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RE: Do you wish God was real?
June 26, 2015 at 8:09 am
@ Neimenovic: Well, there's hamster-loving (affection), hamster-loving (interspecies affection) and hamster-loving (interspecies ingestion).
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Do you wish God was real?
June 26, 2015 at 8:14 am
(June 26, 2015 at 8:09 am)Stimbo Wrote: @ Neimenovic: Well, there's hamster-loving (affection), hamster-loving (interspecies affection) and hamster-loving (interspecies ingestion).
I'm pretty sure Alex objects to at least one of those.....
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RE: Do you wish God was real?
June 26, 2015 at 9:25 am
My only problem with the first kind is that there are already too many hamsters in captivity
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
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RE: Do you wish God was real?
June 26, 2015 at 9:29 am
I understand that at least round here, hamsters are a foreign species requiring culling if they escape into the wild. That ought to please UKIP.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Do you wish God was real?
June 26, 2015 at 9:47 am
(June 26, 2015 at 5:39 am)paulpablo Wrote: There's this being who was up there forever who can do everything then he all of a sudden decides to say let their be light, why does he say let their be light why didn't he just think it?
This part of the Genesis story gives me a chuckle, how did sound waves transmit his voice since air didn't exist yet?
What was god speaking to? I guess god didn't really create something from nothing, the something that was already there just obeyed him when he spoke, but I guess this something must have had some intelligence since it obeys commands.
So the universe is like a big puppy-dog?
Using the supernatural to explain events in your life is a failure of the intellect to comprehend the world around you. -The Inquisition
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RE: Do you wish God was real?
June 26, 2015 at 9:48 am
do i wish there was a loving all powerful god who looked over us and helped us in our time of need? Yeah I think that would make the world a better place.
Do i wish the god of the bible/torah/quran was real? hell no, even by not being real he has made this world shitty enough.
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RE: Do you wish God was real?
June 26, 2015 at 11:08 am
(This post was last modified: June 26, 2015 at 11:11 am by Catholic_Lady.)
(June 26, 2015 at 7:37 am)Tonus Wrote: (June 25, 2015 at 6:02 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I'd say it's part of it, yes. Is there something else you had in mind?
I wanted to be sure I understood how you define it. My own view of free will is a bit more nuanced, but it's not fair or useful to ask you to defend your beliefs using my definitions. One more question, if I may: if, at the end of your earthly life, god grants you the gift of life in heaven, what happens to your free will? Do you keep it? If you do, does it work the way it did on earth, or does it change in any way?
The Catholic idea is that you don't enter heaven until you are already "perfect", for lack of a better word. We believe the vast majority of us will go to Purgatory where we will really learn to love God (love goodness and love, which is what we believe God is) with a perfect love.
Once we reach that stage, we go to Heaven. Yes, we will still have free will but at that point we will already have so much love for God and for all that is good, that we won't sin anymore. I hope that helps. Thanks for the respectful dialogue. Let me know if you have any more questions. :-)
Thank you everyone for taking the time to answer my question. I appreciate it. :-)
My parents and little brother are flying down to visit for the next few days and they will be here this evening! I've been cleaning up and preparing the place for them, so I will be unavailable for the rest of today until next week.
Thanks again, hope everyone has a great weekend!
"Of course, everyone will claim they respect someone who tries to speak the truth, but in reality, this is a rare quality. Most respect those who speak truths they agree with, and their respect for the speaking only extends as far as their realm of personal agreement. It is less common, almost to the point of becoming a saintly virtue, that someone truly respects and loves the truth seeker, even when their conclusions differ wildly."
-walsh
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RE: Do you wish God was real?
June 26, 2015 at 11:24 am
(June 26, 2015 at 11:08 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: The Catholic idea is that you don't enter heaven until you are already "perfect", for lack of a better word. We believe the vast majority of us will go to Purgatory where we will really learn to love God (love goodness and love, which is what we believe God is) with a perfect love.
Once we reach that stage, we go to Heaven. Yes, we will still have free will but at that point we will already have so much love for God and for all that is good, that we won't sin anymore. I hope that helps. Thanks for the respectful dialogue. Let me know if you have any more questions. :-)
Happy to oblige; thank you for the answers.
I think that this means that it is possible to reach a condition where we have free will, minus that part of it that would lead us to do things that would displease god. I think that the best of all possible worlds is one where we are born/created that way; we get to enjoy god's world and one another, we get to develop as people with unique personalities and skills, and we don't hurt ourselves or one another. A system that filters out most of us --by allowing us to hurt ourselves and those around us, and to offend god, and to wind up in an eternity of suffering-- can't be the best possible outcome. Billions of people who were just one or two mental tweaks away from being part of a perfect society will instead spend eternity in misery and torment. Those who make it to heaven will either bear the burden of knowing that so many were lost, or will not care, or will not be allowed to care. It's just a poor situation all around, IMO.
I think it's possible to make a world where I can decide to be a painter or a plumber, where I can decide that yogurt-dipped raisins are better than chocolate-dipped cherries ( point of fact: they're not) or that I'll pursue a relationship with Veronica instead of Betty, where I can make lots of choices that aren't sinful or harmful. I think if that world also included a mental block that didn't allow me to pour scalding water on the arm of a three-year-old to "teach him a lesson" that would not be a bad thing at all. I'd like to live in a world where Eve's poor judgment didn't bring thousands of years of misery and brutal mistreatment of one another, even if it means that her freedom to make catastrophically-bad choices was suppressed just enough.
Even for people who live a good and clean life --who help when they can and seek to help and never hurt-- such a world must be a better option. There are true stories of mistreatment of people that would make nearly all of us weep helplessly. I'm willing to trade a world where Ted Bundy never tortures young women to death for one where his freedom to choose to be a monster is curtailed. If this is the best arrangement that god could dream up, I am sorely disappointed in him. He created everything, including us. I think he owes us much better than he has delivered.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: Do you wish God was real?
July 4, 2015 at 6:25 pm
I'd rather that it doesn't exist, so I don't have to deal with the "guilt" of being a queer person. Really, that's why.
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RE: Do you wish God was real?
July 6, 2015 at 11:48 pm
(June 25, 2015 at 2:18 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Hello everyone, I have another question for all you fine folks of AF.
Do you wish there was a God?
It doesn't have to be the God of Abraham. But just A God. Some supernatural supreme being out there who created us and loves us.... Do you wish that was real or do you prefer the idea of nothing like that existing?
Please explain why or why not. All gods are imaginary. If you want a god just imagine one to your specifications.
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