Oh my God!

I personally think "God" is the easy answer to all the questions we have no real answer to.
Scientific knowledge is constantly being updated and revised and never has all the answers which it admits, but God is a nice tidy answer to all the questions which we have no real answers for.

One thing that makes me laugh is insurance, which generally has a clause that states "does no cover acts of God". Surely everything that happens is an act of God (if you're a believer) so your insurance hence covers nothing!
 
Isn't that the ironic part of all of this God stuff? If you believe truly in a micromanaging God, then what role do we really play? If you believe in a God who chooses what to manage and what not to manage, then what role do we really play? We've created an elaborate structure of blame/guilt/responsibility around our inability to reconcile free will with an all powerful God.

Kahn, have you ever seen a list of what constitutes 'acts of God' as far as insurance co's are concerned? I'd love to see it.
 
Gary Wassner said:
I agree, and that's the basis for one of my fundamental disputes with the concept of God in our time. Worse in the past I imagine! But wouldn't you label this concoction absurd? And arrogant! We've made God what WE need.
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Would'nt create a god we DON’T need even more absurd? :rolleyes:
 
I'm not surprised. Not. One. Bit.

But at least we now know the Right's alternative to universal health care.

Honestly, at this point, I wish they could just sink back into the swamp of self-satisfied ignorance that unbelievers dragged them out of and to which they so long to return.

Just quit trying to drag the rest of us in with them.

'Course, they like the results of science and reason, just not the process that makes them.

I say, make them walk the walk. Give them their own state, surround it with fences, and let them live like it's The Village and raise their kids to believe up is down, red is blue, and that all the earthquakes, storms, and diseases are the result of their own prideful refusal to submit.

Ayn Rand said it better than I ever could.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-kTeWozXQ&feature=related

I don't agree with everything she says, but she makes a point. Skip past the Nazi imagery and other stuff at the beginning, the good stuff starts about three minutes in.
 
Gary Wassner said:
Isn't that the ironic part of all of this God stuff? If you believe truly in a micromanaging God, then what role do we really play? If you believe in a God who chooses what to manage and what not to manage, then what role do we really play? We've created an elaborate structure of blame/guilt/responsibility around our inability to reconcile free will with an all powerful God.

Kahn, have you ever seen a list of what constitutes 'acts of God' as far as insurance co's are concerned? I'd love to see it.
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I've seen an instance where if someone dies at the wheel and drives in to your house it's considered an AOG. I'm sure there are more ridiculous ones.

Have any of you folks read The God Delusion? There are some great insights in that book. Helps clear up the insanity rather well.
 
Gary Wassner said:
Isn't that the ironic part of all of this God stuff? If you believe truly in a micromanaging God, then what role do we really play? If you believe in a God who chooses what to manage and what not to manage, then what role do we really play? We've created an elaborate structure of blame/guilt/responsibility around our inability to reconcile free will with an all powerful God.
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I don't know if you have kids and maybe we should just make a comparison with your parents. Would you say your parents could predict what you would do in a given situation? Would you probably say they could assume you would act in a certain way because they know you so well?

It's that God knows us so well that allows him know what we need. We think we know what we need, hence why some prayers go unanswered, but God really knows what we need. We're like little kids going, I want to eat candy all day every day. Parents know, this is very unhealthy and hence do not reward their children as such.

What if we haven't created the structure that needs God? What if he actually exists (you have to look at it from this pov to get my argument)? Then, following God is the most important thing. In the Bible God said, "Thou shalt not kill", but he also said "Thou shalt utterly destroy." Given the situation, what is important is that we follow God no matter what he commands us to do, given the proper authority. Just anyone who claims they saw a vision, does not mean that everyone should follow them.
 
Seak said:
It's that God knows us so well that allows him know what we need. We think we know what we need, hence why some prayers go unanswered, but God really knows what we need.
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Do you have any evidence to support this belief? I mean, it's nice, but what makes you think it bears any relation to reality?

And if God knows us so well, why does he think that those who died in, say, the huge earthquake in Pakistan needed to be crushed by falling rocks and masonry? Did they really need that? Do I need my eyesight to be degrading, and my back muscles to be intermittently flaring in agony?

...following God is the most important thing. In the Bible God said, "Thou shalt not kill", but he also said Thou shalt utterly destroy." Given the situation, what is important is that we follow God no matter what he commands us to do, given the proper authority.
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A terrifying statement.
 
kged said:
Do you have any evidence to support this belief? I mean, it's nice, but what makes you think it bears any relation to reality?
And if God knows us so well, why does he think that those who died in, say, the huge earthquake in Pakistan needed to be crushed by falling rocks and masonry? Did they really need that? Do I need my eyesight to be degrading, and my back muscles to be intermittently flaring in agony?
A terrifying statement.
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As I have discussed in another thread, evidence is up for debate. I see evidence in everything; in the vast universe, in my heart, in absolutely everything. That, however, is different for everyone as not everyone sees evidence.

What is death? I believe death is an escape, a release from this terrible world. You mention flaring back muscles and other terrible occurrences, then why is death so bad? It really just depends on how you look at it.

God doesn't try to hurt you, but at the same time, I think affluence is a curse. People may think someone is blessed by being beautiful, famous, or rich, but I think those are curses if anything. People have a tendency of becoming prideful and selfish.

Some people look at difficulties as challenges; ways of finding out what they are capable of.

I'm not trying to tell everyone they have to believe in God, I'm just saying that you can't just say people are stupid if they believe in God. I'm not the one starting threads about it all the time I'm just defending the view point.
 
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Seak

That is the most disgusting sentiment I have ever heard. It excemplifies the sheer self-centeredness, love of death, and romanticised totalitarianism of the religious worldview.

If the world is so horrible and life is such an burden, then give away all your possessions, refuse medical attention when you're sick, and foreswear your citizenship. Stop trying to influence elections. Stop running for office. Stop voting.

For all its faults, the West is the guiding light and the safe haven in this savage world. It's the closest thing to paradise humanity has ever and will ever find, and it's the fruit of humanity's own labors, not the alms of some idealized king.

I honestly wish I could take you back to a time when faith really did rule the world, society's power structures were seen as divinely-inspired, and folks lived short, miserable lives enlivened only by religious ecstasy.
 
That still doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. That means that people misused their understanding of God and that's it.

I just don't get why everyone's so concerned with death. We all have to do it. It is not good when a bad person causes death, but that doesn't mean that it's God's fault.

If anything, death shows that there is a God. What else is our purpose here, but to die if there is no God?
 
What is death? Simply the total collapse of the neulogical nexus that produces consciousness.

We're concerned with death and with the quality of individual life and freedom. In the West, people are free to seek their own purpose. To try and live as they want. To make experiments and let those experiments be a path or a warning to others.

In a non-Western society, the purpose of your life is defined for you: to advance a collective meme. Death becomes the ultimate cop-out, the sop for all injustice. But it depends on the pious driving it into humanity's skull that this world and this life is excrement and can never be anything more, and that the best use of your life is to submit and die.

Death then becomes the blank slate to write all your unfulfilled wishes and terrifying fears. It becomes the goal and the ideal of the pious, who in their perversion yoke life to the service of death.

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die

If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.



From "The Preacher and the Slave" by Joe Hill.
 
I wouldn't say death is the ideal of the pious. It's about living this life to its fullest and becoming the kind of person you want to be to face what comes after this life.

What I don't get is that it seems like those who do not believe in God feel it is their collective duty to warn everyone that does believe in God that to do so is juvenile and ridiculous.

Believing in God, at the least, gives people hope and happiness. Why would you want to put that down?
 
With all due respect, evangelicalism is hardly limited to atheists... :rolleyes:
 
Because faith and religious has once more reared its head to become a political force in free societies and among our enemies, and we must do battle.
 
RAD said:
Because faith and religious has once more reared its head to become a political force in free societies and among our enemies, and we must do battle.
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En Garde!

C'mon now...

Are you opposed to women's lib as a political force? Civil rights? The Military? Government? Bars? International trade?

Just because you find the beliefs of one particular politically active group in a "free society" to be distasteful or wrong is hardly sufficient reason to denounce it on those grounds. You're not opposed to religion and faith as a political force -- you're opposed to exercising political force based on something you hold to be a falsehood. But in a "free society" you impose a rule of law that to denigrate or persecute or disenfranchise those with whom you disagree is disallowed. These individuals/groups, too, are "free" in a "free society" -- including holding the desire to impose a rule of law that to denigrate or persecute or disenfranchise those with whom they disagree is allowed.

That's the fundamental paradox of multiculturalism in democracy. It's much easier to create hegemony when you disallow multiculturalism, not so easy when you allow it.

So if you really believe in a free society, isn't it a bit ridiculous to argue against a certain group freely expressing their beliefs to shape democratic governance? Hmm?

:p
 
Fung Koo said:
En Garde!

C'mon now...

Are you opposed to women's lib as a political force? Civil rights? The Military? Government? Bars? International trade?

Just because you find the beliefs of one particular politically active group in a "free society" to be distasteful or wrong is hardly sufficient reason to denounce it on those grounds. You're not opposed to religion and faith as a political force -- you're opposed to exercising political force based on something you hold to be a falsehood. But in a "free society" you impose a rule of law that to denigrate or persecute or disenfranchise those with whom you disagree is disallowed. These individuals/groups, too, are "free" in a "free society" -- including holding the desire to impose a rule of law that to denigrate or persecute or disenfranchise those with whom they disagree is allowed.

That's the fundamental paradox of multiculturalism in democracy. It's much easier to create hegemony when you disallow multiculturalism, not so easy when you allow it.

So if you really believe in a free society, isn't it a bit ridiculous to argue against a certain group freely expressing their beliefs to shape democratic governance? Hmm?

:p
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Ender-of-threads strikes again.

But for serious, not one of you guys read the god delusion?
 
Dangnabbit, I always do that!

Nope, didn't read it. Read a summary, saw an interview. Got the gist. But I may pick it up.
 
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