Is there a GOD?

[bulldoza]

No one is "judged" on any judgment day. That is a lie perpetuated to keep people righteous. In this context, fear is the shepherd's staff.

I believe we will all be judged at some point. Matthew Chapter 25 makes it pretty clear and simple to me that we will.

The only question now is whether individually we choose to believe what's in the Bible or not.

 

[explod]

I believe we will all be judged at some point. Matthew Chapter 25 makes it pretty clear and simple to me that we will.

The only question now is whether individually we choose to believe what's in the Bible or not.

If you go back to post 1216 you will find that the writings of Matthew were not accurate to the extent that he was making it all up. Dawkins makes very many clear points showing the scriptures to be no more than great moral tales to fit a theme.

And in my view if there was a higher being and he created us I am sure he would be wise and forgiving of everyone, anyone doing wrong would be a fault of his creation.

 

[Soft Dough]

OF COURSE THERE IS A GOD

AND I HAVE EVIDENCE!!!

HE HAS A WICKED SENSE OF HUMOR

He is currently influencing the brain of that pathetic batsman michael clarke and forcing him to bowl the useless bowler Mitchell Johnson

to give the West Indies hope.

 

[bulldoza]

I do not see any hairs to split, there is God in peoples minds but outside of the mind there is nothing physical that represents anything like a God, icons, imiages and churches maybe but nothing godlike that lives and breathes in our presence. I have never seen or been told that anyone has seen anyone walk on water.

I don't see why there necessarily has to be anything physical that proves God exists, which I assume is what you are getting at.

I commented earlier how everything changed when Adam and Eve failed whatever test was put before them (whether it was the 'forbiden fruit' or something else is irrelevant to me). Since that moment, my belief is that we all must prove to God that we are worthy of sharing eternal life with Him by choosing to believe in Him and living our lives the way he showed and taught us through Jesus Christ His Son. God has now given us the world we live in, with its good and bad and we will be judged on our worthiness to spend eternal life with Him on how we react to and with each other while coping with all the good and bad in this world. I see this life as a test for how we will spend eternity after being judged by God.

All of the above depends on whether you choose to believe the Book of Genesis and the New Testament. Personally, I do.

If God revealed Himself physically then I suppose most, if not all would then obviously believe in God and that would defeat the purpose of His test for us.

But I believe He will reveal Himself physically through the second coming of His Son Jesus Christ (Judgement Day), but by then it will be too late for those who have done the wrong thing in God's eyes during their lives here on earth.

It's been an interesting discussion this afternoon and evening and hopefully at least some 'fence sitters' will have some food for thought to hopefully fall onto one side or the other of the fence

 

[Wysiwyg]

29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

Ridiculous. Thankfully this statement is unlawful and not followed by rational, compassionate, sane people.

30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

True colours exposed here. The two servants that doubled their *talent (in their masters absence) get rewarded and the servant who buried his talent and returned it as is gets the crying women and barking dogs treatment. Next we see why ...

And what of the master?

24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed

So the unprofitable servant calls the master a liar and a thief to his face and gets victimised.
Great story but typical of the nonsense in the Bible I alluded to in a previous post.


* Talent

Talent Of silver contained 3,000 shekels (Exo 38:25, Exo 38:26), and was equal to 94 3/7 lb. avoirdupois. The Greek talent, however, as in the LXX., was only 82 1/4 lb. It was in the form of a circular mass, as the Hebrew name kikkar denotes. A talent of gold was double the weight of a talent of silver (Sa2 12:30). Parable of the talents (Mat 18:24; Mat 25:15).

 

[Synergy]

I'd be interested to know this....

1) The % of people with religious parents who themselves don't believe in god.

2) The % of people with non religious parents who do believe in god.

Personally, I can think of several of my friends with religious parents who are non believers, but none the other way around.

I doubt there would be many people fitting into the 2nd category.

Why doesn't God just do a pamphlet drop to improve his popularity?

link i found while googling the above
http:///www.humanreligions.info/intelligence.html

 

[explod]

OF COURSE THERE IS A GOD

AND I HAVE EVIDENCE!!!

HE HAS A WICKED SENSE OF HUMOR

He is currently influencing the brain of that pathetic batsman michael clarke and forcing him to bowl the useless bowler Mitchell Johnson

to give the West Indies hope.

Your line is probably the best one Soft Dough.

And I give up, if we cannot cross the border between belief based on weak secondary evidence as written by some odd bods hundreds of years ago and the facts as they can be clearly seen, then I would do better selling iceblocks to the Eskimos.

 

[roland]

Hi Explod -

OK, I am not going to split hairs on semantics. I believe God is our creator and I don't believe my beliefs are a result of indoctrination, but I guess some will think that it is. That's fine.

Hi bulldoza,

I've been wanting to post on this topic, but in all honesty I wasn't sure how I could condense all my thoughts on this subject into something short and meaningful to others.

Having someone who truly believes in GOD seems to open an opportunistic chance to ask a really simple question:

Why do you believe in GOD?

It seems that it is a lot easier to disprove GOD because there is no hard evidence.

With most other life learning tasks there is theory and then practical tasks to validate the theory.

I, like most, have been down the path of school scripture classes, Sunday School, Church on occasion and in my case, even went to Bible Camps. Plenty of theory but sorely lacking in any practical. At Bible Camp, the "leaders" were certainly well trained in conversions and I was open to be convinced and played along to the point of acceptance and beyond.

To this day, I am still waiting to be convinced as I would dearly love to think that there is more to life after my death.

I wonder what it is that you have been told/shown/felt/seen/experienced that I couldn't "see"?

So, once again, the very simple question - Why do YOU believe in GOD?

You mentioned that you had been brought up as a Catholic and wonder if you had have been brought up as a Muslim, would you still believe in a Christian GOD?

I am not trying to personally confront you, but have a genuine interest in why you do believe.

 

[Julia]

Suffice to say, you will be hard pressed to convince me that a large number, let alone the majority of Catholics are damaged or disadvantaged in any way as a result of their upbringing.

Well now, how about all the unwanted pregnancies because of the Catholic ban on contraception?
How about the exponential spread of AIDS because of the Catholic ban on the use of condoms?
How about the sexual assault of young men and women by Catholic priests, who have taken the thoroughly unnatural vow of celibacy. So they offer a veneer of living the celibate life whilst in secret causing huge harm to innocent young people who are too indoctrinated as to the superior role of the priest to report the abuse?
And how about the constant fear - as you have in this thread been promulgating - of being JUDGED by some Creator being?

But don't worry too much about that as long as the sinner can go to the priest, make a confession of all the bad stuff, do their penance, and all is well.

Really, you expect non-indoctrinated, thinking people to accept all that???

Indoctrination is achieved by repitition. It becomes blind belief, for example the people of Germany formed it behind Hitler and many of the workers at the death ovens acted under blind group belief.

Explod, no doubt many did indeed. But possibly even more acted out of fear for their lives in that it was a case of show support for Hitler or be killed.

You'd have to wonder if something similar is not taking place in many religions, i.e. toe the religious line or be horribly punished on Judgement Day if you have transgressed once too often.

By the way, bulldoza, is there a clear list of what constitutes unconscionable sin as distinct from minor human indiscretions so that Catholics (and some other Christians) can keep a check on how they are going prior to being judged, i.e. a score of so many points for particular wrong doings?

Are points put back if an appropriate confession is made?

I commented earlier how everything changed when Adam and Eve failed whatever test was put before them (whether it was the 'forbiden fruit' or something else is irrelevant to me). Since that moment, my belief is that we all must prove to God that we are worthy of sharing eternal life with Him by choosing to believe in Him and living our lives the way he showed and taught us through Jesus Christ His Son. God has now given us the world we live in, with its good and bad and we will be judged on our worthiness to spend eternal life with Him on how we react to and with each other while coping with all the good and bad in this world. I see this life as a test for how we will spend eternity after being judged by God.

All of the above depends on whether you choose to believe the Book of Genesis and the New Testament. Personally, I do.

If God revealed Himself physically then I suppose most, if not all would then obviously believe in God and that would defeat the purpose of His test for us.

But I believe He will reveal Himself physically through the second coming of His Son Jesus Christ (Judgement Day), but by then it will be too late for those who have done the wrong thing in God's eyes during their lives here on earth.

It's been an interesting discussion this afternoon and evening and hopefully at least some 'fence sitters' will have some food for thought to hopefully fall onto one side or the other of the fence

Hmm, I doubt any of us will be changing our carefully considered views as a result of this discussion. As previously suggested by, I think, Wayne, this is really another Groundhog Day in that we've had this discussion on multiple occasions frequently.

Every now and again someone new, e.g. this time it's you bulldoza, happens along and the whole tired subject is resurrected once more.

Without wishing to be disrespectful to you, bulldoze, when I read through your post above, with its dogma, I reluctantly have the same response that I experience when listening to politicians. i.e. it's just a bunch of words that mean little to the objective reader.

But hey, it makes your life feel better so that's a good thing.
We all derive comfort and reassurance in different ways.

 

[Wysiwyg]

Hmm, I doubt any of us will be changing our carefully considered views as a result of this discussion. As previously suggested by, I think, Wayne, this is really another Groundhog Day in that we've had this discussion on multiple occasions frequently.

Every now and again someone new, e.g. this time it's you bulldoza, happens along and the whole tired subject is resurrected once more.

Well I thoroughly enjoy any dialogue with religious people and never tire of it. I find it a very interesting subject and have the time for anyone willing to discuss anything from the core to the extremities of their "belief". Everyone is welcome to their views on any subject in this forum whenever they want..

 

[tunrida]

Well I thoroughly enjoy any dialogue with religious people and never tire of it. I find it a very interesting subject and have the time for anyone willing to discuss anything from the core to the extremities of their "belief". Everyone is welcome to their views on any subject in this forum whenever they want..

pleased to hear of your keen interest Wysiwyg - my religion is zoophilia and some people shy away, nay, are quite discriminatory when they know that - most ungody I think.

 

[bulldoza]

Hi bulldoza,

Why do you believe in GOD?

Hi Roland - I'll quickly summarise what I have commented earlier.

The reasons I believe in God include my belief that the overall messages and teachings in the Bible are the Word of God and to be correct.

One of the reasons I believe the Bible to be correct is the very close similarities between the predictions of the prophets in the Old Testament and the accounting of the actual events in the New Testament. The main examples of this I can give are the reasonably detailed descriptions of the birth of Jesus Christ, the miracles He worked during His life and his death and resurrection by the prophet Isaiah and the fairly similar accounts of those events in the 4 Gospels.

Given the hundreds of years apart the Old and New Testaments were written, I find it implausible that the authors of the Old Testament somehow 'got together' to create a conspiracy to fabricate their writings and propogate and maintain the fraud for hundreds of years and generations to this very day. I also believe it to be implausible that the authors of the New Testament somehow 'got together' to create a similar conspiracy, especially given the large number of eye witnesses that are said to have witnessed some of Jesus' miracles.

However, I don't necessarily believe that everything in the Bible happened exactly as described in it, but I do believe the events happened.

With respect, my advice would be to take some time (and it shouldn't take that long) to read at least the four Gospels and try to make your own mind up.

An easy trap many people fall into imo is to listen to various non-believers on the TV or other media selectively take individual versus out of their original context in the Bible and put their own interpretations and opinions on those individual versus to suit their particular views, which of course they are entitled to have.

I would much rather prefer those people to quote the entire passage or chapter they plucked those versus from so that their listeners or viewers can see the context in which they were written. When reading the Bible, I think the reader should also take into account the very different world, cultures, traditions etc the passage was written in at the time when trying to determine the teaching or meaning the passage is trying to convey - and then try to work out how that teaching or meaning applies to today's world.

IMHO plucking individual versus straight out of the Bible and applying a 21st century interpretation without taking into account the context the verse was written in, could lead to a misinformed opinion.

Finally, as I commented earlier, their is no 'hard evidence' that proves God exists or does not exist. If anyone in this world finds some, I'm sure if they took it to the media the media would pay huge sums of money to publish it.

We individually have to make up our own minds as to whether we choose to believe in God or not.

 

[bulldoza]

Well now, how about all the unwanted pregnancies because of the Catholic ban on contraception?
How about the exponential spread of AIDS because of the Catholic ban on the use of condoms?
How about the sexual assault of young men and women by Catholic priests, who have taken the thoroughly unnatural vow of celibacy. So they offer a veneer of living the celibate life whilst in secret causing huge harm to innocent young people who are too indoctrinated as to the superior role of the priest to report the abuse?
And how about the constant fear - as you have in this thread been promulgating - of being JUDGED by some Creator being?

But don't worry too much about that as long as the sinner can go to the priest, make a confession of all the bad stuff, do their penance, and all is well.

Really, you expect non-indoctrinated, thinking people to accept all that???

Hi Julia - you ask some very valid questions but imo they are not relevent to this thread "Is there a God?"

Rather than risk hijacking this thread onto another subject more related to the Catholic Church specifically, I would be happy to try to contribute as time permits to answering your questions in another more appropriate thread if you would like to start one, assuming you would like to discuss further.

I commented earlier how Confession is not a 'get out of jail free' card. Yes a sinners sins are forgiven at confession but the sinner must then genuinely try to repent and try to not commit the same sin again - eg. a robber cannot continually go to confession inbetween continually robbing banks and expect to get off scott free by God when the robbers turn comes up to be judged.

And also, no - I do not expect people to just blindly accept anything I say. As I and others have commented, we are all entitled to our views and opinions. I will repsect other peoples views although I might not agree with them and I would hope most others would at least respect mine even if they don't agree with my views.

 

[bulldoza]

Ok - I think I have done this thread to death (for want of a better expression) from the point of view of my answering the originator of this thread's question.

So I thought I would take a few minutes out of what I normally do (I am a self employed website developer who dabbles in the stock market and not some crack pot evangelist for anyone wondering) to ask a question of my own.

With respect and totally out of curiosity -

"What do you believe will be life after death if life goes on at all?"

Just as important, I guess, I am curious and interested in getting a feel on what information, experiences etc your beliefs are based on.

I guess I am more curious to get a feel for what those who do not believe in any God or any religion think. I already know what the 'mainstream' religions believe life after death to be.

Finally, please don't think I am trying to gain ammunition from any responses to try to shoot down the authors. It should be a no-brainer to realise that I will probably disagree with most views but I will respect any views put forward.

 

[Sdajii]

Of course there is a God, you would have to be a complete moron not to understand that! How else could all the planets and stars have got there? Do you honestly believe that a world so complex could be created by random without an intelligent force?

If you don't believe in God it just means you are a foolish person with no faith, no heart and no ability to see blatantly obvious truth.

Sometimes religion has inconsistencies, but that is just because if it was too easy to see your faith would not be tested and there would be no challenge. You need to earn your ticket to Heaven, no one could expect a free ride.

God allows babies to be raped, people to die of starvation, mass disasters such as floods and famines which kill millions of innocent people to test the faith of the survivors, and of course, the more extreme the test the more effective it is that you will weed out the ones who are weak.

If religion displays any inconsistencies, if things don't make sense, you probably are just confused, and even if you are not, God just makes things a bit confusing to test your faith, and haven't you ever heard that God works in mysterious ways? If it doesn't make sense to you it is just because you are not God and can't understand things. You shouldn't try to understand anything, just have faith and accept God's words.

If God says gay people are evil and will go to Hell, or if women should remain silent in church, or any other politically incorrect things, who are we to complain or question? We are mere mortals who must blindly follow the Lord no matter how ridiculous it might seem. We are nothing compared to the Lord and do not deserve the right to think for ourselves and we should not try to do so, for the Lord has given us rules to live by and it is blasphemy to suggest we know better than God.

...and yes, I'm taking the p!$$, but it really isn't much of a stretch from what the religious folk will tell you, it's just worded a bit less evasively.

 

[Mr J]

Finally, as I commented earlier, their is no 'hard evidence' that proves God exists or does not exist.

I'm interested in how you - and many other religious people - apply this consistency to the existence of extraterrestrial life. Many people consider it impossible, despite no hard evidence either way. I imagine there's also an extremely strong negative correlation between belief in god and belief in 'aliens'. I would bet many (perhaps most) religious people would deny the possibility of 'aliens', while most agnostics and atheists would allow for the possibility.

It's the inconsistency in logic that I find interesting. The religious people who refuse to acknowledge the possibility of 'aliens' have a firm belief in one subject despite no hard evidence, yet are willing to completely rule out another subject, again despite no hard evidence. There is no consistency there.

*By aliens I don't mean something out of the X-Files or the movies, just life outside of this planet.

 

[Julia]

Suffice to say, you will be hard pressed to convince me that a large number, let alone the majority of Catholics are damaged or disadvantaged in any way as a result of their upbringing.

Hi Julia - you ask some very valid questions but imo they are not relevent to this thread "Is there a God?"

Rather than risk hijacking this thread onto another subject more related to the Catholic Church specifically, I would be happy to try to contribute as time permits to answering your questions in another more appropriate thread if you would like to start one, assuming you would like to discuss further.

It was you who raised the Catholic Church as above.
And no, we do not need yet another thread on religion.

 

[Sdajii]

I'm interested in how you - and many other religious people - apply this consistency to the existence of extraterrestrial life. Many people consider it impossible, despite no hard evidence either way. I imagine there's also an extremely strong negative correlation between belief in god and belief in 'aliens'. I would bet many (perhaps most) religious people would deny the possibility of 'aliens', while most agnostics and atheists would allow for the possibility.

It's the inconsistency in logic that I find interesting. The religious people who refuse to acknowledge the possibility of 'aliens' have a firm belief in one subject despite no hard evidence, yet are willing to completely rule out another subject, again despite no hard evidence. There is no consistency there.

*By aliens I don't mean something out of the X-Files or the movies, just life outside of this planet.

Presumably the belief that aliens don't exist comes from the belief that god deliberately made us all and we are special. If you believe that only god can produce life and god only wanted to create life on one planet, you would obviously believe that aliens could not exist. That would have made more intuitive sense if the original belief that there was only one planet was true, and is now utterly absurd in light of the fact there are squillions of galaxies each containing squillions of planets. These are traditional beliefs based on a framework of ancient assumptions though.

 

[bulldoza]

Mr J - I don't know if there is intelligent extraterrestial life out there or not.

We are told in the Bible that God created us in His image but exactly what that means I do not know. I also don't know if the Bible says we are the only intelligent creatures in the universe. If it does please post the reference to it.

But to be honest, whether there is extraterrestial life out there or not is irrelevent to me personally because Genesis tells us that God created the universe and everything in it and so the existence or non-existence of extraterrestial life does not affect my belief in God.

Now hopefully, you will take a few minutes to answer the question I posed to the forum earlier:

"What do you believe will be life after death if life goes on at all?"

 

[Wysiwyg]

"What do you believe will be life after death if life goes on at all?"

You mean spiritual life after death but did not state that. Spirit is observable during life but not observable after death. Belief in such is just that, belief, but why belief? Why not deal with the reality? The answer will be 'prove there is not spiritual life after death' . Case dismissed on grounds of no evidence.

Really, anyone can make a statement without actual evidence. That is, evidence that everyone else can see and not some "connection" extrapolated from stories, whispers and rumours.