Religion and/or God

[NOCTVRNVS]

That's probably for the best...  

[Zfoot]

Congratulations, you just opened your eyes.

I think there are no perfect religions, and I don't think anyone should dwell on the subject, because to be honest, there are multitudes of contradicting and ill-prepared reasoning behind the necessity for any religion. It arose, and I would love to see it buried.

Though I don't ever attack people's religion. It is very important to have faith, and what you believe in is your decision. I will not say what you believe in is false, because I advocate "possibility" as my own personal religon, of sorts. It is important to have your faith, religion is comfort from the questions. Take your shelter, for I don't think anything ill of religious people or religion in itself.

If you waste your time taking it literally, you will miss the actual message.

 

[Pro-Idiot]

I have a question. Going back to the garden of eden story, If God is all powerful, why not just oust lucifer on the spot and not let him in the garden? Yes he was disguised as a serpent, but shouldn't god have been able to know who it was and do something about it? If he trusted Adam and Eve not to eat The fruit, why not just destroy the temptation? Why risk having your creation be depurified and be forced to turn your back on them because they disobeyed you? Why even risk it? And what happened to second chances?

Frankly, the God that most people envisioned seems to personified to me. I mean, we may be the smartest living things on the planet but we're not the only living things on the planet. Why were we created in Gods image and other things weren't? For that matter, if God is supreme in the universe, then what of the possibility that there are life forms way more intelligent than us. Why not make them in your image?

I believe that we are unable to fully understand God and yet God is a part of all of us. This may seem strange for some, but I'm going to say it anyway(I'm really just pondering out loud), what if instead of creating the universe, God is the universe? What if all living things make up God?which would mean when we kill each other, we are sort of killing God. That would explain how were all connected.

I hope I didn't sound insane sweatdrop but I like to question things, keeps the motor running up in my head wink  

[Efstathios]

Pro-Idiot

I have a question. Going back to the garden of eden story, If God is all powerful, why not just oust lucifer on the spot and not let him in the garden? Yes he was disguised as a serpent, but shouldn't god have been able to know who it was and do something about it? If he trusted Adam and Eve not to eat The fruit, why not just destroy the temptation? Why risk having your creation be depurified and be forced to turn your back on them because they disobeyed you? Why even risk it? And what happened to second chances?

The official story is that he had to give them a chance. You don't just trust cosmetics to be safe, you rub them into the eyes of defensless little bunnies to see if it blinds them and then market it to consumers anyway.
He "risked" it to give humans the chance to prove their love, I guess.

Pro-Idiot

Frankly, the God that most people envisioned seems to personified to me. I mean, we may be the smartest living things on the planet but we're not the only living things on the planet. Why were we created in Gods image and other things weren't? For that matter, if God is supreme in the universe, then what of the possibility that there are life forms way more intelligent than us. Why not make them in your image?

God is only the God of Earth, actually Jehovah is only the God of people of Jewish descent. Other people were around before Adam and Eve, it says so in the 2nd chapter of genesis. The god of the Christians is only a face or aspect of the divine/cosmic energy/etc Jewish people actually made him in their image to make him easier to understand and communicate with. We can't think in enough dimensions to fully comprehend "god".
In other words, you're right, very good.

Pro-Idiot

I believe that we are unable to fully understand God and yet God is a part of all of us. This may seem strange for some, but I'm going to say it anyway(I'm really just pondering out loud), what if instead of creating the universe, God is the universe? What if all living things make up God?which would mean when we kill each other, we are sort of killing God. That would explain how were all connected.

I hope I didn't sound insane sweatdrop but I like to question things, keeps the motor running up in my head wink

Haha, it sounds strange because it's part of the truth that clergy of various religions try to obscure. You should check out subforum #39 spirituality. You would fit in well there, there would be answers to your questions and a lot of people who think like this.
Actually, feel free to PM me. You sound like you also have begun to question and most intelligently.  

[Starbranded]

Sweet Gods, why all the questioning? I was raised crazy christian (if you don't know what that is, I'm not telling) and luckily I didn't turn out that way. I just don't see the reason in the christian way of thinking. The bible says that god put the tree of knowledge in Eden and said "No touchie." That like putting cookies in front of a child and saying "you can't have them" and walking out of the room. The kid might try to resist but eventually those cookies will find their way into the kid's stomach. Someone should seriously edit the bible so it's not such a psychology lesson of delayed gratification.  

[Elanorell]

Quote:

Does anyone believe that there is one perfect religion?
Or per say, Any God at all?

No, I don't, though sometimes I have wished that there was, when I was very sad or very happy and wanted so badly for there to be 'something else' to.. join in to.

I've researched the history of religions at uni, in-depth. Imagine that you're living in an early (typically small) human clan-group. One year, all is joy. The next year, most of the infants and the elderly die. The following year, they're all well.. The harvest is good for 2 years, then eg locusts/grasshoppers invade and eat it to the ground for four years in a row. One day, it's been raining, then the sun comes out, and suddenly, after the nightmare, you see a rainbow.. this is how religions start. The basic 'WHY?' and the 'how'. The imperative in humans to understand their world. With no science, no history.. what would you do? This is how the early religions started, with angry, 'jealous' gods such as Jehovah (yes, Jesus' father), who would happily kill all the children in a 'tribe'; who'd carry the punishment for a crime over 7 generations (explains the droughts/insect devastations/over-farming of animals in a pre-science era). Times were too hard, and when you are trying to understand what is happening, you evolve the concept of gods.. angry gods. It's in the Bible. The rainbow becomes a covenant from 'God' with a capital 'G': after the flood, it's a promise that he won't mass-slaughter all living beings again.

Then, gradually, slowly, humans developed the idea of living together: creating a society. There began to be a concept of 'safety'. Life was still brutal, but.. in a town or city, you had neighbours at worst: law, justice, and HELP IN RETURN FOR TAXES at best. When famine hit, there was seed crop. When illness hit, there was rudimentary medicine. Most importantly, you were no longer isolated, and you could see that there was something at work which wasn't the arbitrary will of a 'god'. That's when humans began to reject the early, vicious gods.. their understanding of their world was expanding, so those gods were.. immature. That's when the "sons of" began appearing: god-like beings, connected to the God, who reflected the newer, safer vision of humanity. Less life and death, smite and kill, more.. love and obey, sublimate and (endure shite but) prosper. Eg Jesus, Mohammed.. kinder.

These days.. I recommend that anyone who thinks that Christianity is fluffy, finds a full, proper version of the ten commandments. It's not easy reading.

Quote:

Exodus: You shall not make for yourself an image, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me

This is just one of the commandments which Jesus told Peter were essential to follow, to be loved by God his father and get a place in heaven. Given my life, my great-grandchildren are going to be wretched, because I was once in love with the ancient Greek gods/wicca. Elsewhere, a commandment insists that one works for 6 days a week, and rests on the seventh: you, your family and your male or female slaves. Slaves? 6 days? You see?? This is OF IT'S TIME. It explains society as people were living it then. That's what a religion is: it's a way for desperate humans, with the brain we have, but none of the knowledge that we have now, to try to make sense of life. And to understand the rainbow.  

[Elanorell]

To address peoples' points: and sorry if I'm going on, but this subject is important:

NOCTVRNVS: the book of Genesis is interpreted these days as a creation myth. It was historically an explanation of how God could allow evil to exist in the world. How it is interpreted depends entirely on which era you're in, or I suppose, on what your church/parents teach you, if you're not into studying theology in history.

Just a thought: I have a friend who is a life-long Christian, and has been a Sunday school teacher for the past 22 years. She, with the full approval of her minister, tells the kids that Adam picked and ate the apple, and then gave it to Eve. Why? Because the Bible was written in it's time: women, basically, get the flack. Are women evil? No. Is the Bible a literal history of the world, including the book of Genesis? No. So why make the woman the scapegoat? Question, always. Anyway...

Sin-of-Malice: I personally refuse to worship ANY god who states that I must love him, do as he says, or go to hell and be tortured for all eternity. That god does NOT deserve my worship.

Zfoot: Why is it very important to have faith in a supernatural being or in a system of social laws based on the supposed tenets laid down by a supernatural being? I don't understand that. At the risk of being misunderstood, I take my comfort from human beings. We're amazing, and we don't need the supernatural to validate that. What we have achieved, and will achieve in our time as the dominant lifeform on this planet is almost unbelievable. Our need to reach out for an understanding of our selves, for explanations, for an answer to our innate burning questing selfness and to then invent gods, lacking a better answer at the time.. well, let's celebrate our species! It was a pretty good try, with no other resources at the time, no?

The rainbow can be explained by physics, but it's still beautiful even when we understand it. So are humans.  

[Grn Apple]

Sure, I believe in God, but i also believe that little magical fairies make the TVs run. No, really, if my parents didn't force me to be catholic, I would be agnostic. One who doesn't believe it is possible to have absolute or certain knowledge of God or gods; or, alternatively, that while certainty may be possible, they personally have no knowledge. I think religion sucks, and that there are to many "God" figures out there to determine the "real" one. All I think of life is that we live to die, so do whatever you can/want to make what little time you have the best.  

[Efstathios]

Deism FTW  

[MsDevin92]

I'm an Animist- the Native American belief that basically everything has a spirit and we're all connected by life and nature.

It's okay to have your religion and everything...But I can't stand people who treat me like the scum of the Earth because I don't go to church or anything. They just call me a sinner and be done with it. Honestly, just because I'm not religious doesn't mean I have no morals!

You know, a majority of the troublemakers I knew back in school- the kids who smoked in front of the library, the ones who broke open the window at the gas station and broke the pizza parlor door, the ones who pushed a kid in front of a moving car (thankfully, he wasn't hurt), the ones who had lost their virginity by seventh grade- were religious. Now, I'm not saying religion makes you a bad person- I'm just saying that not having it doesn't make you one, either.

The worst part is, some people take it farther, using it as excuses for all kinds of uneccessary tripe, like violence and racism. You know, like that one guy who shot three homosexual people becuase apparently 'God wanted him to', or the fact that the war is right because 'the Middle Easterners deserve to burn in hell'. They take religion and use it as a basis for any kind of discrimination or stupidity they please.

I'm sick of being pressured to become Orthodox. I get so many preachings, and one guy tried to pressure me by showing me this chain letter about the grisly deaths of about thirty billion people (oddly all either homosexual or of other races/religions) who weren't Christian. I'm happy the way I am, and my life is fine.

Now, if you're religious and a nice person who doesn't use it as an excuse for violence/discrimination, doesn't make it the focus of everything in your life, and doesn't try to shove your religion down other peoples' throats, then that's okay.  

[Efstathios]

MsDevin92

I'm sick of being pressured to become Orthodox. I get so many preachings, and one guy tried to pressure me by showing me this chain letter about the grisly deaths of about thirty billion people (oddly all either homosexual or of other races/religions) who weren't Christian. I'm happy the way I am, and my life is fine.

The thing about that is, they were all killed by Orthodox Christians. Hell of a recruitment device, eh?

And, again I find myself in complete argeement.  

[AvariciaMooneater]

k
im not a christian and i need to understand a few things
the tree that adam and eve ate from
a point was made earlier that by eating from the tree, adam and eve were rejecting god
ok
imma compare it to this
Have you ever been told not to do something by a parent, but wanted to know what its like and tried it anyways?(if you say no to this question, then ur an idiotic liar)(and i know that there was no point to the question it was rhetorical)
Thats what I think happened.
Curiosity killed the cat and eve ate the fruit of the tree. She saw no harm from eating it so she told adam, its ok to eat. They were curious and were simply trying to satisfy their curiosity. Puppies and children do the same thing.
Another adam and eve question.
how on earth are their so many people if there were only 2 people to begin with and they only had 2 children, both boys? it makes no sense to me.  

[Flipsided]

Snowmaiden616

But then, if God controls everything else, why does he not simply control us. MAKE us follow him, MAKE us live in peace, MAKE us have a perfect utopia?

Well have you ever read the book A Wrinkle In Time? Life would be like that of the people on Camazotz. No freedom. No sadness, which also means no happyness.  

[AntieQ]

I once read a quote about how an all-knowing and all-powerful being created imperfect humans and blames us for his mistake!

You should check out this site: http://www.godchecker.com/

How many of these thousands of gods would you say might exist? If you keep an open mind about one god, then you need to keep an open mind about them all, for they all have the same amount of evidence - that is zero. I'd worry that keeping my mind that open would allow my brains to fall out!!  

[Der Freischuetz]

I keep saying that zero evidence does not mean that they don't exist. It simply can't be proven.