Do you believe in some sort of God(s)?

[Stuey]

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I don't believe in God.

You know what I find to be a more interesting question tho? If no one ever educated a person about Gods/Religions how many people would still have spiritual feelings and how many would have none? I really don't feel it the way I think others do if you know what I mean.

I like other people and I feel a sense of goodwill towards my fellow man but I really don't feel spiritual about it. I just treat people the way I want to be treated. So I have trouble buying into most religions. Is it just instinctual and we are just born with or without out it? I explained my thoughts on this poorly but I'm too lazy to try again.

The devil tho he lives next door to me he is real. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

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I know what you're saying (I think). People are good to each other just because, and religion swooped in and took credit for it.

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That is part of what I was saying but the main part was more about how I feel. Like when I was really young actually as long as I can remember I did not believe there was a God. My parents told me there was but I just didn't feel it. I think I believed in Santa longer than I believed in God. This Santa dude was giving me stuff after all. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

God was making me miss playing in my Sunday hockey games!

[cambraceres]

Our minds are such that, given our powers of creative inquiry, we cannot ignore certain questions, which at the same time transcend our powers of reason.

It is a cruel trick for nature to, by our very nature, frame the most intriguing possible question, while at the same time not giving us enough information to properly solve the problem.

I accept the situation to be just as I have said. We cannot posit the nature of our existence; only our minds can apprehend, but the elements of the question do not correspond to our faculty of assessment.

The only reason I need for the dissmissal of god is that which allows me to be certain he is not needed. We have no cause to believe natural causes do not suffice to produce the world we see. Why compose a god with no utility. What can we use him for?

Who needs a god who is dimensionless, yet fills all space.

Who needs a god who is "Benevolent" enough to form the squalor within which much of his creation lives.

Who needs a god whose powers are limitless except where important.

And while we're at it, why does one need a creator, we are here; this is what we know. I think therefore I am, of nothing else are we certain.

Cam

[amplify]

I believe that there is a creative force in the universe, I call it God, or whatever word happens to be handy, but yeah. I have been an atheist and I have been a Christian but I am definitely neither of those things any more. El D put it pretty well. People hear the word God and picture Santa Clause in the sky judging you but that's certainly not what I mean when I say it.

[JP OSU]

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This is going to be an awful, awful post, but I'm going to post it anyway.

I couldn't sleep a few nights and was thinking about the Christian, think Dante, idea of Hell. Now, most very intelligent minds, think DS, will say that Christianity is a bunch of BS, etc. However, put odds on a Christian sense of Hell being real, so if you sin, you exist forever in eternal damnation. What would the be? What would DS put them at? 1,000,000,000:1? Even at those odds, is it worth risking a trillion lifetimes of the worst pain/boredom/unease imaginable and sinning?

Did I mention this would be an awful post?

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I can't think of who it was, but I am pretty sure that this is a famous philosophers' argument, basically that the risk of not believing in god was not worth the reward... can anyone help me out here?

[Jurollo]

A lot of you sound Agnostic or Atheist but you just don't want to say it. That says a lot about the social stigma attached to those words (although it is getting better). Feeling as if there is a higher power or spirituality is a very, very common feeling and it is almost universal throughout human kind. Look at the beauty around you next time you walk through a park or look at the stars, there is a certain overwhelming feeling about it that makes you feel that perhaps "God" in a sense is just the immense beauty we are surrounded by.

I think organized religion, as a whole, was created to assert power over the masses and to explain the unexplainable. "How did the universe come to being? Well... we don't quite know but it was likely a creation from a being higher then us, take our word for it." That line of thinking seems silly to me. Deities who control everything we do and for instance, natural disasters and war is also an explanation for the dirty side of human nature, in my opinion. Anyhoo, sorry for the ramble, I would also ascertain that a majority of posters here (2+2, not El D forum) are either Agnostic or Atheist, or at the very list a non-practicing member of a religious group solely through family ties.
~J

[nath]

This thread has a lot of really great responses. I usually hesitate to discuss this topic with people I don't know very well, but I'm impressed.

[.Alex.]

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This is going to be an awful, awful post, but I'm going to post it anyway.

I couldn't sleep a few nights and was thinking about the Christian, think Dante, idea of Hell. Now, most very intelligent minds, think DS, will say that Christianity is a bunch of BS, etc. However, put odds on a Christian sense of Hell being real, so if you sin, you exist forever in eternal damnation. What would the be? What would DS put them at? 1,000,000,000:1? Even at those odds, is it worth risking a trillion lifetimes of the worst pain/boredom/unease imaginable and sinning?

Did I mention this would be an awful post?

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I can't think of who it was, but I am pretty sure that this is a famous philosophers' argument, basically that the risk of not believing in god was not worth the reward... can anyone help me out here?

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It's called "Pascal's Wager." The obvious problem with it is you can use it to apply to any belief system, like the flying spaghetti monster.

[Jurollo]

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This is going to be an awful, awful post, but I'm going to post it anyway.

I couldn't sleep a few nights and was thinking about the Christian, think Dante, idea of Hell. Now, most very intelligent minds, think DS, will say that Christianity is a bunch of BS, etc. However, put odds on a Christian sense of Hell being real, so if you sin, you exist forever in eternal damnation. What would the be? What would DS put them at? 1,000,000,000:1? Even at those odds, is it worth risking a trillion lifetimes of the worst pain/boredom/unease imaginable and sinning?

Did I mention this would be an awful post?

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I can't think of who it was, but I am pretty sure that this is a famous philosophers' argument, basically that the risk of not believing in god was not worth the reward... can anyone help me out here?

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It's called "Pascal's Wager." The obvious problem with it is you can use it to apply to any belief system, like the flying spaghetti monster.

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Oh Richard!

[lippy]

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This is going to be an awful, awful post, but I'm going to post it anyway.

I couldn't sleep a few nights and was thinking about the Christian, think Dante, idea of Hell. Now, most very intelligent minds, think DS, will say that Christianity is a bunch of BS, etc. However, put odds on a Christian sense of Hell being real, so if you sin, you exist forever in eternal damnation. What would the be? What would DS put them at? 1,000,000,000:1? Even at those odds, is it worth risking a trillion lifetimes of the worst pain/boredom/unease imaginable and sinning?

Did I mention this would be an awful post?

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I can't think of who it was, but I am pretty sure that this is a famous philosophers' argument, basically that the risk of not believing in god was not worth the reward... can anyone help me out here?

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It's called "Pascal's Wager." The obvious problem with it is you can use it to apply to any belief system, like the flying spaghetti monster.

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Thank God (pun intended), at least I thought of this centuries later than him. I can now claim that I subconsciously heard this in passing and don't feel like such a moron.

Thread idea: What experience have you had that has made you believe in a deity?

Of course it would degenerate into a theological [censored] waving contest... but it could produce a few intriguing replies.

[JaBlue]

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Our minds are such that, given our powers of creative inquiry, we cannot ignore certain questions, which at the same time transcend our powers of reason.


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Some might say that this is a reason to believe in something above us. Some might call that thing God.



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We have no cause to believe natural causes do not suffice to produce the world we see.


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Why do you think of God as unnatural? To me, God would be the most natural thing there could be.



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Who needs a god who is "Benevolent" enough to form the squalor within which much of his creation lives.


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"His creation" is everything, not just mankind and the earth. What if imperfection - as evil in what you suggest - on Earth is part of perfection for the universe? Also, you accept that there are some things that are simply beyond your comprehension. Why can't this be one of those things?



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I think therefore I am, of nothing else are we certain.


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Funny you reference Descartes, who "proved" God's existence a few times over.