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anandamide
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17 Oct 2006, 10:19 am

I believe that god exists. I believe in the power of faith and that it is possible to connect with god on a personal level through faith. My faith includes my belief that Jesus Christ died and was resurrected. This flies in the face of everything I have ever been taught throughout my university education and my upbringing. But now I believe that spirituality is an integral part of our humanity and that we are not completely whole as human beings until we have faith.

I believe that I have been touched by the Holy Spirit while praying in church with others and that it was a wondrous experience. I feel my life has been enriched by the experience in awesome ways because of my personal spiritual relationship to god.

I belong to a wonderful church where people can disagree on interpretations of the bible and have a dialogue about what it all means.

Many people dismiss religion based on what they think they know which is actually a very limited amount of information.



Scintillate
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17 Oct 2006, 11:47 am

I get the same reaction when I tell people about my belief in an infinitely moving universe..

But yeh, I'm sure lots of here love a good debate anyway.


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markaudette
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23 Oct 2006, 6:35 pm

God, I believe in.

Organized religion, I do NOT.



Corvus
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25 Oct 2006, 1:45 pm

God/Universe/Whatever, when broken down through logic, must most likely exist at some point.. What god IS is up for debate.. However, there is still the possibility (and hope for some of you that there isnt one, although I dont know why thats a great outlook to have) that no god exists (again, it depends on how you define god - infinity might be god)

Anyone who preaches about god and their religion is just as bad as anyone who preaches that god doesnt exist

Who has the answers? No one.. Funny how people can be so confident that they are right based on absolutely nothing

BTW, if you meditate, you will become a tid bit more aware of whats happening out there.. Most, if not all religion derived from meditative states

Philosophy is the "religion" of the future as its more open for discussion..

"Religion" is a nasty by product of meditation created by those who just listened instead of 'doing' the meditations



camphortree
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25 Oct 2006, 2:05 pm

the more i think about it the less sense the idea of a god makes.
i also think a godless universe is more beautiful and magical.



diseased
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25 Oct 2006, 3:59 pm

God, God, God.
Interesting topic and one that I rarely get into simply because it tends to make so many people so unreasonable.
Let's see... God was Yahweh was Jehova was... El. Yep, El. A second-rate Sumerian sky-god (lightning to be exact, if I recall correctly). Fast forward several hundred years and *foosh* gone is the Sumerian mythos and somehow this El dude has been promoted/promoted himself to head honcho, patronised a small tribe of humans and told them they're his "chosen" people, ignited a few bushes and knocked up some mortal chick. Hm. That last bit kinda reminds me of Zeus.
For a supposedly omniscient, omnipotent deity, God comes across as extremely human, imo. Don't follow Gods rules? BAM, lake of fire, demons jabbing pitchforks in yer bum. Follow a different god? Then it's okay for Gods' people to kill you until you're dead. Question God? Poof, pillar of salt, beeyotch. Pwnt. Kinda sounds like a child having a temper tantrum to me.
I mean, were God truly all-knowing, all-powerful etc., then... first example off the top of my head, here... why would he give a damn what other god some people choose to worship. Seems to me that if he/she were TRULY all-powerful, yadda yadda, he'd be content to wait until the nonbelievers died, reveal Himself to them and say "See? I was right. But I love you anyway, so here, c'mon in."
Or, let's throw in autism. Specifically low and ultra low functioning. What kind of kind and loving god would put someone through that? Oh, they get to go straight to heaven? Then why bother having had them on earth in the first place? Moreover, what kind of biased "test" is that? "Here, person with a wonderful spirit but screwed up brain, this is earth. Many people will regard you as a complete and utter moron and even the ones that love you will often find you trying. Some people may spit on you, others will institutionalise you and then molest you. But *I* love you." No, if you really loved them and wanted their unbiased love in return, you'd set up a fairer "test".
And on the whole notion of testing, a la Job, I say "WTF?" Testing us? Sounds like God's a sadistic bastard, y'ask me.
However, at the same time, I'm reminded of how much I don't know about The World And So On. There may well BE a god, for all I know. I'm just one hairless monkey on a minor planet.
But all the same, the Christian/Muslim god can kiss my butt until he comes up with some explanations and apologies.
My family wasn't too big on religion when I was growing up and I was encouraged to find my own Way, and ultimately settled on a mix of Buddhism (Zen) and Taoism. Makes a lot of sense to me.

this is just scratching the surface... easier to get into it in person, but that usually also implies '...within kicking distance if you offend them'.



Corvus
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25 Oct 2006, 5:55 pm

No one has the answers so put faith into what "IS"

If you want to believe in something, I will say for the 100000th time, practice Meditation, as religion got its roots here (and did so for an exact reason)

If you want to believe a "system" of rules, like that of muslim or whatever, then close your mind up and preach on..



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27 Oct 2006, 1:32 am

Truth is self evident, science isn't based on faith as it created everything we know.


Sure some aspects of it are, but thats cause they're new.


God or Godless its all the same to me, I don't care what you wanna call it, I'm obsessed with the infinite possibilities between all things, I'm obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge, for the further I travel into the known, the more the unknown reveals itself.

Meditation can take many forms, for me it takes the form of sound, or listening to running bath water..


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Scintillate
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01 Nov 2006, 3:14 pm

I wanted sausage, so I could be the bun.


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Nexus
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02 Nov 2006, 4:26 am

To simplify my current conclusion of what it is; God is a purely mathematically driven force (aka fancy way to say laws of physics) which if the right equations can formulate, it can have a level of intelligence much like a Artificial Intelligence system, but since it's mostly mathematical and not very emotional, morality is irrelevant to it's primary function. God can have a personification however I doubt it can break it's own rules by performing divine tricks, because it would serve as a error to it's fundamental purpose. If it can, it'll be able to perhaps change the fundamental equations for a nanosecond to accommodate for something it has developed personal interest in; but it won't be a babysitter or genie and grant wishes to everyone, because it can't do that without consequence.

But here's an ethical question you have to consider: Why would it save humanity from it's self destruction when another life form as we speak is probably at war, killing each other in the trillions and yet it did nothing to stop them? It's simple, because it's just letting it's mathematical laws dictate the outcome physically and being fair in a logical sense. Divine intervention is a illogical motive to it, however only in probably a freak chance it could do something out of the ordinary, but I'm talking once in every several thousand years, or even up to billions of years. But until I see it, I doubt it'll do anything for us.

The last thing I should add is that, according to the dimensional structure of this existence which I believe is 9-dimensional, I feel there's actually three of them. The reason why is because three unique factors exist, and those are: Individuality, Electromagnetism and Gravitation. Time flows cubically as each factor has one temporal axis constituting their effect I believe; however they all work in synchronization in a spatial environment forming a linear time line. I know kind of off-topic but I figured I should give a bit more information to give an idea of how that would be possible.

I use the word 'believe' a lot in saying that because no-one is qualified to state an answer of what god is as fact, because it's purely an unknown which may never be figured out.


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02 Nov 2006, 12:08 pm

Nexus, sounds interesting.

I only follow my own reason, understanding, values, and aims. Such a "God" has never been proven or made themselves known to me. I would not hate or love such a being should religion prove itself to be right, but I worship nothing. I believe in humanity making its own way and having a superior understanding and level of technology.
I also have my own ideas of evil- corruption, ruin, poverty, greed, the encouragement of stupidity, degeneracy, decadence, barriers to progress. Such should be eliminated in an appropriate way.


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richardbenson
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02 Nov 2006, 7:10 pm

i now beleive god is a beautiful guitar solo.


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Scintillate
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03 Nov 2006, 12:13 am

I declare that I believe in a flying sausage monster, you can't prove it doesn't exist so IT MUST EXIST!! !

It seems kinda pointless to focus on what we don't know, only through pursuit in the known do we break into the unknown.


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Scrapheap
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03 Nov 2006, 9:37 pm

Scintillate wrote:
I declare that I believe in a flying sausage monster, you can't prove it doesn't exist so IT MUST EXIST!! !

It seems kinda pointless to focus on what we don't know, only through pursuit in the known do we break into the unknown.


Flying sausage monster?? don't you mean Spaghetti monster??


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Xenon
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03 Nov 2006, 9:45 pm

I do not believe in God. I never have.


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VesicaPisces
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06 Nov 2006, 3:53 am

Scintillate wrote:
"I think a certain naivety is required to make god out to have the same form of working conciousness itself, for what is beyond our comprehension? How everything works together! Its not the universe that is god, it is EXISTENCE.. "


Existence is the state of something that observes or is being observed, it would not exist if their were not motion. Motion would not exist if their was not a Universe. Existence is reliant on the Universe. The Universe is reliant on motion to exist. The Universe encompasses all that exists. I would say that since you cant have one without the other, existence and the Universe are both aspects of the divine. Perhaps the Universe is existence. We observe the Universe and also are observed by the Universe.


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