Quick Poll - Do you believe in God?

[robvalue]

I think the parable teaches the message, "God wins whatever, but you probably lose."

[charlesjohnson3]

Honestly if "God" was real the world would differ drastically from how it is today. Because people's prayers would actually be answered. I believe there is no such thing as any type of higher power than a human. No supernatural being exists that people can worship. You sew how many different religions there are. If God was really real there wouldn't be so many different ones. People made these religions up centuries ago.

[VAN BELLE Jean Marc]

I tend to be short and quick...

Ultimately, what this parable is saying, is that we can never know when god is offering assistance..."

This was not a (wiser) parable, it is just a (more human) joke. Most of my religious friends (very, very few, 5 in total?) feel in the joke that God is NOT offering assistance but we as men can help eachother in a very restricted way : we will all die, some of us will have cancer, accidents or die 'naturally'.

The person that died, believed in a god offering assistance. WE laugh at him this way (i do not think God is placed somewhere to have even a smile or an advisiv role, otherwise we reflect a human to something as God; for me he does not even have to exist, sometimes i just believe what i felt as a child. Sometimes moslims ask me 'when did you convert?' and then i answer: I cannot convert, that would be a total lie, sometimes i feel the same as moslims do describe or what is told in some books. Eg. when a (military dangerous) Jew asked Mohammed: "What is that about your God 'Allah', is he another one that that of 'ours' or that of the christians". We cannot see if the answer of Mohammed was true of heart or under fear for war, but he should have answered: "No, we all have the same God".

That is exactly what i feel since i died: "If there is a God or if there are Gods, it must be 'all the same'. But it cannot be what results as thoughts out of our mind. For me it is not essential anymore for the moment i will die, but perhaps (perhaps now!) it seems to be that i can use it for living faster, deeper and knowing things that would to many lifeyears to find myself on my own out. Why would those millions of ancesters be totally wrong? Are we smarter then them or do we think more 'in chains'? I fear, the more materia and techniques we have and know, the more we think and talk 'chained' and arrogant. NOT free, not modest.

Perhaps we are a part of one 'human construction in our thoughts' that can be called God that contains 'good' and which can be 'bad' at the same time for others. In the beginning there was logos (the word). In the end there will be no words. Perhaps I have to write this booklet with these words to express what i cannot express either?

Do you believe in God? What the hell is God? How would i know? Will i believe tomorrow in God? Did i ever believe in God and why did i?

Do you feel a God? And afterwards, do you feel that feeling fade away again? I lost some 10 years my believe and then found it back, exactly the same way as if i 'just' had believed what was in some holy books (they can be contradictory also, i do not want to lie about this). So with 10 years 'lost of time' i became a very strong believer via my atheism. Nevertheless I staid also a nihilist and gave sence to my live because that is also the result of being very deeply a nihilist (if there is no sence, we become a sort of God that can give ourselves sence to our lives).

Sorry, it is becoming a large poll instead of a quicky.

Mea minima culpa... +je

[robvalue]

Honestly if "God" was real the world would differ drastically from how it is today. Because people's prayers would actually be answered. I believe there is no such thing as any type of higher power than a human. No supernatural being exists that people can worship. You sew how many different religions there are. If God was really real there wouldn't be so many different ones. People made these religions up centuries ago.

Yes, that is a good argument for atheism. I heard it somewhere else recently too. When something is true, opinions on it, on the whole, tend to converge. The fact that religion keeps on diverging points to the opposite.

Anyone can make up a religion anytime they want, believing absolutely anything, and claim it is true because they have faith in it. Good system?

[IATIA]

Hail Bob!

[VAN BELLE Jean Marc]

I believe there is no such thing as any type of higher power than a human. No supernatural being exists that people can worship.

Whoop... "higher power than a human"?

I have problems with such arrogance: When the sun will die, you will see man has NO power to survive. Suppose there is some AIDS virus variant that can be spread by mosquitoes, suppose a large 'stone' falls on earth... men will end existing as fast as the 'fire' goes.

We have not enough power to live on another planet, the people of Mars will be dead in some years, I fear (i really hope i am wrong, really i do, but this is a way of atheist thinking in deduction terms).

Life is rather complicated, and a human can think rather simple. None of us can build a car on its own, can make a computer on its own, knows about chemistry and quantities of about repairing the machines to get oil out of the soil. No one can fly of us without enormous help.

My dog understands me, but me myself, cannot even understand her!

We have very less 'power'. When we get the flue or are ill, we think we are dying. When women has to bear children with before they can take care of theirselves (that's why we are born to early and helpless, horses have not that much brains and lesser fine motorics in hands and tongue/language so they can be fully beared in the wumb) they suffer also more than eg. an ape.

When nature has a real accident, we die immediately. When we drink too much liters water, we get poisoned, when we eat wrong things or move to less or 'cancer too much or nitpick on everything and everybody' we get cancer and die.

When we fall from 10 meters or from 1 meter on our head, we brake a lot and need months to repair.

We can not run fast, we can not eat much, we are lazy...

But perhaps here we CAN have a difference: If i would believe humans have higher power than whatever, you can ONLY be atheist anymore.

Robvalue, charlesjohnson3, can you follow me, or am i wrong?

Because i also get that arrogant when working on scientific matters where i often think 'I know now!' and at that particular time, my deeper religion in me calls: "Take care of yourself: If you know now, you close your eyes and you don't listen anymore to others (or other members here).

Is this right:


"I believe there is no such thing as any type of higher power than a human. " means "I do not believe in God" and leads to (wrong) arrogance?

[IATIA]

"I believe there is no such thing as any type of higher power than a human. " means "I do not believe in God" and leads to (wrong) arrogance?

I am sure the intent was higher awareness, though that might not be absolutely true either. With the billions of galaxies out there, some may have humanoid lifeforms that have a higher awareness than us, but certainly not at the 'god level'.

[robvalue]

I agree life is very fragile, and we may seem great on this planet but in the grand scheme of things we are nothing.

I couldn't even guess what kind of other life may exists in our reality, or in others, if there are any others. I wouldn't presume we are the most intelligent life form in the universe, with so many other planets and potential forms of life that seems unlikely.

The problem with "God" is that it carries all this ridiculous baggage like omnipotent, Omniscient... Such things are stupid to suppose and don't even make sense. There could be something that made this reality, but we could only guess what it is. I think we shouldn't worry about that, because it is irrelevant, and concentrate on sorting out the problems we have on our own. Not waiting around for invisible friends to do things for us.

---

I think overall we can be very stupid, because we run away with using new technology before thinking through the consequences. Many years later the fallout is felt; and at the rate we are going it wouldn't take much before things are irreparable.

[DeadChannel]

No. I do not believe in God.

[VAN BELLE Jean Marc]

No. I do not believe in God.

I have a problem with this magnificent question:

If you do NOT believe in God, what did you learn God "would be". I think you say I do not believe in 'the' God I heard my parents believed in (or something like that). Or did you read something about 'God' and then you said immediately: "Oh, I cannot believe in this kind of God".

Suppose I ask you: do you believe your parents love you. You cannot proof anything about 'love', or worse: you see later on they begin to hate you. Would you then say: "I do not believe in love"?

Einstein had the same problem. In his last years, he changed from
"I believe in God" to another sentence:
"I do NOT believe in a personal God."

Very weird for me and I felt a big problem: Einstein tells indirectedly that he believes by telling what he does not believe in. And that's the same way he constructed during his life his "absolute relativity principle" (and his "general relativity principle", but the last one is too difficult for me to really understand too, so I do NOT believe in non-relativity).

Can you slowly think about this topic.

Me neither, i do NOT believe in a personal God. Very often, i do even not know what i believe in, but that is the essence (essere = to be, cogito ergo sum, non cogito ergo non sum).

PS: i really try to believe you when you say you do not believe in God, but i cannot comprise what you mean then with 'God' (who learned you that word, were it foolish perhaps young people?)