[The below are personal opinions. I would suggest doubting them in every why possible.]

What if when god created man he didn’t understand us? Of course if this was true it would negate my base religion, but I’ll deal with that in my own way. What if he gave us something that he hadn’t given any of his previous creations, for the sake of this let’s say Angels? At one point in the old testament god completely blots out all human life on the earth except for the most strictly religious family, Noah, because everyone else was too damn evil to live. Later, even Noah starts to falls out of grace with god because he too becomes “evil”.

Let’s say, when god created angels he made them the perfect servants. They worshiped him with every thought and every move. They wanted nothing more than to please god and where unable to sin. But now there’s humans. We have a choice in the matter. We can choose to sin and most of us like to sin, but again god didn’t understand the choice he gave us. So he wiped out everyone except Noah, a man who I’m sure would cut-off any body part he thought god didn’t like.

A couple thousand years go by and god starts to understand a little more, but there’s something’s he is simple incapable of knowing. God wouldn’t have known, for instance, what it’s like to eat a fish, or have sex, or (and this is important) die. If your “all powerful” and you want to know what it’s like to do these things, what do you do? You create a human body, of course. Let’s call that body Jesus. Through Jesus, god feels sin for the first time and starts to understand his broken creation more fully, but there’s still one thing that god hasn’t felt. Death. Have you ever read the part of the Christian bible that describes the death of Christ? The sky goes dark and various other big scary things happen. I think those are the repercussions of a being that has been since the beginning of time feeling what it’s like to die.

Then, with gods newfound understand of humanity, god decides that humans simply don’t respond well to having an almighty figure lording over them, and god decides to change his position. God no longer makes burning bushes or rains fire from the sky, but instead he watches and does his best to make humans fix their own damn world.

One of his supposed properties is omniscience, which completely destroys everything you just said.

Yes. I mentioned before that I'm willing to conceive that my, or any other religion my be wrong. My thought on the subject is I won’t truly know until I'm dead, so until then I get to decide what’s my truth.

I like to look at it this way: Humans are imperfect, I think we know that, and humans have created most of the religious principles; therefore, it’s very possible that humans have gotten a simple and straight forward message mixed-up and garbled along the way.

[edit: A couple spelling and grammer corrections.]

[This message has been edited by chaos_guy (edited 02-24-2004).]

A few things garbled?

How many?

Which ones?

Why would a god allow the message it inspired and is its only message on Earth to be garbled?

How do you know the entire message isn't incorrect?

How do you reconcile the above answers with the fact that there is no objective evidence for the existence of a god?

I'm glad to see I've found someone who has as many questions as me.

I've always imagined that god probably wouldn't care for organized religion that much, but no matter what I thought it would be nothing more than an opinion. My thoughts on gods existence is completely personal as well. When I've been it situations where all hope is lost, I've always felt that god was there with me. I also understand how worshiping a deity may be primitive, but I'm willing to deal with that alone.

You "felt he was there with you"?

How do you know it was the presence of the Christian God you felt?

Nice to see your taking the suggestion to doubt everything I say.

How could I call something I've never seen the christian god? It's always possible that it was Brahma, or Ra, or Allah, or possible something that hasn't been named yet. Like I said, I won't really know until I'm dead.

I'm a skeptic and an atheist, doubting's what I do.

You obviously believe in the Christian god; you're referring to angels, Noah, the Bible, the crucifixion, etc. as real things.

Why, if your only evidence is something you've "felt"?

You can know a lot of things conceptualy, but experiencing is a whole other realm. You can know what it's like to have sex with a woman, but experiencing sex is so much better don't you think?

Chaos_guy got's a good point, but he got's the timeline distorted somewhat. Since we are supposedly made in the creator's image and likeness. What if we were created to be an experiencing vessel for the creator?

quote:Originally posted by Craftian:

I'm a skeptic and an atheist, doubting's what I do.

You obviously believe in the Christian god; you're referring to angels, Noah, the Bible, the crucifixion, etc. as real things.

Why, if your only evidence is something you've "felt"?

There is nothing more proof positive than the way you feel about something. Whatever you feel about something it is so. If you feel you don't know then you don't know. If you feel happy then you are happy. If you feel sad then you are exactly that. One should not discount feeling, but feeling is personal and is not easily communicated. I think this is because feeling is on a higher level than our yells and grunts we use to communicate. If you think our level of communication is so good, then you haven't been in a college level calculus course.

Feeling is good for knowing what you feel, and that's about it. People's feelings have no effect upon the reality of the universe (outside of their own minds, of course).

People of thousands of religions and spiritual backgrounds have all had "feelings" which confirmed their faith for them. They can't all be correct.

But I do agree with you, communication through language is very weak. Unfortunately, it's the only option we have. And calculus is the sucks.

quote:Originally posted by Craftian:

Feeling is good for knowing what you feel, and that's about it. People's feelings have no effect upon the reality of the universe (outside of their own minds, of course).

People of thousands of religions and spiritual backgrounds have all had "feelings" which confirmed their faith for them. They can't all be correct.

But I do agree with you, communication through language is very weak. Unfortunately, it's the only option we have. And calculus is the sucks.

Feeling has no effect upon the reality of the universe? Feelings are the only things that make humanity human. Feeling is what created this universe. Emotions caused by feelings are the most powerful forces that we experience. It's what causes people to go into "holy wars" and bring down buildings with airplanes. I never saw logic do that. At best logic only wins chess games.

quote:Originally posted by ilbastardoh:

Feeling is what created this universe.

If you mean that in a literal sense, I have to ask you to back up this claim.

If you mean it in a metaphorical "it's how we got where we are today", I won't deny that emotion has a significant impact on human actions.

quote:It's what causes people to go into "holy wars" and bring down buildings with airplanes. I never saw logic do that.

It may have been emotion that caused those planes to be hijacked (not really a point in its favour), but it was stresses and temperatures that brought the buildings down.

quote:At best logic only wins chess games.

Right. Or creates the computer you're using right now. Or discovered the principles of hygeine. Or that gives you light at night, heat when it's cold and food when you're hungry. Or...

quote:It may have been emotion that caused those planes to be hijacked (not really a point in its favour), but it was stresses and temperatures that brought the buildings down.[/b]

Well stresses and temperature exist regardless(remember gravity?), but it was the desire to bring them down that did so.

quote:Originally posted by Craftian:

Right. Or creates the computer you're using right now. Or discovered the principles of hygeine. Or that gives you light at night, heat when it's cold and food when you're hungry. Or...

The truth is that the logic that creates those things are a byproduct nessecity.

And as far as feeling creating this universe, i'll say that it's my own idea, and can neither be proven or disproven, to me it just is.

[This message has been edited by ilbastardoh (edited 02-26-2004).]

quote:Originally posted by ilbastardoh:

it just is.

Surely that's a cliche by now. Is it something people say when they can't be bothered to further explain? I wonder.

You are absolutely right.

I don't know instead of being told how things are, like we have all our life, why don't we figure it out for ourselves, or can we not be bothered to think?

Language is a cliche, but we don't consider it that so we don't seem unsophisticated, maybe, but it doesn't matter, that's just my opinion. In fact i'm surprised this forum gets as many posts as it does, all these arguments and statements have been run into the ground.

[This message has been edited by ilbastardoh (edited 02-27-2004).]

quote:Originally posted by ilbastardoh:

In fact i'm surprised this forum gets as many posts as it does, all these arguments and statements have been run into the ground.



I know it's a shame, and really interesting topics are rarely discussed, even tho there are so many more to discuss. And then when you attempt to start an original topic you get insulted by people who don't understand the ideas.



[This message has been edited by ---Beany--- (edited 02-27-2004).]

The Logic that runs a computer isn't very similar to the logic that drives philosophy. Low level discrete math's FILO stacks and data sets aren't very important to proving why we cry when we watch a sad movie (if you're a pussy like me).

The logic philosophers use is just words. The only people who create things with words are computer programmers and gods.

quote:Originally posted by theBishop:

The logic philosophers use is just words. The only people who create things with words are computer programmers and gods.

What do you mean gods create things with words?

I'm referring the Genesis 1. "And God Said..." lots of stuff and it was so. According to Genesis, God essentially spoke, or "willed" the universe into existance.

quote:Originally posted by theBishop:

I'm referring the Genesis 1. "And God Said..." lots of stuff and it was so. According to Genesis, God essentially spoke, or "willed" the universe into existance.

Ah, well in that case you're only gonna confuse people. It was gods will that brought existance into being. Speaking and willing are 2 different things.

quote:Originally posted by Craftian:

I'm a skeptic and an atheist, doubting's what I do.

You obviously believe in the Christian god; you're referring to angels, Noah, the Bible, the crucifixion, etc. as real things.

Why, if your only evidence is something you've "felt"?

Doubting a good thing. I only wish more people were willing to look at the world through the eyes of a skeptic. (not literally of course...)

I worship at a Christian church and I'm most familiar with that religion, but I have some problems with it and other religions. That's why I try to keep an open mind.

And as for my feeling, frankly I can't prove it. I don't think I'll even fully understand it in this life. That's why I don't force my views on anyone else. I do, however, try to make people look at it from a different angle.

chaos_guy, props.

This kinda gave me the empression that we are an expirement by god. Just so happened that something happened that it didn't expect.

This also puts god a selfish point of view. "Damn it, they are not worshiping me. Choice... Ah kcuf it i'm going down there."

i think to sort out all the fighting we should get all are gods and put them in a wressling ring and see who is the champ!