Is there a god/Allah/Supreme being?
Discussion
toppstuff said:
But what about when pain and suffering arise where it was nothing to do with free will?
I think most people mature and come of age when they realise that bad things happen to good people. No doubt a crisis of faith can occur when the same thing is experienced at a personal level.
And for many, most religions fail to address this question.
Because he is testing us! And before anyone replies...no, I don't buy it either.
You're a funny bugger, you bearded omnipotent one!"
There is no being called God.
God is your conscience..
Your thinking mind.
Deep down inside we all control our own destiny,thoughts,emotions and love for each other.
God is for the weak who dont have faith in themselves.
I believe in mind power.
No life form is superior to another.
Therefore we are all of the same existance and should become a supreme being as a whole.
and if you make sense of that you are a better man than me
(phew off to get a drink!!!)
God is your conscience..
Your thinking mind.
Deep down inside we all control our own destiny,thoughts,emotions and love for each other.
God is for the weak who dont have faith in themselves.
I believe in mind power.
No life form is superior to another.
Therefore we are all of the same existance and should become a supreme being as a whole.
and if you make sense of that you are a better man than me
(phew off to get a drink!!!)
andy mac said:
After some more googling, found out the date that the Church decided that Immaculate conception was a 'truth' is 1854...
<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm">www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception</a>
Surely you can see that the church manipulates these things as it sees fit? removing books, and abridging others?
Hi Andy
The event you mention in 1854 was a papal constitution that declared officially that the Immaculate Conception was truth beyond any doubt. But it doesn't mean that people didn't believe that to be the truth before 1854. Most Catholic doctrine takes ages to become 'official' such is the level of scrutiny and debate concerning the relevant scriptures relating to a concept (such as the Immaculate Conception). I agree 1800 odd years is a long time to mull over a topic, but once declared dogmatic it remains so forever. Further down the page you mentioned it gives the details of the different occasions over time when the Immaculate Conception was taken as valid and true ~1000 years before it became dogma. So Church leaders haven't pleased themselves for their own ends, but only confirmed after long debate and study what people have been thinking and practising for a long time.
This is the reason I stopped posting in the other thread, there is a lot more to an area of doctrine than a read through of a web page. There are loads of things to understand and have clear in your mind when reading stuff like the web page you gave the link to. Also how the Church works in defining and declaring dogmas and doctrine is important. Like the Christian chap said on here a few pages back, you cannot get everything into a post on PH and it ends up going round in circles.
I am totally NOT trying to be patronising in saying the above; there are lots of areas I don't understand fully myself, though like any other huge and deep topic you can only start with the fundamentals and build and learn from there I think.
With reference to your comment that the Church is corrupt because it is run by people - any organisation irrespective of the field it is engaged in has some degree of corruption within it....purely by virtue of the fact that humans (along with their intrinsic deficiencies) run and are in charge of the show. Priests, and religious are as human as us, but they are working within an organisation having the highest moral values and standards. So any failings of priests, etc, such as the abhorrent child abuse cases and other awful happenings are all the more apparent. Don't get me wrong I think the people committing these crimes should be punished to the extent of the law just like a member of the laity doing such things should be. My point is that just because they are priests or a nun doesn’t take away their human condition and all the awful traits that go with it. This leads to the fact that the Christian journey is the long road of trying to 'better' yourself if you know what I mean...... though many people live by Christian virtues but do not subscribe to been religious as you say yourself. But this does not negate the fact that they are 'Christian' virtues.
The 2nd website you linked to is a very good source for finding out more stuff about topics that people have negative issues with regards to Catholicism.....whether it changes their mind on a topic or makes them oppose something more, either way it gives the potential for stimulating debate.
Have a good weekend.
Best Regards
Martyn.
>> Edited by MOD500 on Friday 9th July 17:57
V6GTO said:
V6GTO: pain and suffering arise because God gives us free will, which includes the freedom to act the arse.
Not in response to anyone in particular: science and religion are orthogonal.
What has our free will got to do with innocent babies being born into pain and suffering?.
And what of the billions of souls who are born into a world where they have no notion of god, and no culture that speaks of him? Where they will live their entire lives with no exposure whatsover to the God of the Christian faith.
How can they believe in him when they have never even heard of him?
Considering the fact that the Christian house rules say that only if you believe in him will you go to heaven, it seems a bit harsh on those who have never even heard anyone mention the guy !
You can imagine several billion Chinese at the gates to heaven saying :
Q; "why can't we come in, we have led good and virtuous lives !"
A: Sorry, you can't come in because you did'nt renounce evil and pledge your faith to God almighty and his son Jesus Christ. Its the rules.
Q; Who ? Never heard of him ! My mum said that if I paid respect to the buddha, lived in peace and respected every living thing, I'd be alright. It hardly seems fair to be damned for not believing in someone I've never heard of, does it? "
A: Sorry, its the rules. Tough. Next !
There's a Not the Nine'O'Clock News sketch about this.
IIRC it goes something like this: Devil (Rowan Atkinson with a clipboard) standing at the gates of hell in front of a crowd. "Come on line up, Christians over there, I'm afraid the Jews were right. Atheists? Come on, atheists over here, I bet you're all feeling pretty bloody stupid right now...Etc etc"
No doubt someone has the time to google for the script
IIRC it goes something like this: Devil (Rowan Atkinson with a clipboard) standing at the gates of hell in front of a crowd. "Come on line up, Christians over there, I'm afraid the Jews were right. Atheists? Come on, atheists over here, I bet you're all feeling pretty bloody stupid right now...Etc etc"
No doubt someone has the time to google for the script
tvrohtvr said:
The earth is not old enough for all these lifeforms to have evolved from one so called point of origin, look around you insects, birds, mammals, fish, plants, trees, germs, bacteria, viruses, etc etc etc
And your evidence for that claim is? You don't think four to five thousand million years is enough to do the trick? That's roughly 25% of the age of the Universe.
Who says life came from one point of origin? If life is a natural consequence of certain conditions, then anywhere that has those conditions should see life develop. After that, the local environment plays a part in the evolution of different species.
If we don't accept the idea of evolution, what's the alternative? Adam & Eve? There's these two people, presumably of one race, placed on Earth x years ago. How can you spin forwards to today and account for the differences we see in people depending on where they live? If Adam & Eve were black, why am I white? If they were white, why are Chinese people not?
More to the point, if God created life in the form of Adam and Eve, why do we have lesser forms of life, from wasps down to the ebola virus? If God was running around creating life, why would he create basic organisms as well as humans? Where's the sense in that? Why bother with marsupials just for Australia? Why give the dolphin a pectoral fin with a bone structure strikingly similar to the human hand or bird/bat wing? Why do that?
toppstuff said:
Considering the fact that the Christian house rules say that only if you believe in him will you go to heaven, it seems a bit harsh on those who have never even heard anyone mention the guy !
You can imagine several billion Chinese at the gates to heaven saying :
Q; "why can't we come in, we have led good and virtuous lives !"
A: Sorry, you can't come in because you did'nt renounce evil and pledge your faith to God almighty and his son Jesus Christ. Its the rules.
Q; Who ? Never heard of him ! My mum said that if I paid respect to the buddha, lived in peace and respected every living thing, I'd be alright. It hardly seems fair to be damned for not believing in someone I've never heard of, does it? "
A: Sorry, its the rules. Tough. Next !
Absolute quality toppstuff! Can see now that St. Peter is a public sector employee.
hornet said:
If we don't accept the idea of evolution, what's the alternative? Adam & Eve? There's these two people, presumably of one race, placed on Earth x years ago. How can you spin forwards to today and account for the differences we see in people depending on where they live? If Adam & Eve were black, why am I white? If they were white, why are Chinese people not?
And thats a bit of a killer isn't it? No way at all to explain the variation unless either evolution exists or all the 1 billion orientals are imposters of some sort.
>> Edited by Control on Friday 9th July 19:41
MOD500 said:
But it doesn't mean that people didn't believe that to be the truth before 1854.
How many people? or rather what percentage of the population? I would expect that a small percentage would have believed it for a long time, but more and more with time. What I'm trying to get at is that probably less than 10% of the population of the world believe that NOW, so how many believers does it take before it's spouted as fact? You must understand that people who believe the bible, and even fewer believe the church, are in a minority. Most of us can see reason. Most of us can think for ourselves, we do not need a backup plan to the questions 'Is this it?' and 'You mean that when I die that's the end?'
Mmmmmmm....suddenly it's gone very quiet on the believer front.
Please don't get me wrong, I am in no way anti religious. If religious people, as a whole, practiced what they preached this planet would be a wonderful place to be. No wars, love of your fellow man(or woman) tollerence and caring.
Instead we get the exact opposite.Kkilling in the name of religion makes the second world war look like a bun fight. Total hypocracy!
Martin.
Please don't get me wrong, I am in no way anti religious. If religious people, as a whole, practiced what they preached this planet would be a wonderful place to be. No wars, love of your fellow man(or woman) tollerence and caring.
Instead we get the exact opposite.Kkilling in the name of religion makes the second world war look like a bun fight. Total hypocracy!
Martin.
ScoobyZoom said:
dont talk utter bollox...
most worthless post on the thread, try reading peoples comments before you leap in.... arse
Why thanks for your kind words
Why would i want to read 11 pages of "bollox"??
The thread started with a question and i gave my answer.
As for being a arse you might want to look a little closer to home, Mr ScoobyZoomy
V6GTO said:
Let's stay 'On Thread', huh, chaps. Don't spoil the best thread in months!
Oh it's all gone quiet over there, (on the IF front)
It's all gone quiet over there,
Oh it's all gone quiet,
All gone quiet,
All gone quiet over there!
well, I'm a believer but have not always been such a person. Was dragged through the Catholisism torture training and mind bending and had pretty well decided by 20 something there was no God because of all the plausible arguments put forward by you unbelieving lot..it's much easier to swallow science as it's a touchy feely on-the-webpage piece of information.
But some things will happen in your life that no amount of science will have an answer for but you will try and explain it as some random will power redeeming exercise.
Well, 3 years ago my wife (who is a damn saint compared to me and any woman I care to think about) no reason to smite her down as she was, she had multiple seizures and asperated (vomited into the lungs), goes into coma, blood cells move away from lubgs to protect themselves (evolution taking over here) doctors put her in ICU and we watch over the first couple of days as she dives towards the end.
there's nothng science is doing except keeping the body alive and even then not doing a very good job.
I actually use my brain for a change and don't sleep for 4 days watching her and checking the internet to see what all the drugs going into her are doing and I monitor the scientific equip VERY closely as it is telling me whether she is going downhill or not...she is and nothing is stopping it.
Doctor says to go home and prepare son for his mothers end as I'm doing no good there, they are now prepared to offer me the option of turning the machines off , I refuse to leave her side and am at my lowest despair when for no explicable reason the heart and kidney situation improved ever so slightly (straight after I made a pact with God, if he existed)
You know what, that was good enough for me, I believe in science, and human willpower, and aberrations and all sorts of other things but what happened in that moment of reaching out in despair to the only possible being who could intervene to stop the inevitable and got an immediate response is not chance, co-incidence or any other scientific explanation, it was a moment when God says, if you want proof try this, you can choose to believe it was me or not, but all the medical and scientific intellect said she was dying (I saw 2 other people who were in better condition than her die while in ICU during that period as I was watching their monitors as well - comparison testing as it were to see what her chances were)
Sorry for the long dribble but proof comes to sceptics like myself in very strange ways, you really shouldn't need such trauma to convince yourself that all this came together by chance
I dont believe in any gods but its impossible to prove at the moment, for me it defies belief that anyone could believe the mumbo jumbo of any religion. Its like fairies and goblins (oh bugger they dont exist either??) Religion is just a great tool for controlling people often with extremely good sets of rules but any that lead to a god are claptrap. Wake up and smell the coffe folks. Man is god and the sooner you all realise this the better. We could make this planet absolutely fantastic instead often because of stubborness its a sh***le. This of course is just my opinion and as an understanding sort of bloke I will respect yours as long as is doesnt stop me doing what I want
CAR 7 said:
ScoobyZoom said:
dont talk utter bollox...
most worthless post on the thread, try reading peoples comments before you leap in.... arse
Why thanks for your kind words
Why would i want to read 11 pages of "bollox"??
The thread started with a question and i gave my answer.
As for being a arse you might want to look a little closer to home, Mr ScoobyZoomy
because thats the whole idea of a thread, you read people comments and post something worthwhile, before leaping in with crap...
get back in your box
oh and as you were bothered to read my post, there are plenty more people on that page saying it was rubbish too.
Have a crap weeked
>> Edited by ScoobyZoom on Saturday 10th July 09:17
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