Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Felix Lyric]

I don't wish to be unfriendly but some of the convictions about God in this corespondence make him seem fake and only add to my disbelief in such an entity. I only believe in a fictional but true deity as an ideal. We have to obey his commandments and instead of doing this we are thnking of 'civil rights,' we are told. This view speaks for itself and requires no comment.

Jesus did not estanblish the state of Israel; the orthodox Jews did. Israel was then a colony of Rome and Jesus was very popular at first because the zealots thought of him as a political liberator but when he made it clear that they had misunderstood him they turned against him. He intended a revolution of humanity and not a political one. He died alone and misunderstood. What infinite sadness.

The Old Testamennt was written a very long time ago and the insistence on going back to its commandments resembles that of the Islamic fanatics. This would be sheer barbarism. About religion Jesus said that old vats have to be filled with new wine.

The subject of homosexuality was brought up. It was forbidden in the Old Testament but the present state of Israel accepts it. If I go there I don't have to be afraid of being hung on a crane or stoned to death. I have studied this subject quite thoroughly and homosexuality goes through all the species from man to fish and all species between them.

A god like the one proposed by some should lose his job and it is up to humane people to throw him out.

Felix

[Josefina1110]

Please support your argument with references other than the Bible. Thanks.

[Numi Who]

WHERE THE AUTHOR FAILS

The author falls into the same pit that all religions (and a lot of unenlightened philosophers) do – the pit of the “IS GAME”, which (since it is my term) is defined by assuming uninformed speculation ‘IS’ truth (and ‘truth’ IS a word that religions have drug through the mud and soiled completely – as in “Behold, the Truth!” when all that is offered is pure make-believe).

EXAMPLES OF THE AUTHOR'S 'IS GAME' STATEMENTS:

1. “Time just stretches on and on for eternity.” While this is probable, there is still the probability that the universe holds more surprises.

2. “Someone greater than the whole universe is controlling time in his hands.” This statement holds as much weight as saying a great Crayola crayon controls everything – there is an equal amount of evidence for both – meaning none.

3.) “He knows the beginning, the end, and everything inbetween.” This is not only mindless gibberish, it is a self-contradiction (which religions are full of, and they do not matter because they are all make believe). This ‘IS’ statement contradicts 1. above (where the author made the claim that ‘time just stretches on and on’ - which holds that there is no ‘end’, in contradiction to the ‘end’ claimed in this statement. This is why I say that religions are composed of the preposterous imaginings of primitive minds, then institutionalized, then commandeered by social manipulators and domineers, then which serve as paths to power for future knaves who destroy the word ‘truth’, and which then serve as venues for people to indulge in self-delusion, fatalistic thinking, and not thinking at all, or, on the twisted front, for twisted sophism (in defending the preposterous claims of religions), and where the only value is in the wisdom stolen from lifetimes of hard-won experience, which receive no credit, and the only other saving grace of religions, ‘reverence’, was stolen from its rightful owner (Woman), upon whom religions then wage war in order to eliminate the competition.


So, so far, no – the first chapter will not convert any ‘thinking’ atheist (and I would not touch the term with a ten foot pole – it has been stigmatized by make-believers, and I would not fall into that trap. I would not even use ‘non-believer’, which has also been stigmatized. I would use ‘Non-Make-Believer’.

Just a note – any person that actually ‘thinks’ in history, going back centuries before Christ, exposed religions for the frauds that they are. Why, Paul told his people, “Do not try to be like the Romans, who pursue power, and do not be like the Greeks, who pursue knowledge.” His message had good intent – he was obviously saying ‘don’t be envious, just do what you do best’; but, as with most good intentions, this was twisted by later religious people, and they blacklisted power and knowledge (for everyone but themselves – which brings up another fatal flaw with institutionalized religions (and any institution) – that any institution is easily and quickly corrupted by man).

4. “He IS the creator of heaven and earth.” Another primitive preposterous imagining, akin to saying a Great Carrot created the universe, and holding as much veracity – meaning none.

5. “He is transcendent, eternal, supernatural, ominscience (sic), omnipresent, omnipotent, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Here, the author is been a mental automaton - mindlessly repeating what he was told to repeat by people who themselves found it financially/socially profitable to mindlessly repeat it.

6. “He is Jehovah, the great ‘I AM’.” As you may have begun to see, this author is filled with memorized hogwash on the level of any child’s imagining.

7. “He is the God of the universe.” Now here I will offer another insight – that even though religions operate on pure belief (meaning it is unnecessary to try and offer proof – you do not need it – all you need is belief), which renders the believers blind to reality, such people DO have value to the broader survival of life in a deadly universe – toward diversity – where they may be the ones who survive some cosmic calamity (just out of pure dumb luck – so being ‘different’ is crucial).

8. “He has declared the beginning and end, the Alpha and Omega.” I suspect the author himself made this up – and there is no harm is done, since the entire system is make-believe.

9. “He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.” Again, a phrase from primitive times. Did you know that the early Jews had an advanced political system, and they rejected it, desiring a King, so the could ‘be like everyone else’? This is actually the underlying force behind religions, ‘to be like everyone else’, where people find social safety. (and, as you may have noticed, I am being lazy – since I am playing the IS GAME myself – for what I should more correctly say in those instances is, ‘from what I have observed, it is’ rather than just an unverified ‘is’. So, observing this laziness, it can be concluded that religions are similarly lazy.

10. The author continues (and this is my last example) with, “God is...” and this is where I stopped reading – for the book is nothing more than a game of memorized, preposterous, lazy primitive statements from a time when Man had an excuse – when he knew little about reality and had to make a lot of guesses about reality which were, not surprisingly, dead wrong. Today, people have no excuse – there is a vast amount of verified knowledge (which they ignore) that exposes the claims of religions as fraudulent at best, and as institutionalized vehicles for deplorable knaves at worst.

CONCLUSION:

So the answer to your question, "Do you think reading Chapter 1 of this book would convince a rational and open-minded atheist to convert into believing in God?" is a resounding "No" - the book will not convert anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of current verified knowledge, or the slightest ability to think rationally, let alone someone who already has seen religions exposed as preposterous, primitive, and frauds.

[-1-]

Please support your argument with references other than the Bible. Thanks.

He already supplied references.

Josepina, you are in my opinion the type of person who is happiest when she reads the Bible,and revels in its truth and how happy it makes her to live in an age when she can read the Bible.

This is what you ought to stick with. In my humble opinion. If you mix with people who think for themselves, and think logically, and reference reality, you are only asking for trouble. These people will never agree with you that the Bible is the truth; furthermore, they will decry the truth in the Bible and will call you names in their own minds and aloud in places where it is allowed by the rules of conduct.

[Josefina1110]

Thank you very much -1-, for seeing the truth like it is in the Holy Scripture. I understand that people who contradict the Bible will never be convinced of the reality of the Creator of the Universe. As you know, the Bible is the greatest book on earth written mostly by God's chosen people - the Jews. Scientists and philosophical intellectuals came about so much later than the Bible. In such cases, they are God's adversaries. God had intentionally created a nation of people starting with Abraham so that He can call them His own in order to tell the whole world about God as said by Nebuchadnezzar, a pagan king, that there is no God like the God of Daniel. God made the original Israelites and their descendants into priests to spread the gospel of truth to the world that there is only One God Yahweh, the creator of the universe and sent His Son Jesus to save the souls of the people that His Father had created. I'm happy to trouble the minds of these people with God's words. They might call me names whatever they want, it does not change the truth that the Bible is the Word of God.

[Lone Wolf]

Perhaps Josefina should read from THE OTHER BIBLE before declaring her "Holy Bible" to be the truth. The Other Bible contains the books that were left out of the Holy Bible such as The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and The Apochryphon of John. In the Apochryphon of John, Jesus tells the story of creation that is quite different from the story in Genesis. It is very enlightening.

[Josefina1110]

Thank you for your suggestion. However, I don't doubt my belief on the Genesis Creation Story. I know the books that were left out, too. Chapter 1:1 of the Gospel of John just confirm what I have said in my book that God said it and it came to be because He is the Word Himself. And nothing was made out of anything but with the Word of God.

[Lone Wolf]

So be it. You should always cling to your faith with all your being. Each of us must choose his/her path in this life and you have chosen yours. I was raised in the Christian religion, but somewhere along the way, I learned to read other perceptions and began to wonder why each of the different religions were so adamant in their proclamations of being the only way. Now I have my own religion and a church of one. I am quite content with my God and what I believe. I do not have a "great commission" as is required by Matthew, so I do not try to get anyone to join me in my belief system. It makes for a much more peaceful existence.

[Josefina1110]

You are right. No one else will be responsible for your soul but you. We are free moral agents. If we preach Christ, it is because we love our fellow men and we want them to know about Jesus as the only one who can save us from hell. Take it or leave it. As for me, after I have told you, my obligation to obey God's great commission is finished. It is up to the Holy Spirit to do His work on you. He would either harden your heart for the benefit of others or He can humble you down to repent and follow Him. Our role as Christians is simply to tell so that somebody will hear and may be saved. How about your family and loved ones, will you just be content not to know if they are saved or not? I am not here to convince anybody about God. I am here to tell about my God. Jesus was not able to convince those people around Him. How much more for me? All the apostles died just because they preached Jesus as the Savior. But they did not die in vain. Jesus had warned that anybody who will follow Him would be ready to take up the cross like He did. I'm glad you have a peaceful existence. I wish you the best. As for me, my peace rests in knowing that as best I can, I can tell people about Jesus my Savior and Lord.

[Lone Wolf]

My wife and I raised our children to make their own decisions and all three of them chose Christianity as their religion. One is Unitarian, one is Baptist, and the third is Methodist, but her children are Catholic. I am not in the least worried about any of them or their souls.

[Josefina1110]

Good for you. It looks like you belong to none of those denominations you mentioned. Jesus is not a religious advocate. He came to save the world. All He asks of us is to believe in Him. " . . . that whosoever believe in Him will have everlasting life." Someone has said, "it is better to believe in God now and find out there is none after you die, than not to believe in God now and find out after you die that there is a God." This is a street talk, but it has some weight in it. To think about it, believers and non-believers live the same life - sometimes sunny, sometimes rainy. One thing for sure is that our soul will not die because it is a spirit. So it matters where your soul go after you die.

[Lone Wolf]

I owe allegiance to no organized religion. Too many nonsensical rules and rituals. As far as Jesus is concerned, I believe he came to show that death of the physical body is not the end of life. I believe that life is eternal and that we only come to the earth to experience a physical existence that isn't possible in the spiritual realm since a spirit has no body. I also believe that the subconscious is continually awake and in touch with my God and that if I learn to let it dominate in my life instead of my conscious mind, I can learn what Jesus learned and ascend. Of course, I have no empirical data to support my beliefs, so I don't try to convince anyone else to accept my beliefs as a truth.

[Josefina1110]

I understand. I like your philosophy. We are not here to convince each other's idea. But it is good to know where we stand as far as things that matter in our lives are concerned. It is up to you or me to filter our thoughts to conform to what we believe. But no man is an island, there are many things to learn from each other as means to an end. Nobody is perfect but everyone wants peace in this troubled world. It is sobering to know that there is One who is called the Prince of Peace that we can count on.

[Steve3007]

Josefina1110:

omeone has said, "it is better to believe in God now and find out there is none after you die, than not to believe in God now and find out after you die that there is a God." This is a street talk, but it has some weight in it.

It's not normally referred to as street talk. It's normally referred to as "Pascal's wager", after Blaise Pascal, to whom this thought also occurred. Arguments about it are a staple of forums like this.

[Pelegrin_1]

... All He asks of us is to believe in Him. " . . . that whosoever believe in Him will have everlasting life." Someone has said, "it is better to believe in God now and find out there is none after you die, than not to believe in God now and find out after you die that there is a God." This is a street talk, but it has some weight in it. To think about it, believers and non-believers live the same life - sometimes sunny, sometimes rainy. One thing for sure is that our soul will not die because it is a spirit. So it matters where your soul go after you die.

This goes out not only to Josefina but to everyone who is a believer and thinks that it's truly important that we believe...

In the vast majority of cases, belief in a God comes down to one basic thing:
The human desire for immortality and to have an afterlife that is at minimum pleasant, whether we're just talking our own mortality or also of our loved ones.

Fine, I think that's easy enough to understand and appreciate, and generally why wouldn't any human being want that. But we are now in more modern times, with much more knowledge available to us than was available when all those ideas of God came into existence. We now should look at this whole topic with much more discerning minds and truly analyze the contents of the holy books that have been written long ago to bolster these faiths, and analyze how and what they really say about these so-called Gods or God in the singular. But I think first we can start off by trying to define the most basic essence of what a true universal God would be, and then we can apply that to what's written in those holy books and see how it fits with what those holy books tell us about their God.

Of course, a truly universal God is all that there is and all that there can be; it is all that we can possibly imagine and infinitely more. But wait a minute. If a true universal God is all that there is, does that mean that The God is not only everything good but also everything bad? Essentially, we have two very divergent paths that we could take here with respect to what a truly universal God is: 1) Simply focusing on all the "good" that exists and that this God represents that, or 2) that this God is in fact everything, good and bad, God the good in one sense, and the Devil in another. I'd like to consider both options here.

So, if God is everything that's purely good, good in all senses, then would such a God be pretentious, would such a God be intimidating, would such a God be self-centered and egoistic, would such a God demand worship, would such a God not be forgiving at least for the lesser degree of bad actions if the committer of those actions is truly remorseful, would such a God not be understanding of human limitations (being that we are not Gods ourselves), would such a God not give consideration to our capacity of human thought and reasoning and the varied hypotheses that can and do come from that, would such a God not welcome our attempts to do what we perceive to be good whenever we our faced decisions. I could go on, I'm sure, with other such questions/scenarios, but suffice it to say that a truly godly God who is all about goodness is not an entity that would be all about ITself and having as its principle demand that we Believe that IT exists and we Worship IT. Such expectations are not of a truly godly God, they are of a humanized god, coming from the human imagination of how a human God, a Caesar-like God, would expect and demand us to be if IT is to accept us.
A truly good God in all ways is Good to the extreme, because IT is God and is the pure representation of Good.

Now, on the other hand, if a universal God is everything, both everything Good and Evil, then I suppose that perhaps we had better beware. The human species may never know when such a God could be very pleased with us, or more significantly very displeased with us. However, I will make a personal statement here, with my own determined human mind, that I do not respect this God. I do not respect a God that can act not only good when it so deems but also with evil intent when it so deems. I do not respect nor will I willingly follow such a God, though many may say that the choice should be obvious for me to do so, because the alternative could be to suffer in eternal Hell, a suffering beyond anything that I can imagine. But I'll tell you why, in great part, I openly and clearly state that I do NOT respect this God... I do so because I simply have no real reason to believe that either of these God options actually exist. The only thing I have our human written texts and the human imagination of the existence of a universal God, and all those texts and virtually all of those human expressions about their "imagined" God(s) are all so elaborately "humanized", and as such it seems clear to me (and to others who are willing to accept their mortality and that the life we have is all there is other than what many be remembered of us or written about us) that those texts and other human expressions are not of any True God but just of a God or Gods that humanity have imagined so as to have a savior, something that will continue our existence beyond this mortal life that each of us live. All human beings have that desire, and virtually all human cultures have created their God-like savior with the hope of extending their lives beyond our mortal limitations. And in order to make that goal ever more possible, every religion developed a myriad of rules and guidelines so as to hopefully satisfy their God sufficiently so that salvation may actually take place.

But none of it is real! None of it other than our human desire for it to be real.

I do not fear the Devil, even if that Devil is one with God, because I have no true reason to believe that such a thing exists. And then even if it does, It is evil and can never be trusted; I could satisfy it one day and the next day it could take out its wrath on me regardless.

And I do not need to imagine an all Good God, because my reasoning power tells me that doing good leads to better results, sooner or later, than doing bad. Do bad unto others and you only justify that others then do bad unto you. It's a much more peaceful and pleasant world if we try to produce less chaos, less destruction, less violence, etc, and feel that we're producing conditions in which we can sleep peacefully at night and not walk the light of day in constant fear of others who may attempt to do ill against us. And if, on the off-chance, a truly Good universal God exists, IT should accept anyone human who did his/her best to live his/her life in a good and positive way, absolutely regardless if the person themselves had a concept that there is a God and paid regard to such.