Welcome to Gaia! ::

Well, that particular point I was pretty done with. Remember, it depends on how large of a scale of a "universe" you're referring to. Assuming that a divine being exists, do they exist in the universe that we know of, or are they merely part of a larger, even grander universe?

I concede that the universe as we know it (beginning with the Big Bang and expanding outwards) must have had a beginning, and even the larger plane of existence probably has a beginning. However, going back to our universe, it may or may not have been deliberately willed into existence, because it's probably not the entire plane of existence.

Do you see how complicated it becomes, trying to decide what came irrevocably first?

I believe what I believe because of the way my parents raised me. They taught me basic morals and values, and, as I grew older, I researched and found what made the most sense.

The thing I really don't understand is faith. To me faith isn't logical. You could be putting your life in the hands of something you aren't 100% sure exists.

It sounds like fairy tales to me, if you stop and think about religion for a long period of time, it sounds like we have taken what comforts us into a diety. What we fear turns into sin, What we praise turns into scripture.

And it isn't even you have to deny the existance of a higher power, because you don't know, you can never know, if one exists.

So, doesn't it make sense to keep that in mind while living life to the best of your ability? Morals are fine for life, but guidelines? Laws? Those are created by humans from what we determine as bad and wrong.

Religion as a whole is a way people are telling you how you should live your life. Catholicism says in order to get married, we HAVE to want to have children. If you aren't having kids, you aren't getting married. Wow, what a FANTASTIC way to live your life, in chains. Bearing rules we have only made because 500 years ago we had a different thought pattern, we certainly didn't have the same intelligence we do today.

How dare a religion MADE by humans tell me how I should live my life? This was given to me and only me, and I am the only one who gets to determine what I do, what I believe and how I go about living in general. If there was some sort of moral way I am 'supposed' to behave to go someplace 'good' I wouldn't have the logic to look around this in the first place.

I think it is pathetic that people think their 'gods' would love us for what we are. Even the good humans do in their life is fueled by greed, power, glory. We put love in the form of a deity because we feel secure that way. If no one on the planet loves you are least your God does (: . Hello comfort zone, I have just battled pain (: .

I think that is the biggest piece of foolishness a religion could have. We are Human Beings, we are always going to do something wrong. That is how religion gets people, when you sin, it gives us what is so extremely different from the animal world. Hate, greed, lust, rage, pain; animals feel that out of INSTINCT but only humans know what it is. It is human NATURE to fear sin, therefore, we look for the 'ray of hope.'

By asking for forgiveness, we are doing what makes most humans weak. We are selfishly hoping that our deeds will be forgiven because it is comfort. We hope we go to a better place after this because we fear the unknown.

We have created better things because our emotions, our feelings, our reason, our choices, our logic, the data sheet that runs through our veins tells us to do so. The things that make ONLY humans different from anything else we are aware of (and we are aware of a good chunk of things) we have put restrictions on. And very few people see it for what it is.

When you hold onto the hope that it might be true, it weakens you, it brainwashes you, and put you into a make believe world.

Pain is the price for what we know.

When you accept that possibility with the acceptance that the loop holes in reality are what they are, you can attain ultimate freedom.

And it is great. (:

Nonsense, even if this is Gaia, there are a select few of us who advocate intelligent thought and discussion. Two cents is better than nothing, and I'd love to hear any more you have to offer.

This goes out to everyone who reads this, don't be afraid to post your thoughts in this forum! It's what it's here for!

@Rioku: say, this is off topic but...were you in a guild at ffa at one point? But anyways, here's my own perspective on what you said.

1. faith
I am not believing blindly. I am, in fact, 100% sure God exists. I'm sure you don't want huge explainations as to why but in case you want to see the logic that proves God 100% real, you can always challenge me to prove it to you.

2. your life
That is a point that I agree with you on. You are fully capable of choosing what to do with your life. That is free will. Of course, choosing to walk off a cliff will lead to bad result and making other choices will also be followed by corresponding effects. I can tell you that walking off the cliff is bad, but it is still your free will, your choice to listen or not. Personally, I believe I have no right in forcing anyone to do anything. But, I can try to be very persuasive, which is essentially what I am doing here by presenting the logic that has been given to me.

3. God love us = comfort zone?
Perhaps or perhaps not. You have made an assumption that there is no God and must less to say one that loves us. But suppose, let us suppose that it is true that there is God that loves us. Would you want that love?

4. human nature to fear sin.
If you say that I would have to ask. Is this nature found in all humans? Where did this nature come from?

Just in regards to the last post


Why do you know that there was a "why" in creating us? Without going into discussions of the nature of causality, he could have just as easily been an infant being of his kind, playing in a cosmic sandbox that yielded our universe and everything in it. He also could have just as easily left us alone after creating us, and has never returned to his creation since. As we cannot understand the nature of his kind or his culture, we cannot even begin to understand his motives for creating or whether he maintains this place.

Back to the subject of the origin.

You're playing around with the definition of time. Like a higher plane of existence, the only time we know is that which we know began with the BBU. As I've said before, the statement about the BBU being willed deliberately into existence is not invalid, but it is not proven. My position is, and has always been, that we do not have sufficient evidence to prove HOW the universe was created, much less any possible WHY. Now, assuming that the god of this universe is outside of BBU's time, that would certainly make him infinite by our standards. However, simply because he is outside of OUR time doesn't make him outside of ALL time. Like the TAPE, I'll be referring to a scale of "absolute time" (once again, I reaffirm that this is all speculation, and I have no proof nor will anyone ever, by nature of their existence).

You dismiss the possibility of a larger universe as not relevant to our discussion, and then you state that we can define a being who deliberately willed the BBU into existence can be called the god of this universe. This implies that there does exist a higher plane, and therefore must also imply that there is a higher level of time. Like the Kalam argument states that an actual infinite cannot exist, doesn't this contradict the concept of an infinite god? He must operate in some kind of time, defining time as a series of events, since there existed a point at which there was no universe, and then following that point there was.

Like I do not believe in the existence of deities, I do not believe in the existence of higher planes. I speculate on the existence of both, but as I have never firsthand seen indisputable evidence confirming the existence of either, I have no reason to make the assumption that they exist.

About self-fulfilling prophecies.

Like you said, any of those could easily be luck or chance, so I won't push it. Remember that people see what they wish to see, so what one may see as a divine intervention, another may see as coincidence, and another may see as the result of several causes that are yet unknown, assuming that there is a perfectly logical and physical explanation for the situation. For example, I applied to one of the most selective schools in the country, and yet I was accepted. On one hand it could be because a higher being saw that I was a good person and tipped the scales in my favor, gently nudging the minds of those reviewing my application. On the other, it could be completely random, that I was overlooked and somehow wound up in the pile of "accepted" instead of in the pile of "rejected." And lastly, it could have been a combination of a low number of qualified applicants, four years in band, two years as Science Bowl captain, high GPA and standardized test scores, and talent for writing that was demonstrated in the essay portion. Is there any way to definitively prove which of these is the case? Going further, it could be chance that led to all the points that led them to accept me, or it could have been a higher being guiding me the whole time. It could have been a higher being that made sure my application got "accidentally" dropped in the accepted stack.

In essence, it really depends on how you look at things. So far, you've focused on the positives, which is a fine and healthy thing to do, and is probably why you and the missionary made out all right. If you were to focus on every single bad thing that's ever happened to you, you would have a very different outlook on life. Instead of remembering that you somehow made it on time to the meeting, you would remember only that it was a ridiculously busy day, and that you had to rush and stress in order to barely get through. Instead of focusing on the friend who called you to give you ideas, you may concentrate on how the deadline is looming and that you have nothing prepared, or that you had to come up with something at the last second of terrible quality.

Also remember that our window to the world is very narrow, as the world itself is incredibly vast. For every missionary church that somehow miraculously is able to scrape by, a dozen others may have already been shut down or abandoned. However, the only ones you would ever hear about are those that are successful, as the unsuccessful ones would never cross paths with you. Even if they did, you would probably see them as an isolated incident, cause by a lack of faith, or as a test of their faith. On one hand, you may inspire them to return to their cause, confident in themselves and of their survival, or they may dismiss you and wind up unsuccessful and bitter. It all depends on the people themselves. Human willpower is remarkably strong, and I have seen several examples of this in my own life, as have you. Sometimes it's helped by faith in a higher being, sometimes it isn't. As long as you're focusing on the positives and have confidence in yourself, the results will generally be the same.

Tangent:
People that do amazing stuff, thanks to will, focus, and confidence. I'm not sure if any of them thank deities for their talents, but I just think it's interesting to see what humans are capable of.

What is the limit of human strength?
[link][[link] [link]

What is the limit of the human eye?
[link]

What is the limit of the human mind?
[link]

1. mistakes in the bible?
You have made a claim that there were many mistakes by people who are not as dedicated. However, I do ask, if it is not too much trouble that you give support for the mistakes. I can, however, prove to you otherwise. Know this, there is a discovery of parchments/manuscripts for the old testiment that we today call "The dead sea scrolls" They have been tested and dated back to 200BC-100AD. Now comparing with the manuscripts we used for translation, there is less than one percent mistake in actual wording and zero percent mistake in meaning. 200BC-100AD in comparison to the 900AD manuscripts that re most commonly used. After 800 years you would expect there to be more mistakes. Please, by all means, do go and do some research on it yourself if you don't believe what I am saying.

2. validity of the Bible
There is debate, yes, and I suspect there will always be debate. You yourself have confirmed that there are only confirmation of archeological finds or uncertainties but no archeological find to disprove the Bible. Thus by comparison, there is more support than refusal at least.

You question the validity of the source. For the old testiment, you could very well check with the history of Israel to test the historical portions of the OT. And for the new testiment, the manuscripts that we have found - though it is not the original - was much too close to the actual event to be false. If they were false, anyone - especially those against Christianity - could simply stand up and crush the text by saying "I was there, that did not happen".

In addition, if you look at the prophecies in the Bible, you could see that there are many that has been fulfilled. Christianity is unique among world religions in that it is unequalled in the area of fulfilled prophecy. The destruction of Tyre is one, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem is another. There is also the destruction and restoration of Israel. If I have not been mistaken, these are historically proven to have been fulfilled. Now I ask you, the old testiment was written how long ago? How could it be that they have information about the future of what will happen? Take the country of Israel for example. It was destroyed(hosea 9:17) and now it is restored(Jer 31) in 1948. Other prophecies are fulfilled as well, say... the destruction of Tyre(Ezekial 26). So I ask you, is this not highly improbable to the point that it is imposible? Now you might say it is self fulfilling prophecies or just probabilities but if you were to search out all the prophecies that have been fulfilled, you would realize that it is rather extreme on the probability for all of them to be fulfilled.

Now if you can refute the Bible, I do challenge you to do it. Many scholars and philosophers have tried and many have failed. I don't claim to know all there is to the Bible but I do know that if anyone can find one thing false with it, they can crush the entire thing.

3. evolution
This one, actually, tweeks my interest the most. You claim that evolution is true and that there are thousands of different examples, experiments, and researchers reinforcing the validity of evolution. So I challenge you. Bring those proofs up and prove to me that evolution is true.