Does God exist?
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ImTheDoubleGreatest!
Master Don Juan
****, you tell me. I don't even know anymore to be honest....
Serenity
Moderator
I think God and lots of things in the bible got twisted with time. What if it's as simple as God not actually being a person but instead a concept. That God is just a warped version of the word "Good", after all it's just one letter difference. Coincidentally the word "Devil" becomes the word "Evil" with the removal of just one letter. Could possibly be a warped for of "the evil".
It would make a lot of sense that the bible is a collection of stories about good and evil experiences. That would put the bible on the same line as artists creatively expressing their experiences.
There is no evidence of any supernatural entity though.
It would make a lot of sense that the bible is a collection of stories about good and evil experiences. That would put the bible on the same line as artists creatively expressing their experiences.
There is no evidence of any supernatural entity though.
ChristopherColumbus
Master Don Juan
Well, I always found the ontological argument interesting though inconclusive. Yet my beliefs do not rest entirely on reason.
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ChristopherColumbus
Master Don Juan
It is from the moral sense of the reality of good and evil that we infer some ground and cause for it. The attempt to reduce it to something else such as natural or social causes leads to all sorts of absurdities.
The same is with our aesthetic sense. It is irreducible, and is something in itself. Confronted with it, we're constrained to believe that in some way Beauty really exists.
I suspect this is why art and religion were closely intertwined... until they weren't. And then they both went bad.
Serenity
Moderator
@ChristopherColumbus They both went bad? Art is at least still honest about what it is, religion often claims to be something it isn't. I believe both are derived from reality though, but it does not accurately represent it as religion often claims it does.
Bible_Belt
Master Don Juan
I joined the Christian Legal Society in law school, mostly because I felt sorry for them. Religious people are outcasts in liberal academic environments. Hardly anyone would come to their meetings. They gave me their "outline bank." It was a CD of notes for all the classes, taken from previous students. Professors teach the same class over and over, so it was like having a script for each class, making it a tremendous resource. I think I must have been the first person in the history of the club to reason that if Jesus commanded us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and I had notes that everyone else would want...which I got from Club Jesus...then I should share them with everyone else.
So that's what I did. I burned 120 or so CDs, and over the next couple of months handed them out to all of my classmates. And it's important to note, the law school grading environment is based on competition. Your class rank is your grade. Everyone can't get a good grade. Professors are forced to place a bell curve distribution on the school's mandated median gpa, which in my school's case was a 2.6 - most students got a C. The only way to get a good grade was to do better than everyone else, so it is fiercely competitive. No one helps anyone else. How stupid of me, right? What a moron.
The funniest thing happened, though, because after that it was like I walked on water Law school classes are based around everyone doing hours of homework for fear of the professor randomly picking them to humiliate that day. I would walk up to the hallway outside class and see the one kid desperately flipping through the reading and obviously sweating because he didn't do his his homework. Then I'd point at whoever was standing next to him, white magic power of Jesus lightning bolts would fly from my finger tips, and I'd command him, "You! Give your homework to him. He needs it." And of course he would, because he owed me a favor. Other students would come up to me and ask in amazement, "How are you so well-connected?"
For last two years of the 3-year law school experience, I hardly did homework at all. When the professor called on me, everyone else would whisper me the answers. I remember one prof grilling me for 45 minutes about cases I hadn't read. He knew what was going on, but he thought that if he just kept firing off more difficult questions, then people would stop helping me, which didn't happen. Sorry, teach, I'm invincible...power of Jesus and stuff.
Is God real? I can't tell you for sure. But I can take the things his son said and use them to jedi mind-fvck the universe into doing my bidding. That is real enough for me.
So that's what I did. I burned 120 or so CDs, and over the next couple of months handed them out to all of my classmates. And it's important to note, the law school grading environment is based on competition. Your class rank is your grade. Everyone can't get a good grade. Professors are forced to place a bell curve distribution on the school's mandated median gpa, which in my school's case was a 2.6 - most students got a C. The only way to get a good grade was to do better than everyone else, so it is fiercely competitive. No one helps anyone else. How stupid of me, right? What a moron.
The funniest thing happened, though, because after that it was like I walked on water
Law school classes are based around everyone doing hours of homework for fear of the professor randomly picking them to humiliate that day. I would walk up to the hallway outside class and see the one kid desperately flipping through the reading and obviously sweating because he didn't do his his homework. Then I'd point at whoever was standing next to him, white magic power of Jesus lightning bolts would fly from my finger tips, and I'd command him, "You! Give your homework to him. He needs it." And of course he would, because he owed me a favor. Other students would come up to me and ask in amazement, "How are you so well-connected?"For last two years of the 3-year law school experience, I hardly did homework at all. When the professor called on me, everyone else would whisper me the answers. I remember one prof grilling me for 45 minutes about cases I hadn't read. He knew what was going on, but he thought that if he just kept firing off more difficult questions, then people would stop helping me, which didn't happen. Sorry, teach, I'm invincible...power of Jesus and stuff.
Is God real? I can't tell you for sure. But I can take the things his son said and use them to jedi mind-fvck the universe into doing my bidding. That is real enough for me.
wifehunter
Master Don Juan
God is perfect, I am not.
taiyuu_otoko
Master Don Juan
That's not Jesus, that's reciprocity and social proof. You gave CD's to everybody, invoking the law of reciprocity, making people want to repay the favor.Then everybody saw everybody repaying the favor, and that gave you massive social proof, which turned into authority, as enough social proof tends to lead to authority.
This is why FDR passed the new deal so easily he'd been doing people favors for years, and they owed him.
It was also why Jimmy Carter was so ineffective. He had virtually the same ideology of FDR, but nobody owed him squat.
Charlie Wilson's war is also a good example of how the law of reciprocity works.
It's also how the Hare Krisna's got so rich so quickly. They begged in airports and never got squat, until they started giving away flowers FIRST, making people feel COMPELLED to repay the favor.
There's an interesting book called "Christ's Ventriloquist" that argue that Jesus never existed, and if He did, then the stuff that is attributed to him is pretty much made up, mostly by guys like St. Paul who had Jesus saying stuff so it would be easier for Paul to build the early church.
Kind of like how cult leaders tell the young girls in their flock that "god told me you have to have sex with me" to get laid by the younguns.
It's easier to convince people of something when they quote a holy man or son of God or famous person, even if it's a made up quote, than it is if the person said it myself.
"I think you should do unto others the way you want them to do unto you," sounds pretty weak.
"Jesus says to do unto others as you would have done to you," sounds much better.
I think God is a hypnotist, and he wants to convince us He doesn't exist so we'll stop using Him as a crutch and finally figure sh!t out on our own.
ChristopherColumbus
Master Don Juan
We are bipedal bipolar animals. Neither an Epicurean, nor a Stoic be... rather be both.
It's hard to be dogmatic, one way or the other, about God. If it helps you live your life happily and abundantly, then believe on pragmatic grounds.
It's hard to be dogmatic, one way or the other, about God. If it helps you live your life happily and abundantly, then believe on pragmatic grounds.
speed dawg
Master Don Juan
Things I see as fact:
1 - Evidence points toward an intelligent designer.
2 - Evidence points to the existence of Jesus Christ, a Jew who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, led a sinless life, was crucified and came back to life.
3 - All other religions are based on something a non-perfect human did.
It just makes sense to believe God and Jesus Christ. At least since of the beginning of THIS world, which, by all accounts, is only about 10,000 years old.
1 - Evidence points toward an intelligent designer.
2 - Evidence points to the existence of Jesus Christ, a Jew who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, led a sinless life, was crucified and came back to life.
3 - All other religions are based on something a non-perfect human did.
It just makes sense to believe God and Jesus Christ. At least since of the beginning of THIS world, which, by all accounts, is only about 10,000 years old.
Sho-No-Luv
Senior Don Juan
Well, I can tell you that demons certainly exist, unless you watched the show supernatural, where demons themselves weren't even sure of Gods existence
Tenacity
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I believe a CREATOR exists, but I don't think he has direct control over the day-to-day operations of our lives. I believe the CREATOR setup the process (intelligent design) and it's the individual thoughts, beliefs, and actions of MANKIND that determines how our daily lives function.Yes, he is everywhere
or
No, he is no where
so yes, God does exist!
- So for example, guys praying to God to "bring them a good woman" is stupid because I don't believe God has control over our day-to-day operations. Instead of praying to God to bring you a good woman, you should seek out some other type of MAN (or WOMAN) who can provide guidance in helping you find a good woman or bringing you a good woman directly.
- Another example, instead of praying to God for "financial blessings and to get your financial house in order", you should seek out supply/demand to figure out what skills you can provide to the market in exchange for the market providing you income/revenue. You would then pay off any costs of supplying said demand from the income/revenue you received and the profits (minus taxes) will be what you have left over. Then you would seek out budgeting, spending control, etc. All of these are MAN-MADE principles based on Social Sciences.
- Don't pray to God for peace, seek out a group of men (an army) that can help bring about peace.
- Don't pray to God for healing, seek out a man (doctor) that can treat the symptoms, explain the disease, and whose partnered with other men (drug manufacturers) that can eliminate the disease.
Make sense?
mrgoodstuff
Master Don Juan
This whole praying for "god" to bring a "good woman" simply allows you to position yourself mentally to see it when it's there. It's not like things magically happen. You still have to be the right man that's ready for it and position yourself correctly to receive it.
Tenacity
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Correct, so what does praying have to do with that at all? Shouldn't a guy focus his energies and time on deciding the type of job he wants, becoming the man for the job, and putting himself out there on the market to look for the job or to have the "job" bump into him?
mrgoodstuff
Master Don Juan
Praying is meditation, just puts you in the zone.