Is God an Eternal Entity or a Human Construct?

[kyleb]

lol Zero, it seems to me that he just likes to speak of things that are somewhat difficult to express in english which is why it will sometimes come out sounding similar to a messianic psychopath. i assure you there is really nothing to be afraid of. if you haven't see it yet, or even if you have; "The Messenger", a movie about Joan of Arc does much to explain what TENYEARS was talking about. granted, most atheists i know claim just interpret it in their own perspective and claim the point of the movie was to show that she was crazy; however, if you might watch it while entertaining the possibility that it is not intended to slander the poor woman, you might see what TENYEARS is referring to.

 

[TENYEARS]

There was once a man at a well who was told by a spirt do not drink the water from the well or you will go mad. The man did not drink and started speaking in tongues. They said he is mad, or whatever. He looked at them and said no problem, he grabbed a cup filled with the well water and drank it. He then said now I am like you.

Good luck.

 

[Zero]

Until someone presents something EXTERNAL as proof, I have no way of telling ayour vision from a mental illness...

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by TENYEARS
There was once a man at a well who was told by a spirt do not drink the water from the well or you will go mad. The man did not drink and started speaking in tongues. They said he is mad, or whatever. He looked at them and said no problem, he grabbed a cup filled with the well water and drank it. He then said now I am like you.

Good luck.

English, not homemade fables. Jeez, how hard is it??

 

[heusdens]

Originally posted by kyle_soule
Also, just a note, no scientists claims the universe has always been there, it started about 13.6 (I'm not positive on that figure) billion years ago. But according to Creationists, God has always been around and has come from nothing, just always been[?].

Science doesn't claim that the world started 13.6 billions years ago, as this makes no sense. What then 'caused' the world to be there in the first place? There is no other theoretical possibility then to say that the world exists eternally. The Big Bang is just a large scale transformation of matter, not a begin of the material world.

Noone has seen or witnessed the actual presence of God, so all called "proofs of God" are derived indirectly, bystating or 'proving' that f.i. evolution can't provide the answer for existence of life, or the Big Bang can't 'proof' the existence of the universe, etc.
But that what they claim, is impossible for the world (having eternal existence of instance), is possible for their God. So in this way, all claims on God are made on ill assumptions of how the world works, and the only way to know how the world really works, is through science.

Religion is not an answer to any question mankind has, but is the problem of thinking, cause it imposes a wrong vision on how the material world works.

 

[Iacchus32]

Originally posted by Grimmus
Now i ask where dose[/color] god coem[/color] from?

Hypo man! Hypo! Or, would that be typo?

 

[Psyber freek]

Originally posted by heusdens
Religion is not an answer to any question mankind has, but is the problem of thinking, cause it imposes a wrong vision on how the material world works.

Science doesn't answer these questions either. Science doesn't give us any sense of morality, just sense of survival and there's more to life than that. We need to have absolute truth, otherwise everthings just an opinion.

Anyway, religion does give us the answers. It answers what we should live for. It answers how we should live. These are the most imporant answers to us as humans.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Psyber freek
Science doesn't answer these questions either. Science doesn't give us any sense of morality, just sense of survival and there's more to life than that. We need to have absolute truth, otherwise everthings just an opinion.

Anyway, religion does give us the answers. It answers what we should live for. It answers how we should live. These are the most imporant answers to us as humans.

We don't NEED absolute truth! And, in fact, your feeling that we need it so bad would explain why people make up religions; because we don't like ambiguity, not because there is an actual God.

 

[TENYEARS]

Ok, interpreted as read, but not neccessarily ment. What Phyber could have ment is a true need to understand.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by TENYEARS
Ok, interpreted as read, but not neccessarily ment. What Phyber could have ment is a true need to understand.

But, what I see is when that need to understand hits a wall, people create myths and religion to fill in that gap. It doesn't have to be right, so long as it fills the gap.

 

[TENYEARS]

A true need to understand does not stop by it's very nature. It accepts nothing.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by TENYEARS
A true need to understand does not stop by it's very nature. It accepts nothing.

In your case, it seems to accept everything and anything...so long as it isn't real?

 

[TENYEARS]

No wheaties today?

 

[megashawn]

Anyway, religion does give us the answers. It answers what we should live for. It answers how we should live. These are the most imporant answers to us as humans.

And if society still functioned by these same answers and "what we should live for" then the world would be 100's of years behind technologically. We'd still die around 40-50 if we were lucky, and be secluded from all the world. We certainly would not be sitting here talking about it, if the world lived by what your religion says is "what we should live for". We'd be lucky to have those cool inflatable churches you probably had your revival in.

 

[Psyber freek]

Originally posted by megashawn
And if society still functioned by these same answers and "what we should live for" then the world would be 100's of years behind technologically. We'd still die around 40-50 if we were lucky, and be secluded from all the world. We certainly would not be sitting here talking about it, if the world lived by what your religion says is "what we should live for". We'd be lucky to have those cool inflatable churches you probably had your revival in.

The same would be true if weren't answers and this "what we should we live for" because half of us would be dead since "there was just nothing to live for."

 

[Alexander]

Origin of Gods? Easy.

As my 4-grade textbook says, ancients did not know who throws lightning bolts, so they decided to claim that it is likely a man-looking creature named Zeus. They also did not know who pushes Sun across the sky, so they guessed that it is mighty man-looking creature and they named it Apollo. And so on.

Later many separate gods were consolidated into single one (for political reason: simplification of managing masses by single dictator rather than many tribe leaders). That is why we have many Gods in multi-dictators communities and one God in single-leader communities.

So, according to this textbook, god(s) is (are) what we personally don't know. Say, if we don't know who makes crystals to grow or cells to interact, or galaxies to collide, or volcanoes to erupt, then we assign this responsibility to some creatures (and call them god(s)).

 

[BoulderHead]

So, according to this textbook, god(s) is (are) what we personally don't know. Say, if we don't know who makes crystals to grow or cells to interact, or galaxies to collide, or volcanoes to erupt, then we assign this responsibility to some creatures (and call them god(s)).

Does this mean that more knowledge = fewer Santa Clauses, by any chance?

 

[Alexander]

Generally, yes. Magnitude of education (not general ed, but about nature, i.e. physics, math, chem, bio, astro, geo, etc) anticorellates with magnitude of beliefs in superstitions.

You can also look at correlation of belifs with age groups: more believers at 0-20 and 50-100 age groups (when knowledge is either not there yet, or already not there due to brain/memory detirioration) than in 20-50 group.

 

[TENYEARS]

If you want to see where god comes from I give you a simple solution to any and all. Believe nothing. If you do that you will actually learn some science. They go hand in hand.

My vision where this will be proven will happen in this lifetime. One thing though you will still be nothing more and nothing less than a new kind of believer when it happens. In order to experience reality you must have the need to find it and not settle.

 

[Alexander]

I think this already happened many times over. First, with Ra. Then with Zeus. Then with Bahus, and then many other gods. One by one, they were retired.

Interesting that some theists seeing impossibility to keep last gods around, redefine them in such a way that they can't be traced at all in our world (and even keep redefinig them more and more remote from this world).

 

[Royce]

My daughter, a nurse, said that if one had a psychotic event and they heard voice telling them to harm themselves or others, we dope them up and throw them into a rubber room. If the voices are not harmful but religious or incomprehensable we call them profits, seers and saints.
I thought that funny and inciteful.

 

[heusdens]

Originally posted by The Grimmus
I was listeng to an atheist and a christian debate (really juts putting each other down)over the existence of god, One siad where did the unievers coem from the atheist said that it was always there but the christian siad god then the atheist asked where god came from and the christian siad he was always there.

Now i ask where dose god come from?

From the human mind. Same as Donald Duck, another artifical construct of thought, and which does not exist in reality (have you ever seen a talking duch?)