Do you believe in God?

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I wouldn't mind it, at all, if there were a God.

Now....if a Supreme Being happened to have set the Universe in motion, how do we know that it's precisely, nor nearly precisely, corresponds with the Christian/Muslim/Jewish notion of God?

Personally, I think if you read into the esoteric teachings of all religions around the world, they all seem to circumscribe the same "ultimate reality." In the same way, if you gather all of the most profound thinkers and theologians from around the world in contemporary culture, they all find that they agree more than they disagree. As i say, my own spirituality is constantly evolving. I do not consider myself to belong to any specific religion... or subscribe to any particular philosopher. I cast a wide net... open up a wide bandwidth... when I hear of a new ontology, philosophy, spirituality, scientific discovery, etc.. I do not automatically take a skeptical view... instead I let it be an assumption.. and see how it could fit with my own "narrative." Again... this gets back into the revelation/epiphany it was for me to discover that I have Asperger's. For me I can "see it." I can see that God exists. It is because of the "conceptual web" I have woven in my education over the course of my life. The Judaeo-Christian-Islamic God, Brahman, the Eternal Tao, The Will, the Supreme Being, Nature, Great Spirit, all of these refer to this object I see in my minds eye. In fact, it goes even further, because I believe we are all God pretending that we are not... and this is the secret esoteric teaching of all religions. This is the machinery that is missing in "most" Christians today. All too often, people miss the entire point of the life and teachings of Christ. Christs message was precisely that we are all God. But too often Christians say that only Christ was the Son of God... well this is simply to miss the entire point.

All in all...the questions are, as far as the origins of the Universe, or universes are concerned:

1. Is the Universe of infinite scope and infinite time?

2. Are there multiple universes, with each universe having divergent laws, and divergent origins?

3. Did the Big Bang start it all, if there is one Universe, and it is finite?

4 If so, what instigated the Big Bang...something random, or a superior force?

5. If not, did something random occur which started the Universe (via a mechanism other than the Big Bang)....or was the instigating action performed by a superior force?

6. Was this superior force cognizant of having performed this action?


Obviously, I cannot presume to have the answer to these questions.

But it would be nice if we could explore space further, so we could come up with a better idea about how all these forces work.

Hello! OK, I try a post on this forum. For better of for worse. At least please don't shoot me for it.

Quote from previous post: all religions around the world, they all seem to circumscribe the same "ultimate reality."
Reaction: I guess not. There seems to be some development in religion, though really slow. Take Christianity, Judaism or Islam. These religions are somewhat linked to "paradise", the ultimate 'feel good place'. It's with this that they try to satisfy many people's spiritual longings.

But then what if you cannot find it anywhere in this world?

Then their claim seems to be somewhat smaller, more minimalistic: ok, paradise does not exist all the time, but it exists during certain periods of time, somewhere in the past, somewhere in the future. And we're now in an intermediate period of time (it's now somewhere in heaven, in the cloud, suspended, or whatever).

Clever answer. We know it from the story of Genesis, fall of man, and messianism. Somewhere I read that the ancient Hebrews borrought these ideas from Zoroastrianism.

But then another problem, a modern problem: as we know more and more, we might come to the conclusion that there has never been a paradise. In the past, the world was a wild, uninhabitable place, definitely not paradise. And when there has never been a paradise in the past, it's possible there will never be one in the future either. Or in the skies. And it raises all other sort of questions: wouldn't it be boring to live there forever, etc.

Perhaps that's the end of religion. Or they come up with something else, a bit more minimalism. Maybe another fragmentation in time. As religion develops, at least Christianity, it seems that they give more and more significance to "the moment", like in the notion of revelation, epiphany, etc. They talk more about the moment of Christ first coming, the moment of conversion, any moments of religious significance. This suggest even more fragmentation of time, not so much "periods of time", but "moments". Eventually you could skip the whole doctrine about paradise, millenia, afterlife, etc, the moment is perhaps all that we have.

Yet some people need there to be a god. They can't cope with the idea of not having someone watching over them.

There is a differnce between the concept of a creator and a theistic god.

A creator doesn't require any religious doctrine to be true at all. This is a fallacy used by religion to try an validate their beliefs.

A creator needn't exist now.

A creator needn't intervene or care.

A creator needn't be morally superior.

A creator needn't be omniscient.

The list goes on and on.

The reason why people are drawn to superstitions, faith, etc is a completely different question to creation.

For you Christian and or Jewish believers.

Happy Passover.

Happy Passover to you, too.

Kraftiekortie

Danke

I don't actually. If a person's really seen enough of the bad stuff in life or has enough sensitivity to mass suffering - the thought that something had the power to create this and leaves it just like it is can be really grotesque. I didn't quite go antitheist but was an atheist for several years largely on account of what a relief I felt when i came to the conclusion that this situation was not the fault of any sentient agency. When I got forced out of my disbelief I knew that I'd be quite possibly in for a rather nasty emotional roller-coaster in dealing with this issue and the thought of that coming down the road scared me a bit.

Some say
Life is scary
____ happens
Coyote waits and he is hungry
Life has disruption/suffering
OY
OY vey
It rains on the good and bad
Some write books -
Why bad things happen to Good people

Christianity is not Disneyland and yes there is suffering
Death , mean people , abusers including being wounded in religious setting. ..
I go to a program that uses the slogan
God never waste a hurt.
That isn't easy to understand.
Even harder to take to heart
Humans still wear different forms of armor.

me ... "Reader and Righter"

This post had nothing to do with the multiverse. Merely, the undeniable fact that the universe cannot 'form' itself. I have addressed this issue on my thread 'Deltaville's Brief History' why creation ex nihilio fails on every corner.

On the other hand, the multiverse, if it even exists, would not fix the problem of fine tuning. For instance string landscape conjecture predicts 10^500 'different' universes, but would still not solve the fine tuning problem.

For instance, (10^500)/(10^10^123+10^123+10^60) would still yield an extremely low probability for the life bearing properties of our universe.

Genesis does not go into detail including how long ago it happened. Genesis simply reads:
In the beginning God ([a]Elohim) [b]created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth.

Here is another essay of mine from a while back... it attempts to poetically communicate some profound spiritual intuitions.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=314524

Noah Y.

Oh that I would notice and do more than take off my shoes and put down my sword.
The latter is reference to Highlander.
Love and prayers

Quote: "(10^500)/(10^10^123+10^123+10^60) would still yield an extremely low probability for the life bearing properties of our universe."
A fine tuned universe is probably the least probable event ever. So I guess it means that it is not totally random, our life bearing properties of our universe are not totally random?
But, then this question: how much is the chance there would exist completely nothing? Or, to rephrase: how much is the chance of a universe that does not allow anything to exist?
Some say that this chance is even less. That there is rather something (whatever it may be) than nothing. Because "nothing" would be rather unstable situation.
Secondly: when there is something rather than nothing, isn't it more likely that anything material can exist, without God?
But OK, I am not a scientist at all, so maybe complety confused