bible to steer people "in the right direction" and to keep themselves free and clear of the sins they might commit in the future. I believe that the answer lies within each individual. No one knows for sure the answer. No one ever will in this life. I believe if you live according to your convictions and do your best to balance your karma then you are going to be ok in the end.
It's a question which I have difficulty with, because we live in an age were everything is possible, where we humans do things, were in old ages people thought it was divine. We are extending our lives, try to clone, make super medicine and all. What is god and who is god within you, makes you wonder. If there is something as a god, it so complex and big, that we could not understand even how smart we think we are and how big our hard drives are and that we own a pentium 2 one zillion megahertz. That's the point about it that you don't know. Because if you new all the magic and why blue is called blue and colored blue (????? does dis make sense?) you would go insane by the second. This is an intresting time we live in and I look often for spritutual guidance, but in this 24/7 rat race we live in it's sometimes difficult to find . I often worry god is a lonely entity, I hope he has some friends! But what I realy believe is that we are togehter on this little planet, and what you believe or not, that's pretty special in the first place, something to believe in anyhow. It does not realy answers your question, made just my 2 cents! Peace and believe This is one of my favorite buddha sayings from a budhist called Anon (53 BC) "If you are not confused, you are not paying attention." SJ
Great thread, guys. I've got one really big problem with this whole 'god' thing:- If there is one, at all, it takes away ALL ultimate responsibility from us. It doesn't matter whether we screw up, as individuals or a race, 'coz we can blame the dude who designed it all. ...and don't give me the free-will / 'origonal sin' arguement. That's a cop-out & U know it! I live my life as if there is NO supreme entity. If I'm right, there's no other way to live. And it's not all 'bleak existencialism'. If I'm wrong, but 'do it acceptably right' anyway, I've as good a chance as any of being able to share a bifter with the big guy, and give him a hard time for...... ...microsoft ...amerikan politix ...aids ...religious bigotry etc, etc etc, etc But here's the rub, something I discovered during counsellor training, in a book called "against therapy" (incidentally, it also CAUSED me to quit the course, and never 'advertise' counselling services again) ......... I'm not gonna explain the 'logic' here, but believe me, it's an eye-opener:- The best way to 'serve' a truly 'good' god is to totally dis-believe in him, nevr rely on him or ask his help for anything, but live a 'good' life anyway. It's not the meek who will inherit the earth, it's the aetheists!
Firstly to areoblurg.... to true man. Secondly to RMJL... in relation to the force theory, this is already being touched on by science (forefront of Quantum Mechanics and related sciences), and it is my belief that through such knowledge and science that we will discover so much to suggest "God" like activities. This force that binds the entire Universe and beyond our comprehention is even evident on a human level. Sympathy pains between twins or other family members, and the ghost limb sensation experienced by amputees are just two such examples on a human level. Even the Sixth sence experienced by some humans may be to do with such things. So this works on a human level, a super subatomic level... and throughout the entire universe... sounds like what humans have been calling god to me. Thirdly to Amanita... sorry, did not meen to sound so full of attitude towards the christian religion... but... In my view the Christian religion is the most hypacritical religion of them all... also the most misrepresented, misinterpereted and vague. Christianity would not be here today at all if it were not for the brutal manner in which it was enforced throughout the dark ages and beyond. The ten Commandments are broken more frequently and with more ease by "Christians", than the American Constitution!!! Christianity, in its relativly short life time has been responsable for a greater concentration of war and brutality than any of the other mainstream religions. More people have died because of christianity than any other mainstream religion... and ontop of that i too was brought up (forced, even when i tried to voice my opinions) as a Christian. So i hope you can understand where i'm comming from when i might sound a mite snippy about Christianity in any form. Appologies again if i have offended anyone. Also... who says that life started on Earth? What evidence do they have of that... its highly probable that single celled organisms could have started else where then been blasted to earth long ago when our solar system was still forming. Its a theory that is picking up some considerable momentum and respect from the greatest corners of science. Fourthly to Super joint... I don't know if "God" would experience the emotions of Carbon Based, bags of mostly water that have only been around for a few dozen millenia, considering that the known (or theorised) Universe has been around for dozens of TeraMillenia! or atleast i hope he doesn't suffer from human emotions... the consequences would be devastating... it might... it might create a big bang!!! hehe to anyone.... All religion has been created by humans to explain that which they cannot yet understand. From the early SunGod religions to More Modern religions looking also up to the sky and believing it to be heaven (or another form of afterlife) and seeing perhaps Lava/Volcainos as Evil/Hell. This desperate simplification of good and evil, up and down, black and white, dark and light is the child like explanations of much more complicated things. I don't know if the Athiests will inherit the world Ganja Cat.... I think the religious types will have destroyed it long before we get a chance to. And anyway what kind of Athiests do you mean? Many People who consider themselves Athiests do actually worship many things in a religious manner. Consumerism for one. The Telivised Advertisement is thier prayer and the Shopping centre thier place of worship and the cash registers the collection tills. Its the most efficeint religion yet. Just trying to supply everyone with some food for thought. Digit
{just thought of this} If the big bang theory is true then I have a hypothesis. Let's say there is only one god. And it is just playing with the universe like it was play doh. god takes the universe from the cup and stretches it out (big bang) and makes a universe. Scientist are saying the universe is slowing down. Could god be running out of play doh and squish us back into a ball and make something else?
That brings you to the end of the world as we know it. If God, god, Mother Earth or whatever it is that has the play doh, squishes us back into a ball to form something else, then couldn't Christians take that as what the book of Revelation describes as the end. A ? about god is like asking "What's the meaning of life?" The truth is, that beyond our theories, we will never know in this life.
Herein lies the rub, my friend..... The expansion of the universe is ACCELERATING. Can't point to the url or anything but it was on a 'Horizon' documentry a few months ago. All 'VLA radio-astronomy' and 'x-ray photo vasectomy', that kind of stuff. But under the laws of physics, an acceleration can only be produced by an applied force..... And we don't have a clue what the force is! And digit..... If there is a 'big dude', and he don't have human emotions - like empathy, compassion, love... I'll take my chances with 'big nick'. Anyway, it's not a matter of whether I believe in god. What I wnna know is does he believe in me?
If you were to worship any religion should you not include the entire universe instead of just one teansie planet hovering around a teensie insignificant star in an insignificant galaxy? No offense intended to worshipers of Earth, I have ALOT more respect for them than i do for the larger mainstream religions. Now i have not seen this evidence to sugest that the big bang is accelerating. And I've always been of the inclination that it is slowing down, as that explanation justifies the big bang theory. Similarities can been seen in chemical reaction rates in explosions... except this explosion is the biggest imaginable with so many more factors to consider (Gravity, Time & Space relationships). But if what you say is true Ganjacat then is it not possable that the Universe is neither in a perpetual increase or decrease of acceleration but simply fluctuating? If you consider the Universe as an Animal... compairing it to the only life forms that we know of, - the ones on Earth (i'm not sure if this theory includes plants)- then from the smallest (like rodents) with rapid heartbeats and rythms with such a brief life span... compared with the giant ones like Whales who's lives are so much longer, comunication is at an exceptionally decelerated speed to what we cna cope with, etc. So if the Universe were to be treated as such the expansion of it could fluctuate on such a massive incomprehensable timespan. Trillions and trillions of years. This all still kinda fits in with my theories that i was speaking about before. Nature from every level has a fractal pattern which is followed. Some of it as such is yet just to complicated for us to see of comprehend. From the Leaves on a plant to the patterns of Stars in a galaxy... we all fit into the great fractal fabric that is our universe, all held together on the smallest level with the tiniest little sub atomic particles. which evidentally is also the best place to look to understand this the best... the simpler the easier. Just asuming we can see whats going on. It aint like looking through a microscope. So what i'm saying is that the answers to the Universe and whatever else exists beyond, The meaning of life, the confirmation of God can and will be explained through science. This is no small topic ... it will take a long time, we have still so much to learn. But if we start looking in the right places it can be found so much quicker. And asuming you've managed to take that all in i'll finish by saying... Cannabis and the Teacher drugs (plants, fungi) of the 3rd major planetery body in orbit around the star known to us as Sol in the galaxy known to us as the Milky Way, and potentially found elsewhere, are what have led me to see things in such a manner. Digit (heehee, more food for the grey matter)
Then it seems god got more play doh Any way, I do believe that we should all respect each other and Earth. And I believe that humans either think too much or too little. We think too much about the meaning of life and what made us. And humans think too little when we use our lawnmowers as a hedge trimmers. Every complicated thing is simple if you really think too much. But when you think too much then more questions come up and you think too much again and so on until you create a religion.
that seems to have been the resolve in the past but i feel that this is a new dawn of freedom of thought without the need for everything to be summed up neatly by a religion.
A rebirth of thought? Another renaissance? Possibly, yet I think that the number of slow and uneducated out numbers the smart and learned. PS with a spellcheck and thesaurus on the computer it looks like I have a big vocabulary.
Things are complex. From our point of view and the way everything has evolved (in human society) here on earth. Language. culture. Social behaviour and the thousands of non verbal comunications. These have all hampered our ability to take in and understand the universe fully. most particularly (in my opinion) Language. Our 'ability' to call one thing alive and another thing inanimate. to call one thing stone and another wood. these sort of definitions, as helpfull as they are in thier own right, do not help us understand the great everything. To say the least, human descriptions are inacurate and very simple, and do not allow for cross development of meaning. We are all essentially made from star dust, but is this part of description present when we speak about things? no. because that knowledge was gained after the develompment of all our languages. Language is just one of the many aspects of social evolution that needs to catch up (and fast) if we are to be able to comunicate fully, in any verbal sence, we need to have a Language (or languages) that can evolve along with our ever increasing expansion of knowledge. As it stands the only area that is evolving at any speed is technology. We are evolving technologically at great speed but socially, we seem to be standing still. All the politics and laws in the world cannot help us evolve in such a manner, and in thier current state actually hinder development. So, to bring this back to some kind of relevancy incase you think i have strayed too far from the "god" aspect.... Humans created the idea of "God". The simple answer that can explain anything. "Because God made it that way" is the ultimate answer. But we are evolving beyond that. In the Darwin sence, Evolution is something that we are aware of now. So, if God really did make us, then surely that is part of the plan. We must evolve. And to do this without stumbling over and probably destroying ourselves, we must evolve EVERY aspect of us, and that which surrounds us, and not just concentrating on only one part (technology). So the God made everything answer does not do us justice anymore. We know too much, the simple religions in past days may have guided some, and of course definately helped shape our cultures to the state they are in today, despite all the damage they caused. But to get boyond this, we need to make an evolutionery leap or two. and as technology is an aspect we have been building on perhaps it only be right that it should be the aspect that will assist in developing the other aspects. Language, Intelligence, Biological capability and diversity, socially and culturally. Humans created god, only to one day realise that the image of "god" they created was infact what they would one day become themselves. So if "god" is out there, its a heck of alot more than what many percieve it to be. Digit
If you ask the question, "Who created god?" It is almost like saying who/what created the universe. It is mind-boggling to even try to find the answer to that question. In saying this I think that god is the universe. He is everything. He is Mt. Everest, he is saturn. This would explain how he controls the world/universe. He didn't create man, he simply evolved a part of himself. This relates to thing big bang theory of life. If life started as a single monocelled organism andthen simply evolved all the life in the world out of it's original DNA, it makes sense, this organism is god. This means that there is a part of god in every plant and animal. If there is need for a new type of insect... part of the population of an insect already living starts to evolve... Presto... a new species. This whole theory of mine doesn't even answer the original quetion of this thread. Scientists have tried to answer the questio, "How was the universe created?" but they have only come up with far-fetched theorys. The most prominent of these is the big bang theory, which states that the whole universe operates in a loop. Expanding.. then contracting, over and over again. This theory even sounds right, but, it fails to answer the question. You could say that god created the universe... but who created god? No matter how many times a theory is created to answer the question, the question is simply asked again. Thus it is impossible to find out how the universe was created because time is not a ray (one way line), but a line which goes both backwards and forwards infinetly. For example, the bible predicts the apocolypse, but what comes after the apocolypse? Time has to continue its course. If you think about it the universe could simply be reborn every trillion or so years. We could be the septillionth repitition of this, but time goes on infinetly backwards too, so it is impossible to know. Numbers cannot be applied to time becuase when they are they have no relevence. they lose their meaning and are simply meaningless symbols. For this reason we will never be able to answer the question for eternity has no end, and it has no beginning. An interesting qoute with relation to the subject: I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with Plato 427-347 B.C.