Do you believe in god?

[jiji]

...Wow. Dolemite's initial post is almost exactly in alignment with my personal beliefs. I have nothing more to say here.

[Shine]

Aww shit not one of these again. I am, however, quite ammazed that this has yet to degrade into a FC to fuck with god thread.

I don't believe that god is an omnipitant being that sees all and knows all. I can also claim not to care, as I doubt "god" in whatever form could really give a fuck about what we believe anyhow.

[Yamcha]

I remember seeing this in Donnie Darko, athiest is believing there is no God, but there was a term for one who doesn't see any evidence of God, but doesn't deny the possibility that one may exist. Was this agnostic?

On a side note, this is a completely curious question about Christians. Those who don't believe in God will probably go to hell, right? In that case, how can Christianity preach tolerance of other religions when all these other people are heathens and are going to hell?

[Shine]

Originally posted by Yamcha
On a side note, this is a completely curious question about Christians. Those who don't believe in God will probably go to hell, right? In that case, how can Christianity preach tolerance of other religions when all these other people are heathens and are going to hell?

I recently read a Dear Abby that had printed a letter dealing with a similar topic. In it a woman (the letter writter) was told by a Christain friend that she was saddened to think that they would not see each other in the after life because she (the letter writter) had not been saved. The woman had then told her Christain friend that,
"although I will not be in your heaven, rest assured you will be in mine." and they left it at that.

[gamevet]

Originally posted by Yamcha
I remember seeing this in Donnie Darko, athiest is believing there is no God, but there was a term for one who doesn't see any evidence of God, but doesn't deny the possibility that one may exist. Was this agnostic?

On a side note, this is a completely curious question about Christians. Those who don't believe in God will probably go to hell, right? In that case, how can Christianity preach tolerance of other religions when all these other people are heathens and are going to hell?

Not true. In the "Book of Revelations" it talks of the seven churches, and the seven kingdoms and how god will take those deserving souls from each religion to heaven. This is found in the King James Edition of the Holy Bible. I was raised Catholic, but as you can see from my above post, I can't call this religion any better than the other ones. It's not like wearing a small hat on my head is going to get me to heaven, nor saying pre-written prayers, like the Lords Prayer.

[Fe 26]

Yes and No

In the course of my life I have come upon many undeniable truths. Oddly, virtually all of them are also preached as truths in the Bible.

One being the concept of love. If one analyze one?s own life, and the history of the world and those around them, a person will come to the conclusion that Love is mankind?s saving factor. Where there is love, there is prosperity and hope. Where there is none, there is only pain and death. This fact is obvious in everything. If you look at history you have to wonder, would we have had WW2 if Hitler would have received more love as a child, or perhaps had the love of a woman that he also loved dearly? Also in our own day to day lives, what gives more satisfaction? Things that bring momentary pleasure, or being with people that we love, having a job we love, and just doing things we love? To a mature adult who has a understanding of their own emotions, and what creates them, the answer is obvious. From this knowledge I have to say that Love is man?s God. It his ultimate goal, his ultimate source of peace, it is his salvation. If that is not a text book definition of God, I don?t know what is. Oddly many different text in the Bible and few other religions agree or even restate what I just commented on. And hey, if you disagree, try living with out love of any sort. Not much fun is it?

There are a lot of other things to, but I wont post them. It would be a waist of time seeing how just the concept of sin takes several pages of text in its simplest form to explain from a logical stand point and I know none of you care to read that much.

So do I believe in a God? Yes, am I sure it is the God of the Bible? No

That is just hard to come to a conclusion on. Sure many things I believe agree with the Bible but there are a lot of other things missing. There just seems to be a major lacking in the connection between the God described in the Bible and the world today. He just doesn?t seemed involved. And it doesn?t seem like we can get him to be involved. The Bible describes a God who is very personal, who communicates with those who have faith in him, and who you can get to do things if you pray and have faith that he will. Today there isn?t a connection. At the best, he does something, but he does it in such a vague and mysterious way that the biblical god, or any god for that matter can not be clearly connected to it. Like some kid that should die with cancer, magically gets well. We?ve all heard of such things, hell, many of us have probably had weird things happen to us. But it is never made final, the big connection is never made. It makes it even harder to believe when kids DO die of cancer, or some other horrible event. This is a very common argument given by Ashiest, if there is a God, why do bad things happen. The fundamentalist says it is part of God?s plan. In response, what sort of god picks and chooses who receives pain and happiness. And even if there is a positive end, im sorry, to cause any pain, regardless of what they might get in the end, is wrong. Would you say someone who beats you in the legs with a bat, but leaves you a candy bar is a 100% good person on the inside? I can sort of understand how people in the past had believed more. In their day, all you had was faith to get you better. Now I can go to Walmart and buy more miracles than any human being will ever see ?just happen.? As humans we can influence our own lives more than God seems to. And even if he does intervene, he doesn?t make it obvious. If God is like the God in the bible, day to day life seems like he has a big case of ?I just don?t give a shit.? But being honest with myself, I don?t know I?d believe in him if some big powerful being just came up and started doing shit. If I?ve learned a thing from your standard rpg, big powerful being a God does not make. I believe I talked about this a long time ago in a thread, that I?d need something on the inside to tell me that it was in fact God. Something spiritual on the inside.

So yes, I believe in God, but I?m not entirely certain what to attribute to him. At one point I did have complete faith, and i?ve been baptized. And I?ve prayed that one day this will be resolved. Under most interpretations of the Bible, I should one day have a answer to my questions. If not, it didn?t matter anyway.

[rezo]

I don't believe in god, and when I did, I didn't like him. My old plan was to be a good person and be a refuser of heaven in case I passed, though I figured intending to refuse was enough of a reason to not make the cut. Plus, I stopped going to confession because I thought judgement of a slate that's repeatedly wiped clean was silly. Then I was unable to make sense out of a god existing early in highschool, so I just dropped the notion altogether.

I've been wondering when everyone is going to upgrade to mormonism.

[PKBMax]

Religion is by far the most destructive force on Earth. More people have died in the name of someone's god than for any other unatural reason. There is nothing more dangerous than a man who believes he is acting in god's name.

That said, religion helps some people not worry about questions that they cannot answer, or choose not to accept the answers to. If it helps you sleep at night, that's fine with me. Just don't use it as a justification to do whatever you please, as a basis of blind predjudice aginst those not in agreement, as a way to frighten your children into following the path you see fit, or as a substitute for careful thought and open mindedness.

My truth is that every question can be answered by the combined laws of physics. Science is god. The theory of evolution, the big bang, the expanding universe, the life and death of stars etc....

I hope to live to see the day when intelligent extra-terrestrial life is proven to exist. On that day the foundation of religion crumbles. Maybe then people of the world will finally stop killing each other over their favorite version of a fairy tale.

[FX]

Yep. Yep I do believe in God.

[Viper]

I believe in the idea of God. I think that there is some sort of power beyond our comprehension that is responsible for the creation of the universe. I don't believe, though, that any form of organised religion can offer you answers or knowledge on what that power is, and what it stands for, though.

We may have seen 'prophets' like Jesus Christ and Buddha acting as though they were some how directly in touch with God and could offer us some sort of "holy" guidance or way of life, but I think they were just amibitious idealists, who simply wanted to help others to live a meaningful and moral life, and to gain a better understanding of the world around them. It's next to impossible to believe that they actually experienced some sort of divine influence on their lives, IMHO.