Do you believe in God?

[detrius]

Almpst forgot HAIL LUCIFER!

I miss Luc, is he okay?

 

[Clara D.]

Agnostic. But, I have this occasional, super hypocritical habit of praying when very ill or really worried for someone else.

IMHO, Prayer/Spells/Ritual are a good concentration aid for connecting with WhateverIsOutThere to trying to affect changes in the flow of reality.

No one way is The Only Right Way. Pick whatever suits your personal set of paradigms.

 

[Clara D.]

I miss Luc, is he okay?

Having some ups and downs in RL.

 

[detrius]

Thank you

 

[Bea McMahon]

I'm a Unitarian Universalist, after having been raised a mainstream Protestant, and then having been unchurched for 15 years. I hate putting labels on my theology, but I guess religious humanist would sorta kinda work. I love this meditation from the Rev Victoria Safford.

If I Were Asked​

If I were asked to confess my faith or beliefs out loud, and I were scrambling for some place to begin, I would start in the desert, in the lonesome valley, and say that first of all and ultimately we are alone. No god abides with us, caring, watching, mindful of our going out and coming in. The only certainty is mystery. We are alone, and it is because we are alone it is the chance connections, both chosen and involuntary, that matter most of all and ultimately help and heal and hold us.


We are alone yet intricately bound, inextricably connected to soil and stream and forest, to sun and corn and melting snow. We are alone yet bound by stories we cannot get out of to ancestors and descendants we will never meet. And all these natural conditions, these bonds we did not forge yet cannot deny, are the strands of a theology, the seeds of faith, the beginning of re-ligion, of binding all things.


When I say God – and sometimes I do, because sometimes there is no other metaphor, no other symbol, no other poetry, no other offering – when I say God I mean that place of meeting, that place where solitudes join. The space between my hand and that dogwood, the space where the tiny feet of the ant brush the dry dirt beneath her, the space between Mercury and Venus, between electrons, which we unblinkingly believe in without seeing. God is the space in between, the bridge between solitudes, the ground where we meet, you and I, or any two, by grace.


If I were asked I'd say that all of us, together, are alone, and the emptiness between us is waiting to be filled.


Victoria Safford

​

 

[Chalice Yao]

Since humans aren't purple, the existance of an omniscinent and all-powerful entity is actually disproven.
Checkmate, thus nope!

 

[Sid]

Well, if I hold my breath long enough...... watch my face turning purple.

 

[Free]

Since humans aren't purple, the existance of an omniscinent and all-powerful entity is actually disproven.

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

As someone with a physics degree, God is an unnecessary assumption. Maybe it exists, maybe not. But it isn't necessary to assume God to explain the world as we observe it. So why clutter up our thoughts with something we don't need? You could just as well ask if I believe in the Tooth Fairy or ghosts. I believe in relativity and quantum mechanics, because smartphones wouldn't worth without them. Quantum mechanics underlies how modern electronics works, and relativity is needed for GPS to work correctly. So if I observe smartphones working, then I *assume* those two physical theories are correct. What observation requires God to exist?

Actually some physicists I do know became strong believers due to physics, because they suspect there must be some kind of god lurking behind all that science, e.g. due to the fact, that if some of the well known natural constants would only differ the slightest bit somewhere, life as we know it today could never exist. So they think that the existance of our universe by itself alone without some kind of influence behind it is so marginally small, that they believe in that kind of stewardship.

So this swings both ways; some really found their way to religion because of having a physics degree.

And some even tried to develop concepts which might lead to god in their opinion, like e.g. the omega point theory by Tipler. So science can either bring you to religion, or drag you away from it.

 

[Ashiri]

that if some of the well known natural constants would only differ the slightest bit somewhere, life as we know it today could never exist.

As we delve deeper into particle physics and cosmology, the more mysteries we seem to unearth. Some of the mysteries could lead some to suspect we are in an incomplete simulation. Which would lead to the conclusion that god is far from omnipotent, to say the least.

 

[Sid]

God being omnipotent is a concept used by some religions, to get better grip (power and control) on the masses. Fear always helps the good course, right?

 

[Brenda Archer]

Since we've gone all Godwin: Nazi's paying lip-service to religion was in large part just a political tool.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

Trump signing bibles, anyone?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity

So, it wasn't necessary to accept Christ . . . but to accept the Führer as the next messiah. That's some ballsy WTF right there.



So, scrub Christianty of Judaism, while also trying to reconcile it with Nazism in an attempt to make Nazism more appealing to German Christians. Ex: "Jesus was not Jewish, but had Nordic blood from his Amorite ancestors. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_aspects_of_Nazism

So, while there may have been truly religious Nazis, Nazism's ties to Christianity were mostly bullshit.



Whether they wanted to be Christian or not...

The final division between me and capital-R Religion (besides seeing too much hypocrisy and hate) was the mistake of studying history on my own. It made it hard to "just believe" in a supposedly 'loving' God that would let atrocities be done in His name. Although not entirely out of the realm of the Old Testament's angry, jealous newborn--smiting God, it was still too much of a tool for those in power (who decided which bits of the Bible to keep and which to throw out, even when it was still being kept in Latin) for my tastes.

The parallels between the Nazi stuff and the hard Right BS in the US are pretty obvious. There’s definitely continuity, if not sameness, in the hard Right. And they keep making up stuff with political ramifications out of whole cloth, like the “Left Behind” series.

The hard Right has also been trying to co-opt Asatru/Heathenry as a “blood and soil” type religion which the liberals in both the US and in Iceland have been strongly opposed to. This hard Right reading of Heathenism draws directly on Nazi B.S.

 

[Arkady Arkright]

Fuck no !

We are created by the blind force of evolution, after which "Life is hard, and then you die". (The evolution involved being that of our genes, we're just the transport mechanism).

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

I watched an interview with Joni Mitchell talking about her extreme aversion to celebrity worship. "it's not about me, it's about what you find for yourself in the things I've created. Then the circle is complete." I might want God to say something similar.

I have to admit that when I see Hubble Telescope Photos, I want a starship and I want to live forever. Then I look at my cat and know that I'll probably never find anything out there more awesome than he is. Then I'm not sure that I want to live forever without all of the things that I've loved and lost.

 

[Tigger]

Since we've gone all Godwin: Nazi's paying lip-service to religion was in large part just a political tool.

....

So, it wasn't necessary to accept Christ . . . but to accept the Führer as the next messiah. That's some ballsy WTF right there.

So, scrub Christianty of Judaism, while also trying to reconcile it with Nazism in an attempt to make Nazism more appealing to German Christians. Ex: "Jesus was not Jewish, but had Nordic blood from his Amorite ancestors. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_aspects_of_Nazism

So, while there may have been truly religious Nazis, Nazism's ties to Christianity were mostly bullshit.

This to me comes a bit too close to a "No true scotsman" fallacy. Declaring that Nazis were not christian because of modern interpretation of their actions while Nazis themselves proclaimed their christian ties.

But if you judge their claims bullshit, can't you say the same about the God bothering GOP of the USA. A group who's message is guns, war, wealth and fuck the poor while at the same time believing themselves christian. Or how about the old favourite the catholic church, as they ran around executing people for heresy in the distant past or hiding the abusers among their number for the sake of the reputation of their church, do they have any right to call themselves christian? Their actions surely don't meet the specification.

And don't forget, the national religion of the UK is the Church of England. Which came into being when the leader of a nation stamped out one belief system in their own country and replaced it with their own version of a faith which better suited their goals. Isnt that pretty much the same story as "positive christianity"?

What makes someone a christian? Who is the judge of that? If someone declares themselves christian or believes their actions are compatible with christianity while performing acts that others may judge incompatible with the tenets of their faith are they christian or not?
In general, I take the view that christians are those that declare themselves such.

Whether they wanted to be Christian or not...

The final division between me and capital-R Religion (besides seeing too much hypocrisy and hate) was the mistake of studying history on my own. It made it hard to "just believe" in a supposedly 'loving' God that would let atrocities be done in His name. Although not entirely out of the realm of the Old Testament's angry, jealous newborn--smiting God, it was still too much of a tool for those in power (who decided which bits of the Bible to keep and which to throw out, even when it was still being kept in Latin) for my tastes.

Now this bit, here you and I are definitely singing from the same hymn sheet.

 

[Romana]

I believe in the possibility that there is something (or several somethings) in the universe more powerful than us. Does that make them a god/gods? If humankind ever came in contact with a superior alien being, they might be worshipped. Would that make them a god?
The idea that there is something bringing order to the universe is appealing, but it's a big universe. Such an omnipotent force would be so far beyond our understanding that we couldn't exactly have conversations with it.
I know one thing, if there is a God, none of the world's religions have it right.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

But if you judge their claims bullshit, can't you say the same about the God bothering GOP of the USA. A group who's message is guns, war, wealth and fuck the poor while at the same time believing themselves christian. Or how about the old favourite the catholic church, as they ran around executing people for heresy in the distant past or hiding the abusers among their number for the sake of the reputation of their church, do they have any right to call themselves christian? Their actions surely don't meet the specification.

The majority of the GOP are what I call Christians in Name Only. They proudly wave the banner around, but their true beliefs are anything but. As for the Catholic Church, it may have started off as Christian, and it may still technically be Christian. But I feel it has lost its way in its clergy's quest for power over the centuries.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

I know one thing, if there is a God, none of the world's religions have it right.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Because IF something like that would exist, it's so far removed from us humans, we wouldn't understand it and vice versa. It would be completly alien to us and it wouldn't care about us "ants" either.

I don't know if that last part follows. It makes sense that "something like that" would be so far removed from us that we wouldn't understand it; but we can't extrapolate "it wouldn't care about us" from that. Yeah it might not "care" about anything, in the sense that we understand "care"....but on the other hand, it also very well could care about us, for incomprehensible reasons.

 

[Lianne Marten]

I don't believe in any gods just because I don't think they are real.

But if someone demands explanation and I feel like humoring them i'll go with the standard Incompetent/Indifferent/Malevolent response.

Bad things happen in the world, this is a fact. So given this fact if a god exists they either can't stop bad things from happening (incompetent), don't care about bad things happening (indifferent), or actually want bad things to happen (malevolent). In any of those three cases why would I want to worship such a being.