Civil Discussion About Religion

alright im just going to write some things, most talk about differnt things people said in a random order.
1) people say that if there is a God then why doesn't it make the world perfect: if there was a perfect world then there would be no decision, which would remove all the reason and choice that most people believe make human beings actually human beings. there are still many people who believe in materialism that everything is caused from physical substance which would make everything predetermined due to cause and effect.
2) The possibility of materialism: this is pretty much the entire basis of religion in that is is all based on faith. It is impossible to prove or disprove God considering that God is not a physical being and in that science cannot "prove" a higher being you cannot use science to prove something that it does not try to understand. But with materialism, it means that everything comes from cause and effect, since everything is caused by physical entities then whatever happens to one causes something to happen to another. This would mean that there is no free choice and people are forced into decisions. There is a popular book called Consilience that trys to prove this.

I have no idea if evolution existed or not but i don't believe that has any effect of the existence of God, maybe it could help disprove the existence of a Christain God but not God in it's entirety. But i personally believe in morals and I think morals come from something that is "higher" or more perfect than us since if you don't believe in morals and think that evolution can explain everything then it would say that moral relativism is correct. With moral relativism, there are no wrong answers to morals but only answers based on culture and with that, no one is wrong so Hitler would just have had a different view instead of a wrong view. I believe that something inside everyone thinks that what Hitler did is wrong and some people act on that while others follow what he says out of fear or anger.

With this long post (if you made it through) there are probably many things you can discount but I personally believe that everyone's personal philosophy is based on their own attitude on life or what their influences told them to believe. With that, it would mean that optimistic people or people who are pushed to a religion are more inclined into believing in a God, while many others want more than just faith; which in it's definition is based on something that cannot be proven.

The one thing i can hope is that people try and understand or actually look into other beliefs instead of sticking with one idea and trying to find ways to disprove other ideas. Too many people grow up with a religion or belief and follow it to the death and this creates seperation and problems which are pointless and cause more problems like crusades or bombings of abortion clinic . Both of which make no sense to me since the people who apparently "believe" in Jesus and his teachings partake in actions that are the opposite of what he thought.

that was long and probably had a lot of grammar problems... sorry.

Personally, I'm agnostic. To me, I have trouble believing as truth books supposedly written from 3rd, 4th, and 5th hand information. Many of those books translated many time from ancient languages and by hand. There's also the issue of books of the bible found that were omitted which seems odd to me.

I think religion can be a great force for people. If someone truly believes in prayer, then I think it helps. The mind is an extremely powerful healer.

As far as the heaven and hell thing. In my opinion, as long as you live what would be considered an honest life, I don't think there will be any issues. For instance, I don't feel eating pork will keep me from entering heaven.

As far as when did I stop and why did I stop. I never began. Part of the reason a lot of churches in the community I grew up in is their congregation's average age must be hovering around 55-60. They can't get any young people; my theory is that now days parents aren't forcing children to adopt their beliefs without exploring a bit on their own first, this leads to more people being either extremely casual (not going to church) about religion or become agnostic like myself.

One thing I'd like to clear up that sometimes people misunderstand. Agnostic is not the same as atheist. Agnostic means you believe that there's some sort of higher power, but you don't exactly claim to know what.

Soooo, agnostic is like a...........lazy Atheist?

What were you doing when god was changing you? Sit idle? My take is that you made the necessary changes, god just inspired you.

I am glad for you but the fact of the matter is your "transformation" is not something you can scientifically study to prove the existence of god. In hard sciences anyways but perhaps psychologically and philosophically.

You're looking for an ontological proof of God, right? That is, either a logical set of deductions or scientific evidence, but no requirement of a leap of faith. This is a HUGE field of study, and, AFAIK, there haven't been a whole lot of satisfying answers. Most ontological proofs wind up like the Tootsie Pop commercial ("1...2...3...CRUNCH!"), and I think the vast majority of the religious followers go the "faith" route.

I'm glad you find it funny. I'm not really sure how gambling and wind entered the conversation.

Folks, this tread is about me and god and whether I'm going to hell for no longer having faith in him/her/it. A poll is perhaps in order?

God is a flying spaghetti-monster. Obviously.

Soooo, agnostic is like a...........lazy Atheist?

An agnostic is like an atheist without balls.

The coolest thing about it all is this. You get to believe whatever you want. If your a non-believer, or any other type of believer. You will find out what the truth is. Only problem is, if you have been wrong all these years, it may get real hot............or not..........and NOBODY can prove differently....

The coolest thing about it all is this. You get to believe whatever you want. If your a non-believer, or any other type of believer. You will find out what the truth is. Only problem is, if you have been wrong all these years, it may get real hot............or not..........and NOBODY can prove differently....

I'd like to believe God is more forgiving and understanding than sending the non-believers to hell.

The coolest thing about it all is this. You get to believe whatever you want. If your a non-believer, or any other type of believer. You will find out what the truth is. Only problem is, if you have been wrong all these years, it may get real hot............or not..........and NOBODY can prove differently....

Well if everyone discovers that there isn't a God, their brains won't be functioning at that point, and they'll cease to exist. So will we even be able to think to ourselves, hey, there's no God after all?

The cool thing about all this is the questions it raises. Like was our world/universe/matter created? Or did it simply always exist?

If you think of matter relative to our human concept of time, it's hard to fathom matter always existing. Because to us, everything has a beginning and an end, a notion that comes from our concept of time.

But our concept of time may be limited to the fact that we can't travel faster than the speed of light. Imagine this: you're looking at a clock, it says 8:00 pm. The reason you see that it's 8:00 pm is because the light shining from the face of the clock travels the space between the clock and your eye, reaching your eye basically instantaneously. But now imagine that you're moving away from the clock at the speed of light. What does the clock read? The image of 8:00 pm would be traveling at the same speed as you, so from your vantage point, it would appear to be stuck on 8:00 pm until you slowed down.

That's Einstein's theory of relativity in a nutshell. Time and space are relative to your velocity as you approach the speed of light.

Isn't it possible that our definition of "time" is too limited to define a beginning to our world/universe? With so many objects moving at such vastly different speeds through space, each object would have it's own sense of time.

to say that you have NEVER lost in roulette, either you have only played a handful of times, or are full of it. because sooner or later, its always about the money

If you read my entire post, you will see that I say you will lose if you stay too long. I have lost small battles, but have always won the war...in other words, I have always walked away from my time at playing (sometimes a 4 or 5 times a day, for 5 straight days) with money in my pocket. Does that help you understand what I meant?