Who can honestly say that God doesnt exist?

Not to avoid answering your question. But it works both ways. What proof has there ever been that there is some higher force that shapes the world around us? It seems like a load of hooey.

 

I was raised RC. but i believe in alot of religions. i know for there is a god~ higher being whatever u want to call it. reefer cat does have a point but how can u say that there isn't? of all the miracles that happen? but that is just my perogitive.

 

you cant really PROVE anything.. but just think about it- do you really believe that there is some all knowing, all powerful entity controlling the entire universe? seems kinda unlikely and farfetched to me. miracles dont mean a thing.. for every lucky fluke, there is an unlucky fluke. what makes you think that something like that happens because of some higher power anyway?

and i think we can all agree that the christian god does not exist.. thats just fucking absurd

 

Just a question.
Why would a greater being let little children be raped and killed?
What about all the people who die from raw killers?
Why do we have to leave our children so enough money can be made to care for them.
Why do we have a government offical (Bush) saying who should live or die???

Any one know?

 

In my opinion god (if there is a god) does not control every aspect of everyones lives. Thats why we have minds that work the way they do. For example if a drunk decides to drive and he gets into an accident which kills innocent people did god make him do that? no he decided himself to get into that car.
If anything life is a test that god gives us. and when we die he will grade us on the actions that we have taken. I don't strongly believe in thisas this is just a hypothesis. I as well as many others have many thoughts on life. this is just one of mine

 

^^^^^ what phunky said

 

"you cant really PROVE anything.. but just think about it- do you really believe that there is some all knowing, all powerful entity controlling the entire universe?"

the question isnt what controlls everything, the question is what created it all. can you take a look around at all the beautiful and complex things in this world, and then look up at the stars and see how much is really out there, and then believe it was all an accident? think about how gravity works, think about the human brain, look at all the different forms of life on this planet. something had to have created it all for a purpose, and that something had to exist somewhere before this was all created. but thats just my opinion and what i would like to believe.

 

go to google and do a search on the origins of the universe- science has already explained all that... its all about quantum physics.. basically all of reality just started as nothing- but nothing is unstable, and so the pre big-bang universe and space-time were just created spontaineously.. then the big bang happened. imo that sounds more believable than 'zylar the great created us and lives in the heavens'

 

so your saying that there was absolutely nothing and that nothing was unstable, even though its nothing, so it cant be unstable because its not something, and then it exploded and thats why we are all here? well thats all a theory man, its just a belief.

i see more evidence of a god or something on this planet than i see of the big bang theory. i dont expect someone who believes in science to agree or even look at my side, because science is just a way to make everything black and white. my experience on this planet has shown me that there is alot more to life than what we see, there is a bigger idea that we are a part of. there IS a reason why we are here, its not just an accident.

the truth is, there are only a few things that can really be considered facts. we are here, theres a whole lot more stuff out there, and there is no way for any of us to really know what is going on until we die. anything else is a guess. but i find it very hard to believe that everything on this earth and everything in this universe is an accident and came from nothing.

maybe you could post the reasons why you believe what you believe and the reasons why you dont believe there is a god, and also try to explain to me how all this could come from nothing. nothing is something that doesnt exist, nothing is the absence of everything, so how could it just magically blow up and create all of this? you can believe that but you cant believe a god created this all? is it so hard to believe that maybe instead of there being nothing, there was a god?

 

nothing can so be unstable.. trust me its all explained.. there was nothing, which spontaniously 'boiled', creating the forth dimention, time, and countless millions of big bangs, which all formed universes.. this is the one that just happened to work right, an unimaginably massive fluke, a freak accident.. the others are probably all just dead, random configurations of electrons floating in empty space.. makes you feel kinda lucky eh?

why would we be here for a reason? just think about it.. you think something fucking PUT us here? yeah right.. what is a 'god'? have you ever seen one, or seen any concrete evidence that one, in any form whatsoever, exists? and what created IT? even if there is one, it's literally impossible to comprehend something infinite in a finite existance, and therefore totally useless. i believe the simplest theory with the most concrete evidence behind it.. but really when it comes down to it, i dont care at all.. people spend too much time contemplating things which they will never understand. as far as im concerned, my purpose in life is to eat and then shit it all out, over and over again until i expire, ending my existence, period. and hell, maybe if im lucky i can even continue the species on the way.. shit, gods are for gods to worry about.. not us tiny, random collections of genetic material.. say one day you did find out that there was a god, and he created us. what the fuck would happen? absolutely nothing.. life would go on as usual, and you would eventually die, maybe a tiny bit less curious. so dont worry about it man.. just have some fun

 

im not worrying about anything, im answering and discussing a question on a discussion board. and i do have fun.

in my opinion you are still looking at this whole god thing the wrong way. and just because you cant see something doesnt mean it isnt there, you didnt see the universe form. and why would we not be here for a reason? whats so off the wall about being put here by something? you admited that we are just "random collections of genetic material", you believe that these "random collections of genetic material" slowly evolved, by itself, for no reason at all, into all the living things we see today. is it really that crazy to think that something created it? why would things evolve if they all started out the exact same way? little single celled organisms dont have any needs they need to evolve for. that seems far more off the wall than believeing something actually put us here for a reason. your belief is much more complicated than any other.

i still dont understand how nothing can be unstable or boil considering its nothing. meaning there wouldnt be anything there. and i still dont understand how nothing could produce all this just because it was boiled. and what would cause it to boil? i dont see any concrete evidence behind your belief, just a bunch of theorys, just like mine.

this universe couldnt be created with ONE giant fluke, it would have to be thousands of thousands of them.

im not saying your belief is wrong, im just saying that because of my expiernces in life i believe there is something more to it than what we see or know. so stop talking to me like im trying to push some religion on people, im not a religious person. but i am pretty stoned, just to let you know

 

ok.... put a glass on a table... the glass needs to hit the floor for something to happen to the glass right. How is the glass going to hit the floor? The only way is going to be if it is moved. It's not just going to hit the floor on it's own. Or not unless a small glass-sized hole just APPEARS in the table.

Look at the human mind. You know that your mind works in a different way to all animals. You have the ability to make choices etc... to THINK. Why do you think you have that ability. IF you are simply a part of a fluke- why do you think at all. Why don't you just live autonimously. If nature IS just a bunch of flukes- why should we be any different?

Oh and as to the death and suffering (used a lot). I have to use the thaught thing again. We have the ability to think for ourselves. Why doesn't god stop it. Simple- there would be no point in our existance if we had everything done for us. If we made no attempts ourselves, if we didn't stop these things for ourselves. There would be no weight to our actions. no progress in our thought.

 

i agree that things can be around us without our knowlege, but i wont believe that something is here just because someone says its here.. at least what science offers has some evidence and verification behind it, you know? more than a religious type somewhere saying that they KNOW and FEEL god all around them.. science is more than just a religion because it is based on things that have been proven. so even if something is just a theory, it still has some facts behind it.. something to support it.. but anyway..
things evolve because thats what living things do. they come into existence, and they try to preserve that existence in any way possible until they die out.. if a freak mutation lets one living thing survive better than another, then the living thing will probably get a chance to reproduce and pass on the mutation. this is microevolution.. and if this happens over and over for millions of years, then yes, other animals can develop from the existing ones. you see, evolution doesnt happen conciously, its a series of flukes, just like everything else..

and dude, im not gonna try and explain what is probably the most complex science ever.. shit, i barely even understand it myself. but if you do the research, you will find the answers.. did you know that in the microverse, all laws of physics are thrown out the fucking window? energy just appears and dissapears, randomly, constantly, for no reason whatsoever.. this is happening all around us as we speak.. and in a nothing, you are dealing with the microverse as there in no proportion, no point of reference. this nothing boiled, because damn, what else would it do? sit there? in order to grasp the nitty-gritty mechanics of things, you need to stop thinking in terms of purpose, cause and effect, because sometimes it just plain doesnt apply. some things truly ARE flukes..

but anyway, i dont want you to think im being confrontational.. this is just some friendly, stoned discussion, nothing more.. just because you believe in a god, im not going to hold it against you. and i dont think youre trying to push anything on me.. were just 2 guys with different viewpoints trying to argue them on the net, nothing more.

 

or if the glass was small enough, quantum mechanics could kick in, and it could just dissapear.. or explode.. or be replaced by something different. so no, nothing does have to happen to it.

believe it or not, but really, humans dont have any free will at all. everything we think or do, all of our emotions are decided by the random configuration of chemicals brewing in our brain at that point in time.. this is scientifically verified. the only reason we do things that defy our survival instincts, unlike other animals, is because our brains have evolved to the point where we can live 'consiously'.. the chemistry is just more complex, thats all. what makes you so sure were different at all?



this is how i look at most gods: okay, so something created us (just like we create things).. its a consious being which does things for a reason (just like us).. and depending on your beliefs, it probably even looks human (gee golly, just like us). also, the existence of this being answers almost every question that we dont have a decent answer to..

kind of sounds like something a human made up, eh?

 

religion does have evidence behind it, take the bible for instance, but you choose to throw that out the window.

what im trying to say, is that in a place like this, its impossible for us to just be here for no reason. you say things in the microverse just happen for no reason, but you only think they happen for no reason because you cant see what is causing them. how do you know there isnt something somewhere pushing the buttons? and yes, nothing would just sit there. something would have to cause it to boil.

lets think about what nothing is, nothing is the absence of everything, there arent any walls, but there is nowhere to go. when you really think about what nothing is, its hard to imagine it just boiling for no reason, and how would it boil? its nothing. for something to boil its gotta have some substance. where would the heat come from? what would cause it? in a place with nothing, it wouldnt be possible for this to happen. i dont care if it is the microverse, having the microverse just proves to me even more that there is something more behind this all. this place is "built", it seems so made up. all the rules and the way things work are so logical that it had to be created.

 

i can understand ur view phunky phil, but i would have to say 100% their is something greater than us. i've experienced it. and do has my daughter. but...the world is made up of different people with different views, unfortunately some of those people are a disgrace to the human race. i'm not a person who goes to church ritually or actually ever really, but i do pray alot. and for lots of people. there are some evidence of a god, so many miricles happen.

phynkyphil, do you believe in the afterlife?satan? or do we just die and that's all folks. i'm just curious and wondering what ur views on life after death is.

 

Here are a few paragraphs of a paper I wrote last year. They are not in order but they illustrate a few things.



People believe a lot of different things. Even after a particular belief has been disproved some will continue to believe, so powerful is their belief. This is a something psychologist Nicholas Humphrey said exists among the true believers, "paranormal fundamentalism", an insistence, a belief, "an unshakable conviction that no matter what the evidence, there must be something there" (cited in Shermer, Believe, 61), and what they want he called "supernatural consolation." This consolation is supernatural because what is being dealt with is supernatural, the unknown.

The biggest uncertainty of all is death. Until recently this has been the almost exclusive domain of religion, answering the question of what comes after we die. But recently there has been a rise of pseudoscience which deals with death. Astrology, tarot reading, tea leaf reading, palm reading, mediums, and people who claim to be able to talk to the directly to the dead are just some of the things that have reemerged in recent years. One of the reasons they may have gained popularity is that they allow people to fill the void once filled by religion, but in a more "intellectual" or "scientific" way. As Carl Sagan notes in his defense of science against pseudoscience, "Pseudoscience speaks to powerful emotional needs that science often leaves unfulfilled. It caters to fantasies about personal power we lack and long for (like those attributed to comic book super heroes today, and earlier to the gods). In some of its manifestations, it offers satisfaction of spiritual hungers, cures for diseases, promises that death is not the end. It reassures us of our cosmic centrality and importance. It vouch safes that we are hooked up with, tied to, the Universe" (Sagan 14). This is also exactly what religion tells us; that we are the most important things in the universe, that death is not the end, and that there is a god who has all the great attributes. And because science tells us differently we take offence to it. We want our diseases cured by science and we want new inventions to make our lives easier but we don't want to be told that there isn't life after death and that there is no god. Science may not be telling us these things directly but some inferences can be made regarding some of its discoveries.

What we know about the religious beliefs of early man comes from burial sites. He seemed to recognize that there was something there that animated a living creature and that it wasn't there anymore. The life expectancy of early man was only about 30 years at the most; death was inevitable. It was only natural that he should believe that whatever was there in the living creature went somewhere else. The rituals regarding death show an optimism in man's belief of where the dead went. But, these rituals consoled him also, reassuring him that life was not meaningless. Man also had consoling rituals in uncertain situations, in the face of death, where the outcome was out of his hands. He might have performed certain actions at one time where the outcome of the situation was in his favor; these actions he may have adopted in the same uncertain situation to secure the same outcome. If they did not work the failures would have been rationalized, excuses would have been made as to why they did not work.
\t\t
The mistakes in thinking were made long ago. Through thousands of years of pattern seeking which was necessary for our survival, man saw patterns in other things. Even today we see figures in clouds, images in rocks, or virgin Marys in tortillas. The decisions made regarding these patterns were not life and death, mainly because they are not dealing with concrete falsehoods and truths. Because they caused no harm, and may have even calmed tensions in uncertain situations, they were kept. These beliefs were later rationalized, and having a natural bias in attribution we gave intelligent reasons to think that way. As we became more intelligent the less likely we were, and are, of giving them up. Even today people are more likely to accept a supernatural explanation of something and reject a scientific one. As Carl Sagan had admitted science often does not fill our emotional and spiritual needs, it doesn't promise us of our place in the universe, or tell us that death is not the end. This is what religion and pseudoscience offer us. We need that "supernatural consolation", reassurance "that there must be something there."

 

Does God really exist?
Interesting question.
Religion and faith are admirable qualities, I tried it myself however became tired of being told what to believe. Each church I went to had a different method of praising a god. And different beliefs, and different gods. Who's was right and who's was wrong?
I believe with the evidence, or lack of evidence that I have seen, is that religion is a very efficient method of social control. After all, what greater deterent than an unimaginable and tormenting eternal afterlife? My conclusion thus is that some wise man saught to lead impoverished slaves to freedom, give them a cause. Tall order, so why not come as "the son of God" and let loose interpretations of ancient ramblings and "miracles" provide a means of conforming society. Look around, how many people join cults following usually a dictator of some sorts, anyone remember Manson?
What always perplexed me was that if the missionaries couldn't reach the Eskimos, would they all perish in hell, after all it wasn't there fault they didn't hear about god.
Would a charity working nurse burn in hell if she never went to church? Would a serial killer receive heaven if they repented 2 weeks before execution?
Whoever wrote the 10 commandments I do beleive only saught to do good. Most of them I live by every day, but only because they make sense. I always treat people how I would like to be treated in return, sounds like common sense to me.
I do honestly believe that a man named Jesus did exist, there are primary sources of information to prove this, the evidence does point to him being an extraordinary man (well millions worship him everyday, not bad),a born leader, but the son of a greater being sent to earth to save us from ourselves? In fact with earths current politically unstable climates, famine, disease, drought, poverty, murder ect we could sure use another one right about now.
Thats not to say that there isn't an afterlife however, I have been given proof, material proof of this more than once. So I figure, be nice, keep cool, think before your words and actions and I will maybe join that afterlife too.
If everyone on the planet stuck to the bible, whatever interpretation, it would be harmonious and cure most problems, but we don't and it never will be. In fact half the planet is arguing about religion right now. I live in Scotland where I've seen 17 year old boys stabb each other to death because one is Cathloic and one is Protestant? Er hello, same God?
As the question is unanswerable, it is mearly my opinion that we should just get on with it, thinking hurts me.
Remember, love thy neighbour, if we all just got stoned nobody would be energetic enough to argue or fight, missile attacks should turn into munchies attacks and the world would be a better place.
I have chosen my religion.
I smoke it every day!