Who is this God person anyway?

[snooper]

On another thread I posted:

Religion has no justifiable place anywhere.

All any religion offers is that if you pay money to a specialist (priest, rabbi, etc.) (s)he will intercede between you and an infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being to give you a better life after you are dead.

The flaws are obvious. If God is omniscient (s)he already knows all about your problems and has therefore done whatever (s)he did about it (including nothing) without outside intervention. If God is not omniscient then (s)he is not God.

The aforementioned specialist just wants your money to live a life of comfort without doing any real work, in some cases a life of extreme luxury.[color]

Sweetnpetite replied:

couldn't let this pass without saying-

This is incredibly flawed and narrowminded.

But a discussion of it doesn't belong on this particular thead.

Well here you are s'n'p - a special thread.

 

[wishfulthinking]

Jes, I tend to try and avoid this threads because everyone has their own opinion and have no plans on changing it fast no matter how "strongly" put "valid" "opinions" of others.

But here I am. Shit.

Be it magical or whatever, it is simply amazing to discover the diveristy of animal, vegetable and rock on this earth. I saw glow in the dark fish at our reef head quarters last week, and so many different kinds of coral my mind boogles. I believe there is something.

Having never attended church in my life, and not believing in God [even to this day], when I was about 5 I was covered in warts on my legs from my brother and I playing with canetoads. My parents tried every medical remedy they could, but nothing worked. Then one day, this lady put her hands on my legs and said "God will heal you". The very next day they were gone without a trace, and never came back. Wierd. I don't know what to think about it.

But maybe not all of them are out for money. Some honestly believe they have a connection, and I believe they believe it.

Now I've got you're thinking "shit, get me out of here"

 

[doormouse]

I have many gods. My boss on payday is my fave.

 

[Guest]

 

[impressive]

I do not believe in "God" in the typical, upper case way -- a la "supreme being." However, the divine is all around us. Nature is divine. Procreation is divine. Love is divine. Call it what you will.

As for healing hands -- yeah, I believe it's possible, but not because of any "God" per se.

Deepak Chopra's Quantum Healing is interesting in terms of explaining the power of prayer & such things as the laying on of hands.

 

[Guest]

 

[impressive]

Impressive,
I find that most scientific, and metaphysical explainations...to me...still lead back to God...and the world/universe the way it was created.

Which is precisely what I'd expect of any core belief system. Any faith -- if deeply held -- will result in all roads leading back to those core beliefs. Mine included.

Not right. Not wrong. Just is.

 

[Guest]

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Well, if you define religion as nothing more than begging The Old Man Upstairs for personal favors, then I would agree with you that it’s a waste of time, but that’s a very mean and superficial definition. That’s the kind of thing people do when they characterize modern art as being no more than a bunch of guys throwing paint against a canvas, or rock music as banging guitars and screaming. Maybe I’m unusually fortunate, but I don’t know anyone who takes such a simplistic and naïve view of religion.

No matter how corrupt the institutionalized religions have become these days, I still see the religious impulse as an attempt to answer the big questions about life and death and all that, and the idea that we somehow “ban” people’s attempts to understand these things is kind of extreme, and just as wrong-headed as insisting that everyone blindly worship the same thing. I think that to deny the religious side of ourselves is really to deny a big chunk of our humanity.

As several people have pointed out, divinity is all around us, whether you call it God or the Laws of Nature. In either case we try to comprehend the unknown by waving the wand of our beliefs and having faith that an explanation is in there, if only we could find it. These days it's easier to have faith in Science than it is in Religion, but it's still faith.

By the way, your argument about God’s omniscience, predestintaion and the futility of prayer was one of the central Calvanist ideas during the reformation. Their argument was. basically that God had already decided who was going to hell and who was going to heaven, so there was no sense in trying to curry his favor through prayer and petition. It might, in fact, be offensive, as demonstrating lack of acceptance of god’s will.

This idea led to great debates about the nature of free will: whether we had any at all, or whether everything was in God’s hands. With the “Death of God”, the argument just switched to one of scientific materialism vs. free will: whether we can choose our own fate or whether everything is already determined by the inevitable laws of nature and our own neurochemistry. The debate is still going on, which just shows that even when you get rid of God, the religious questions remain.

---dr.M.

 

[doormouse]

I think I clicked on the wrong thread, but who cares? LOL

(sorry, who ever owns this)

My kids just fucking cracked me up tonight.

my youngest got a doll for her birthday (fabric body, plastic limbs) (Yet, wees its pants LOL)

Anyway, after they gave 'her' a bath, I wouldn't let them put it in the dryer. They stuck the damn doll in the freezer!!!!!! Now it's frozen solid!!!!!

I haven't laffed so hard in ages... sorry.

Back to the thread

 

[Guest]

 

[doormouse]

It's a soggy mess right now, but when they pulled it from the freezer, I could hear their knuckles knock against its back LOL

What could I say or do but laugh?

I feel like sending this into a magazine as a 'kids moment' lol

 

[Liar]

On another thread I posted:

Religion has no justifiable place anywhere.

All any religion offers is that if you pay money to a specialist (priest, rabbi, etc.) (s)he will intercede between you and an infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being to give you a better life after you are dead.

The flaws are obvious. If God is omniscient (s)he already knows all about your problems and has therefore done whatever (s)he did about it (including nothing) without outside intervention. If God is not omniscient then (s)he is not God.

The aforementioned specialist just wants your money to live a life of comfort without doing any real work, in some cases a life of extreme luxury.

You say "religion". Then you describe clergy. Churches does not equal faith. That's all I'll say about that.

Another passage from your post:
"If God is not omniscient then (s)he is not God."

Huh? Why not?

#L

 

[fogbank]

Relating to what Liar said, I think it's important to establish whether you wish to debate the existence of God (or god, or gods, if you prefer), or whether you wish to debate the value of religion.

In regards to religion, I come from a small agricultural community, where there are four churches (Anglican, United, Baptist and Catholic) for a community of about 400 people. With all of these churches, the cost of running the churches are barely covered by the congregations. Nobody is getting rich off anyone there. And you have to understand that agriculture is a profession where a tremendous amount is left up to forces outside the control of the farrmers. They can't control the rain, the frost, the sun. All they can do is adjust the types of fertilizer they use. Faith is tremendously important for these people, as is community. Now, it's possible to have faith without religion. It's possible to have community without religion. But when you combine faith and community, you get religion.

Personally, I don't really believe in God. Certainly not in a typical judeo-christian God. But I when I'm visiting my parents and I go to their church, it really warms my heart to see how much religion means to these people, and how their faith and community helps them through the rough times in their lives.

 

[Guest]

Mab. and Fogbank: yours are the types of posts I appreciate, and wish there were more of in serious discussions.

I used to feel bad about my ambivalent 'faith' until a female minister told me she envied my doubts.

For decades after first leaving the Catholic church (when I finished h.school) I kept my old and uneducated prejudices and anger. It was by chance that I came to work in a Catholic university and gradually learned how much the church of my youth had changed for the better. However, it wasn't the institutional church that drew me back, but the way I saw faith lived among people, and that what they all had in common was their religion, even though there was great diversity in what they actually believed. In fact, these people rarely speak about their faith, they just practice it.

I'm still ambivalent, and angry, about Catholicism, but for me an unexamined faith is not worth having. As for "religion" as a concept or institutionalized idea - it has little to do with how I actually examine or live my life.

Perdita


p.s. doorm: I can't accept your voicing of "sorry"; you could easily have clicked back and found an appropriate thread. Your overbearing cuteness serves you ill at times.

 

[English Lady]

I HATE religion. It's nasty, evil and some humans idea of what should be done. religion causes wars, upset and all kinds of nastiness and religion is very rarely connected with anything good.

I am not saying all churches are evil. people gathering together to affirm their faith is good in my mind..but all the rules and regulations and "you must be such and such before you belong here" is just humans wanting to out do other humans....as always. Whenever you get a gathering of people you get all that nasty human stuff mixed in with the good -add a bit of power and that general evilness goes crackers and that is when things lead to war because of people belonging to different churches,synagogues, mosques, whatever of faith.

God is not all about religion and God and religion are not the same thing. my faith has evolved alot and I am becoming more and more upset at religion and its politics.

 

[Pure]

snooper said,

//All any religion offers is that if you pay money to a specialist (priest, rabbi, etc.) (s)he will intercede between you and an infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being to give you a better life after you are dead.//

OK, it's all very pungent and provocative, but

Buddhism is a religion.

Several branches of Buddhism are atheist or agnostic, and have no concern for an 'infinite being', whatever that is.

So that petitioning for better afterlife is not among their priests' activities.

Afterlife is not a concern in several religions, notably the Judaism of the old OT. (say pre 500 BCE)

---
My guess is that you're from a pie-in-the-sky Protestant, or RC background.

 

[Guest]

 

[Colleen Thomas]

On another thread I posted:

Religion has no justifiable place anywhere.

All any religion offers is that if you pay money to a specialist (priest, rabbi, etc.) (s)he will intercede between you and an infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being to give you a better life after you are dead.

The flaws are obvious. If God is omniscient (s)he already knows all about your problems and has therefore done whatever (s)he did about it (including nothing) without outside intervention. If God is not omniscient then (s)he is not God.

The aforementioned specialist just wants your money to live a life of comfort without doing any real work, in some cases a life of extreme luxury.[color]

Sweetnpetite replied:

Well here you are s'n'p - a special thread.

Sorry, but the most obvious flaw is that you are argueing and setting the defintion. If I choose not to accept your definitions (which I do not) then you have done little more than waste your breath.

Any meaningful debate about the existance of god or the value of religion assumes defintions of both God and religion can be put forward that the participants in the debate can agree too.

You seem to be prepared to define religion as a telemarketing scam minus the phones. I don't think you will get too many people who will buy into that definition and those who do will be unlikely to offer you a spirited debate as they will most likely agree with whatever else you have to say about religion as long as it is negative.

The most basic paradoxx in argueing about religion or the existance of god, is that both are predicated on faith. The most basic precept of taking anything on faith is that you cannot prove it, if you could you wouldn't need faith. That being the case, there is no possibility of proof, indisputable. So all arguments will tend to be circular.

Your definition seems calculated to stir an emotional response rather than forward a discussion.

-Colly

 

[Pure]

Colly, good points about definitions,

but

//The most basic paradox in arguing about religion or the existance of god, is that both are predicated on faith. //

It's peculiar to some western religions, this emphasis on faith (believe on me and you will be saved). Similarly the idea that religion is a set of beliefs (which are part of one's faith, since one can't point to any clear evidence in this world).

People like to go around saying-- "You're a Bah'ai, what do Bahai's believe?"

In many religions, this is a minor if not inconsequential question.

Getting back to Snooper, if he sees a woman light a candle in front of an icon, he says,

"You think there's a Powerful Guy there (who's blessed the saint depicted by the icon); that He's unaware of your problem; that as a result of lighting the candle, the saint will know and tell the Big Guy; He'll know of your problem, and be moved to fix it."

About a half dozen 'beliefs.'

She says, "I was thinking I adored St. so-in-so."

 

[fogbank]

Pure, I love that bit about 'I was thinking I adored St. So-and-so.' Puts it into perspective perfectly.
Makes me think of the protagonist in Yann Martel's Life of Pi, who found value in being a hindu, a muslim, and a christian simultaneously. You don't use religion to form a big picture of how the universe works; of course you'll end up finding out that your picture is wrong.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Getting back to Snooper, if he sees a woman light a candle in front of an icon, he says,

"You think there's a Powerful Guy there (who's blessed the saint depicted by the icon); that He's unaware of your problem; that as a result of lighting the candle, the saint will know and tell the Big Guy; He'll know of your problem, and be moved to fix it."

About a half dozen 'beliefs.'

She says, "I was thinking I adored St. so-in-so."

I think that's a very good point. It's easy to look at people in church and think, "What a bunch of dupes, begging Big Boy for some miserable favor", but really, people go to religious services for all kinds of reasons, from purely social or fear-driven to transcendent and spiritual. They're not all mindless ignorant drones enslaved to some evil and malicious priesthood.

I'm an atheist so I don't pray much, but I do have my moments of profound wonder and gratitude, and I would dearly love to be able to reach out and touch the things that make me feel that way, or connect to them with some sort of gesture or ritual. I can understand lighting a candle to the divine, and I can understand sensing divinity in a piece of music or a rainy night or even some obscure fact of chemistry that suddenly sends a chill up my spine. I really treasure those moments, and I think of them as being essentially religious.

I've got a couple of volumes of Torah in my house (English translations, of course. I don't read Hebrew.) I don't think that they're the word of God as transcribed by Moses as orthodox Jews believe, but I still take them down occasionally and look through them and read words that were read by my ancestors going back some 2500 years or so. There are arguments in there and examples of logic and interpretations that were being discussed 1000 years ago probably with the same arguments and counter-arguments that they're still using today. I don't know what you'd call the feeling I get when I read those words, but I guess I'd call that religious too.

I understand the kind of stupidity that Snooper's talking about-- that kind of TV Hellfire evangelism that embarrasses everyone but a true believer, and I know a number of people who've been seriously screwed up because of religion. But as I said in another thread, you don't reject all of literature just because you don't like fairy tales, and you don't reject all of music just because you don't like what you've heard of Britney Spears. There's just more to it than that.

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

the Torah rocks!

 

[Black Tulip]

...
All any religion offers is that if you pay money to a specialist (priest, rabbi, etc.) (s)he will intercede between you and an infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being to give you a better life after you are dead...

As some others have pointed out as well, you are confusing religion and religious institutions.

I don't care for the institutions either, although not all of them will be bad. Of course not.

To me religion offers a hell of a lot more.

It offers me a thought on the meaning of life that encourages me to become the best person I can be in this life. But my belief also gives me the reassurance that it's okay to fail at some of my lessons, as their is always another chance. Provided I do my best.

It also deepened my connection with the world around me and (Doc. mentioned it too), it also gives me moments of an emotion I can only describe as religious, or numinous as one of my teachers told me. Enabling me to step outside my own needs and wants to make room for those of others.

And I'm not talking in metaphores here. I mean taking care of both my parents when they were dying from cancer.
(Not at the same time, it was not a soap opera. LOL)
Taking them into my home and putting them first till they were gone. Not doing that because it could earn me points, or because some deity was expecting me to. No, doing it because I wanted it and had the courage to do it. And in the end it made me so rich, it was more like taking than giving.

The most important thing religion has given me though is: hope.
The hope that it's possible to make a better world, to be a better person, to live a more fulfilling life, etc.

End of sermon.

 

[Guest]

Similar experiences with me -

The entire TV evangelistic genre bothers me immensely. Surely there must be one honest man (or woman?) among the lot?

But a church community is a wonderful thing. The people who attend can be such a very supportive family when needed. More than anything else, I think that's why we are drawn towards attending a church.

And why we may feel guilty if we happen to miss a service.

I have continued to have terrific dialogue with my pastors, even though I'm not attending services yet. (Yea for email.)

These people aren't in it for the money; they aren't in it for power, or fame. They are sincere in their beliefs, in their caring concern and they are well-educated. All that must be respected.

And when I'm agonizing over why bad things happen, cursing God from all sides, saying that I'm done with Christianity because there's just too much bullshit involved they aren't even remotely offended.

I told one pastor I was studying Buddhism now because it was much safer. With no God to worry about I wouldn't have to rely on anyone else. True spiritual power comes from within.

He just smiled, gave me a hug, and offered me a few of his books on Buddhism.

Damn it, anyway. (Little by little they are drawing me back in.)