Who is this God guy, anyway?

God is everything.....God is the director behind the screen that is trying to write us the story and the way....some of us are listening...some are not....
God can not been in full force until we free his children....us. God...in feeling....is indescribable and uncomprehensible....it is a gift that will be given to us once we get everything right....but it is a gift that will not lose it's luster after a couple of months....it's not a gift of momentary ups and downs.....it is a constant up....and I have just about got it...
MUCH LOVE
------------------
One of Jesus' disciples came up to Jesus and asked, "who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" Jesus called over to him a little child and held the child next to him and said, "This child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Until you can turn away from your sins and live as a child in spirit you will never enter the gates of heaven." GROW DOWN EVERYONE,,, he he
peace.
Seth
 
Utter BS

glowbug said:
I believe in God, but my belief isn't of the garden-variety Judeo-Christian kind, although nominally I am a Christian and I do believe in the Trinity.

Up until about four years ago I was a skeptic. I suppose I fell into the agnostic camp-I wouldn't quite categorize my stance then as one of atheism. Though I was very critical of the Christian doctrines that I had been taught growing up (and to some extent I still am) at that time, I had not rejected them outright.

I really can't pinpoint any specific event that "transformed" me into a believer. I guess it was a sense within myself that there was something greater than myself, some kind of life force that bound all organisms together in a very profound way.

I began to read some works exploring spirituality in an attempt to divine my own spiritual self-sense (two books that I would highly recommend for self-exploration: "Siddhartha" by Herman Hesse and "When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough" by Harold Kushner).

One question had always troubled me in my search for meaning: If there is no "God" or "supreme being" (or whatever you want to denominate it) and humans are all essentially governed by the same "survival of the fittest" genetic stratagems as other lower organisms, then what explains acts of altruism and self-sacrifice? What, for instance, explains an individual's diving into icy water to save a complete stranger who is drowning, at the risk of his own death? There seems to be no satisfactory explanation for such behavior-certainly such "self-sacrifice" traits would not be favored from an evolutionary standpoint, and any potential reward would not justify the risk from a cost-benefit standpoint. The skeptic/atheist can very easily support the non-existence of God by pointing to various examples of man's inhumanity to man, but how does he explain those acts of self-sacrifice?

Through my reading, introspection and yes, experiences in altered states, I have come to believe that God does exist. In my view, there exists a realm in which logic does not reign supreme-I call this the realm of "uber-logic."

In this realm is where God exists, in my opinion. I freely acknowledge that I cannot offer any empirical evidence to support the existence of this realm-only my own subjective experiences, which are unfortunately often very difficult to articulate in a manner satisfactory to those skeptical of my beliefs. Belief in the existence of this realm requires a suspension of those principles so greatly prized by the empiricist-a "leap of faith" if you will, which ties in nicely with the Christian concept that faith is all that is required for entry into the kingdom of God (this statement in no way assumes that such a kingdom exists only after death).

In my own spiritual experience, I have found support for my belief in teleological arguments that point to the preposterously astronomical odds against the universe evolving in all of its complexity by sheer chance. Such arguments, in my opinion, point to the existence of something greater than us, possessing powers of gnosis far beyond the limits of human comprehension.
I have also explored some of the more mystical components of spirituality (though not nearly as much as I would like). In my experience, I have noted a very mystical quality of the number "3"- the Trinity, id/ego/superego, fall from grace/redemption/resurrection, to cite a few examples. Though I have yet to explore them, I understand that the teachings of the Kabbalah delve into the mystical qualities of numbers.

In my own personal view of God, I have come to believe that assigning traits/qualities to the concept of God, as many often do (omniscient, omnipotent, etc.), is really problematic because to humans those concepts carry with them the conundrums inherent in our human comprehension of such concepts, e.g., "If God really is omnipotent, could he make a rock so heavy that he couldn't lift it?" In my own view, God simply IS.

More of my thoughts later. Good topic, loupy.
smile.gif

[This message has been edited by glowbug (edited 02 November 2000).]
Click to expand...

Anyway who created the creator? not a single god-botherer I've ever met can answer that one, and don't give me that old bollocks about 'it's not for us to know' etc, etc..
 
Sorry for ressurecting a long dead thread.

I've been an athiest/agnostic all my life until recent scientific developments have given me cause to rethink. Now I'm leaning toward: "we, along with all matter and energy, are connected, and are part of what could be considered God". The following are my reasons :

Apparently atoms that share an energetic bond that allows stimuli directed at one part to affect the whole, will still retain part of this shared response when spatially separated (even over great distances). Couple this with the Big Bang theory, which is about the only plausible explanation for the doppler shift we observe in the light emitted from our cosmic surroundings, and you have a pretty good, scientifically grounded, reason to believe we are all connected at an energetic level.

Next is what physicists refer to as "The Measurement Problem". Apparently particles only exist in the form we observe them in when we look at them. They are otherwise spread across space in a seemingly disordered state. There could be something the scientists are missing of coarse, but otherwise this implies that matter exists due to, rather than independent of, our perception. That being the case, it would seem that we subjectively and collectively create the universe we perceive (within our sphere of observation, ie as far as our telescopes allow). This adds pronounced gravity to the idea of 'memes' as important evolutionary pressures.

Lastly, some phycisists (and chemists as far as I can imagine) have all but concluded that everything can be reduced to energy at its most basic level. Keeping that in mind: Is a chair, made entirely from energy, in the material realm any more real than a chair similarly made of energy but imagined in the human mind? Both are comprised of no more than energy, and in theory it seems logical to assume they have equal validity. The only thing that separates a material thing from its corresponding mental conception is the material plane's durability versus the mental plane's transience.

Bill Hicks said it this way: "Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."
 
Well, here is my story. I know that God exists.

I used to wonder if there really was a God...until I experienced two events that made me a believer. I did not grow up going to church often, I never even had my first communion.....so I am far from being a bible thumper! But this is an honest to God true story- no pun intended, that changed my beliefs.

I was sleeping and having a vivid dream. In my dream, I was on the beach. The beach is my favorite place to be in the whole wide world. In my dream, I was annoyed by the sound of the waves crashing, which made no sense to me...I love the sound of crashing waves. I was looking at myself in the dream. I said " Why is it so LOUD?? Why is it so ANNOYING! I wish it would STOP!", and I watched myself putting my hands over my ears to shut out the sound. When I took my hands off my ears, A low, soft, yet stern man's voice from all around me said, "Then listen to THIS!!"
At that very moment, I woke up from my dream, and I was still annoyed....still half in the dream, half awake.
I opened my eyes in the dark and said out loud,"Listen to this? Listen to what???"

So I listened. I heard nothing. Silence.

Instantly, I sat straight up. Silence in my house meant something was wrong. We all sleep with fans on 365 days a year to drown out any outside noise. I have done it since I was young, and have gotten anyone who has ever slept at my home addicted to sleeping with fans as well. The ceiling fan above me was off..... the box fan on the floor was off, too.

I looked in the dark toward my son's crib, that was about arms length from me. Between me and his crib, was an outlet. I saw a glow coming from the little plug holes, and smelled somthing that resembled burnt plastic.

I called 911. The fire truck came blaring to my house at four something in the morning, "regulations" they said why they sounded the loud ass siren.....I asked! The fire station was only two or three blocks away.
While I was giving the baby a bottle, whose eyes were huge with wonderment from the fire engine's siren, and probably confused that I was waking him up, they went upstairs.

A small fire had just begun slowly burning in between the walls. They hacked a hole in the wall and put the fire out. They asked me how in the world did I know that a fire was slowly starting in the wall?
After all, the smoke detectors weren't going off, there wasn't any smoke, until they put the extinguisher on it. They also said how very lucky we were, because a fire like that can spread quickly between the walls, and by the time it's discovered, it's out of control. All the bedrooms are upstairs.....we never even discussed an escape route had ther ever been a fire.

It turns out the landlord had reversed the wires when he installed the ceiling fan. It shorted out the ceiling fan, causing a spark.

Is it all some huge coincidence that I woke up the very moment that I did? I don't think so.

I know that there truly is a God.......HE spoke to me.

If you believe in Him, I mean truly believe in Him with all your heart, talk to Him before you go to sleep, ask Him to bless so and so, and most of all thank Him for giving you life......one day, He might
talk to you, too!

I have one more story that involves the passing of my dad. I don't want to take up more space, but maybe I'll post it sometime.

Again.....I rarely go to church because I have major panic attacks, I'm embarrassed I can't go receive Holy Communion with everyone else.
I keep my beliefs to myself, but if my telling this story may give someone hope there really may be a God, then I'm happy I could help. :)
 
God? Thats whatever you understand him as, as long as you have faith that your god is going to inspire you to do good. Your all set
 
This is all new to me. I have an unusul question and am not sure if this the right place to post. I am looking for something, preferably a liquid that has the following properties:

A LOW FREEZING POINT
A HIGH MELTING POINT/FLASH POINT
NO NEGATIVE INTERACTION WITH GLYCERIN OR WATER
NOT COMBUSTIBLE
DOES NOT CORRODE PVC PIPE
CAN BE CONTAINED IN LIQUID FORM

mfemfemfem
 
This is a nice thread....

Ironically I do believe in a higher power, though I see all religion as a creation of man-kind to control people. I have seen things in my life that have made even the skeptic in me a believer, however, I have become more and more resistant towards societal beliefs towards religion as a result of all the hypocrisy and dogma that warps people's views. Keep an open mind and you can see things others refuse to.
 
For all the arguments for and against the existence of "god," the one question that has kept me for jettisoning my belief in "god" has been this...

What created us? Us. This universe. What are we a product of?

Sounds simple, but not really. Big bang...how did the point of energy from whence the big bang occurred come to be? Energy? How did this energy come to be? The forces that keep an atom together? How did they come to be?

There must be something that is infinite. Something outside of time in our plane of existence. Label it what you want. Give it whatever characteristics you want. But there must be something...something from which, as a result of action or reaction, the universe came to be. The most elemental forces in our universe...did they always exist? Was energy always there? What put it there? How can something come from nothing?

The "God" of the Torah stated, "I am that I am." The "God" of Revelations stated, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."

"God" is that which has always existed and from which everything has come.
 
You say that there must be something that is infinite. Why not the universe? Sometimes I think, maybe the universeis what most people would think of as "god".

I hate the whole.."How could something come from nothing?..god must exist!" Argument. The causation argument. If everything needs a cause, then I would say god needs a cause also. I just don't think that this is an argument that proves the existence of god. It comes back to the whole god is magical and hocus pocus stuff and that's why god doesn't need a cause argument. Not proof atleast for me.
 
I think there is a creative force out there. I also think this force has an interest in our development.
 
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I think, it's best to assume you don't know what there is outside our reality. I think this because we have our existence, but obviously there has to be something more, something with a new dimension, and if we could, we'd understand it. But we can't, so far, so we shouldn't assume anything. Maybe there's a god, maybe there isn't, but who knows?
 
We build shuttles and satellites and then throw them out in to space, we build telescopes to see as far as we can see, and don't forget the drills and submarines to see what's underneath us all because we may have missed something. We read books, look at buildings and mountains and listen to others who "know"......fuck the lot of it, we spend so much time worrying about what's gunna happen when we die and why the fuck are we here that we forget what's going on right in front of our eyes. Life to me is fairly simple and we complicate it.
As for the telescopes and shuttles, the books and "chosen" people, you may as well build your telescopes out of used toilet rolls because we have absolutely no fucking idea why we are here or if there's a purpose. If we did know then this thread wouldn't excist and neither would the myriad religions and snake oil salemen.
Be patient and wait until the moment you take your final breath and close your eyes, maybe then we might understand
 
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