A very dark topic...Read at your own risk.

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Yes, Stasis, that's it exactly, we really do create god ourselves, at least in theoretical form...and sometimes even in physical form, as all these portraits of a blond haired, blue eyed Jesus can attest to.
The variety of physical interpretaions of god/gods is amazing, from elephant headed men in India, to jackals in Egypt, to the trickster raven in Native American beliefs. And the lack of physical embodiment of god can also say a lot about people, as with Islam and its prohibition on engraven images of god.
I have another question for those on the board that have been following this: what about spirituality? Is it possible to be be spiritual without believing in a higher power? What is spirituality to you?
 
Why don't we make this topic even darker?
There is no god. All god(s) and all religions were invented in every culture and race in order to instill peace in society. Knowing that there is a heaven and a hell keeps the masses from rapping, killing, and robbing each other. Without god and religion, this would be a chaotic world. So, if we think there is an afterlife, we will be nice girls and boyz so that we can reach heaven oneday.
Actually, we are no different than any other animal. once we die, we die. it's like going to sleep, but w/o the dreams. Live life to the fullest now cuz there is no afterlife. But, this is a secret that only the elite among us know about. shhhhh!
Is that depressing? it's just BS right??? If it's not bs, what is the meaning of life then? U figure it out..........
 
Azn, to a LOT of people yes, that is going to be depressing. In a nutshell that says that there is no meaning of life. Not many people would ever want to believe this. Actually, it's not that there are few of us that know this, it's just that few of us can face and accept this. Most people are raised to believe that there are these "paths" to follow in life and one of them might be the right one (usually being the one that they are taught). When in all probability there is no path. No meaning. No afterlife.
I would love to get into the science of this, anthropic principles, man evolving into "God" etc. but I don't have the time to take it deep. Just know that as man evolves to the point where we could possibly genetically engineer ourselves into immortality we could pretty much become "God". Guru Daddy probably didn't mean it in this sense when he said, "We are God", but in all actuality he's not far off. This is why you typically hear religious folks arguing against genetic engineering because they think we're "playing god". When we get to that point where we can rewrite genetic code to stop aging, manufacture replacement body parts, cure just about any disease and create humans from scratch we will be as close to "God" as it gets (we're a lot closer to this than most realize).
When you look at it this way, it makes the idea of "God" appearing out of nothing not that far fetched.
As for the earlier question about spirituality, it's a chemical reaction in your brain. Ever notice how spiritual you sometimes feel at the height of your roll? Did an external entity tap into your subconscious or did your serotonin just increase to create a sense of spiritual awe?
Feel free to call it what you will, and as this thread shows, it's all subject to interpretation and what we all WANT to believe. I have really enjoyed this thread.
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Stasis
[This message has been edited by Stasis (edited 18 July 2000).]
 
Aznraver,
I think that prospect is only dark for those who rely upon the existence of god to get through their day to day lives. For myself, I would agree with your statement as one of many reasons why people choose to believe in a higher power.
 
Stasis remarks that "Beliefs... never change what IS." I think this is key, mostly because there are two different schools of thought on this.
Some atheists come to the conclusion that the universe is subjective. Those of you who believe this can explain.
Others, myself included, believe that the universe is objective, but we subjectively perceive it. Thus, to me, the point of philosophy and the aquisition of knowledge is to match up our perception of reality as close as possible to what reality actually is.
And really, if you guys haven't read that Sartre essay I posted at the beginning, do read it, it's astonishingly brilliant.
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Trance and Dance: the enlightened path to Trancendence.
 
And let me emphasize that
ATHEISM IS NOT DARK!
ATHEISM IS NOT PESSIMISTIC!
ATHEISM IS OPTIMISTIC!
We are the masters, not the slaves!
Sartre does a much better job of explaining this than I ever could, so read his essay I posted at the beginning of this thread, I beg you!
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Trance and Dance: the enlightened path to Trancendence.
 
just wanted to give my thanks to the kind fellow who told us to quit "arguing". "god forbid" (heh heh) there be some discussion with depth (holy shit, no e talk in this post?!?) .
also, russel is bertrand russel, correct?
i find it highly amusing that my old high school's motto was something russel said. too fucking funny.
ever thought what it would be like to be one of those "blind xians"? having complete faith...and never even entertaining other possibilities. not even wanting to learn them. they always seem so happy...on the outside, at least.
 
As Einstein said, "Energy doesn't cease to exist it only changes form...." So who's to say that once we die we don't actually change form to another type of energy, possibly one that exists in another dimension. Today we can only comprehend the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd dimensions, so what if when we die we transform to beings that exist in the 4th and 5th dimensions (Time and Space). But, to say the same as others have said, some higher force/being had to start it all off.
Party On!
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"If you can't beat them, confuse them."
"Try not, do or do not, there is no try"
"It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"
"Me want cookie"
~~Just Float'n~~
[This message has been edited by Plague2040* (edited 18 July 2000).]
 
Plague, once we die we do change into another form of energy, it's called fertilizer.
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[This message has been edited by Stasis (edited 18 July 2000).]
 
You're telling me that our bodies only poses the energy that it would take to decompose our bodies? I don't think so, I think that the energy of sentient, thought poses its own energy form. Call it what ever you want, but there is something more to this than fertilizer. Beside its only intellectual conjecture, just like everything else posted on this thread. There is no way to prove or disprove anything that has been posted.
 
Stasis you may be right about a feeling of spirituality being at least triggered by a chemical reaction, much as love at first sight is likely triggered by hormones and human sexual response.
Of course, if you want to break things down as constructionists do, you could say that every thought, emotion and action can be broken down into individual components that eventually boil down to nothing more than chemical and electrical reactions.
I think that though spiritual feelings can be triggered by chemicals, the continual feeling of spirituality that some people maintain goes beyond simple reactions. And I don't believe that this is because of some higher power, but simply that the sum of the parts is greater than the individual pieces. And, by the way, I'm referring to non-denominational spirituality, as well as Christian, Buddhist or whatever else.
Anyway, my question, perhaps poorly phrased was a littler simpler than that. I was just wondering what things make you feel spiritual? If you don't believe in god, what kind of structure do you believe in, and is that spirituality to you?
For me, I would agree with Transcendance that the universe is objective, and I too seek to understand as much of as I can. For me the spirituality in my life revolves around the way my life interacts with other humans, how they interact with other living things. How each thing is made up of smaller things, and how each thing in turn makes up a part of a larger thing.
We all came from star stuff, as Carl Sagan said, and ultimately everything is just a different variation of the same thing. It brings me joy to realize how I fit into the elegant and infinitely complex clockwork that makes up our universe. That awe for me is my spirituality.
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"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."
-Jules de Gautier
 
"We all came from star stuff, as Carl Sagan said, and ultimately everything is just a different variation of the same thing. It brings me joy to realize how I fit into the elegant and infinitely complex clockwork that makes up our universe. That awe for me is my spirituality."
That completely sums it up for me as well. Beautifully put.
I miss Sagan..
frown.gif
 
I didn't bother reading all the replies but this is my two cents..
Knowledge exists in two types. There is knowledge which is obtained through sensory perception such as "The ball is Red" and "That Wall is white" -- and then there is knowledge which is obtained through cognition-- i.e. "1 + 1 = 2" -- no sense perception can tell you that because for some reason someday "1 + 1 *might* = 15"-- you never know.
Ok with that out of the way-- you say that god/afterlife was created by man to provide a sense of comfort. Ok-- fine, maybe-- maybe not. However the second part of knowledge-- the part that makes you -- you, the part which makes 1 + 1 = 2-- that does NOT require sense perception. Therefore life on the whole cannot be reduced to sense perception.
But lets say for one very instant we want to say "All knowledge is sense percieved"-- OK. If this is true then your existence as you know it does not exist because sense percieved knowledge is just that-- perception. But you cannot actually prove that what you percieve actually exists. Try proving that a ball is red without using your senses. You cannot-- therefore it cannot exist.
"What do I know?"
Ok-- onto some hoakey spiritual stuff.
I used to not believe that there was life after death. I've been working in a hospital this summer as an orderly. I watched a lady die the second day on the job. She died right in front of me. It was complete bedlam in the room-- everyone was going crazy. In all the confussion-- between all the tubes, the doctors yelling, nurses pushing, and the vomit smell-- something was there. Something greater that I have ever felt. I knew at the moment she flatlined that something else was out there. Notice I say "something"-- 'cause i'm not going to make any guesses as to what it is. (completly contradicts above paragraph)
yeah.. any philosophy majors-- feel free to correct my apriori/post-apriori knowledge stuff-- i'm sure its full of errors.
moss::
 
God did show himself to us, in Jesus Christ.
That's what made Jesus so terribly vulnerable, God always comes in a form where we can reject him, like crushing the baby's skull or nailing him to a cross when he gets too big for that.
What crimes did Jesus commit to be sent to die on a cross? Know how you die from crucifixion? You suffocate while hanging.
All Jesus did was talk about the Father and love thy neighbor as thyself.
What is so wrong with that people?
 
God is a genius. He made things so perfectly puzzling and beautiful for us to figure out. Have you ever thought about lets say your immune system. So you have all heard of antibodies, those little proteins that your body produces to fight disease. Well, you have billions of antibodies against all sorts of germs and these are coded in your DNA. Well, if each DNA sequence to code for an antibody was unique, you would have to use 300% of your DNA to just make antibodies. But God cleverly got around this and instead we get our antibodies from mixing and matching little bits of DNA to form new peices inside our cells and these produce antibody diversity. Anyway, to those of you with a fascination for life, this must astound you as it does me. Or how about that in order to develop into a complex multicellular organism, there must be a hard enveloping case surrounding the first few cells. This is true in every organism but the hard case is different in each case. Anyway, these are some of the things that make me believe in God. Every time I look under a microscope and see all the intricate parts of a cell put together to make it function, I renew my belief in God.
Loves,
Doc
The geek, the meek, on a conquest to figure things out.
 
our souls are reincarnated. this has been shown in thousands of hypnosis sessions not to mention that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. (thats a fact by the way).
 
i dont believe that theres just one god. if there was one god and satan and that this god is so powerful then why does satan rule mostly everything. i mean that if god really wanted to stop hate and all that shit he could. he can part the sea and all that shit but he cant cure hate? its just messed up. i believe in more than one god, that theres different gods ruling different things that one isnt more powerful than the other thats why the world isnt perfect. shit like that...
how do you know we just die and theres nothing after death? have you died b4?
 
I am very comfortable in the role of
ignorant agnostic.
It is not likely we can or should know
about the existence of a Creator. My God,
if we did know, that would take a lot of
the fun out of life- and it would make these
long-winded, oft-repeated arguments
irrelevant. We are not meant to know- quite simply.
I do not believe in God. I do not worry about his existence or his lack of existence.. We do not need to prove God`s existence or non-existence. We
do need to make the most of today- part of
the life that we know does exist.
I despise Christianity and most organized religion- because it is used for violence, hate -and exclusion and condemnation of others who are different or believe differently. We should make the most out of what we face- a life with
many challenges, obstacles, beauties, and rewards...
If Humanity`s Science is able to find God,
to make Contact with the "Creator," I believe that would be the end of humanity and its purpose.
Whoa... can we start talking about drugs again??
 
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