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[Multi dementoinanal]

As a believer in Judaism, I feel there is a god. Haven’t you ever thought that, perhaps, god has made himself (I only say "himself" because god is biblically referred to as a male) allusive because he wants us to ask this question. This is one of the biggest questions in philosophy. God might be the one who actually inspired men to ask this question.

-- Updated Sat Apr 14, 2012 8:43 pm to add the following --

As a believer in Judaism, I feel there is a god. Haven’t you ever thought that, perhaps, god has made himself (I only say "himself" because god is biblically referred to as a male) allusive because he wants us to ask this question. This is one of the biggest questions in philosophy. God might be the one who actually inspired men to ask this question.

-- Updated Sat Apr 14, 2012 9:22 pm to add the following --

sorry if i'm repeating the same post. my laptop is'nt working for some reason As a believer in Judaism, I feel there is a god. Haven’t you ever thought that, perhaps, god has made himself (I only say "himself" because god is biblically referred to as a male) not apparent because he wants us to ask this question. This is one of the biggest questions in philosophy. God might be the one who actually inspired men to ask this question.

[Jklint]

This is one of the biggest questions in philosophy. God might be the one who actually inspired men to ask this question.

And what, pray, would have been God's reason to have so "inspired" us??

[Belinda]

Haven’t you ever thought that, perhaps, god has made himself (I only say "himself" because god is biblically referred to as a male) allusive because he wants us to ask this question. This is one of the biggest questions in philosophy. God might be the one who actually inspired men to ask this question.

But man has naturally evolved into a being with the intellect to ask the question, there is no need to bring some supernatural god into the natural process.

[SEE THROUGH IT ALL]

People are born into Religion being taught to them or forced upon them usually at a young age. This does not give the chance to review everything else out in the world before you make your choice of what you believe and rationalize your beliefs. This happened to me and I tried to believe for many many years. Eventually I ended up looking at religion such as the great Albert Einstein did... Most people look at religion as "The Truth and The Way" because they are lost within themselves and need purpose. All religion does is give you faith in something more.... which there is absolutely nothing proving anything a book (the very many Bibles out there for different religions) has to say is actually true. You are supposed to believe because people (society) tell you its right. We listen to people... Humans? Why!? People are generally INSANE. Look at the world and tell me it is mostly "good". We have very few in the world that actually do what they are supposed to do to make it a better place.

I'm not saying the Bible's do not teach SOME good morals and virtues.. but the belief system it creates leads to more than just GOOD and also lead to wars and distructions more than anything else on this Earth because of the unknown. People gave their faith to Hitler and see how that turned out? 100's of other examples could follow that.

Another way you can look at it is if I write a really good farytail book and hide it.. Hundreds or thousands of years later I, or my make believe charictors could be worshiped as well.

[Misty]

I do not wish to offend anyone, or their beliefs. This is just what I believe. In my opinion, their is no god. Faith is a good way to keep your religion alive, and was used by the creators of a religion as a way of saying, just because he exists doesn't mean their is proof. If their was a god, godess, or gods and godess', then their would be good reason to rely on faith.

Sorry, correction for Romans from 18 to 1

Here is another reason Kingkool: Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidenc of things not seen. Romans 1:20-21 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

[Fanman]

I think that God has proven himself, especially through the life of Jesus. I believe that the reason that God does not make himself visible to us, is because he wants us to have faith in him, and to search for him. If we have faith, not only will we search for God in earnest, but we will also do our best to lead a moral life and be gracious. In my experience, my faith has been a great asset to me in my life. And believing in Jesus has made me a more moral person.

[Jklint]

I think that God has proven himself, especially through the life of Jesus. I believe that the reason that God does not make himself visible to us, is because he wants us to have faith in him, and to search for him. If we have faith, not only will we search for God in earnest, but we will also do our best to lead a moral life and be gracious. In my experience, my faith has been a great asset to me in my life. And believing in Jesus has made me a more moral person.

Belief is personal. You can stitch it with whatever fabric and into any design you like. None of it has to make sense except to the individual who constructs it. Belief can never be defeated or deconstructed because it never required history, logic, science or any "hard" fact to counter convince or discourage the believer. That can only be accomplished by the personal experiences of an "individual" which begin to question and erode the bedrock of belief. For someone who has the faith you proclaim it is only the inner experience which can make you believe or disbelieve. Faith does not in the least require science, philosophy or archeology for it's "inner reaches to outer space" conquests. In fact that would be more akin to anathema.

The credibility of faith relies only on this: the reason that God does not make himself visible to us, is because he wants us to have faith in him, and to search for him. Personally I find a God who desires this pathetic beyond belief - my own belief, that is - like a crying child who's lost and wants to be found. But of course it's not really God who has this problem. Faith is a human projection hoping for feedback. The reason it's so powerful is that we provide the entity to fulfill that wish. Faith (the hope), God (the expression of it) is a single "enclosed" loop within the brain. It orbits by its own logic which no fact can distort.

Anybody who tries to overcome your beliefs by enunciating one fact after another I would regard as an idiot. The only thing I'm trying to denote here is the LOGIC of it.

[Fanman]

Jklint,

Belief can also be based upon facts and so can faith. My faith for example, is based upon the fact that it has helped me to succeed at the things I want to do. Like I said in my previous post it has been a great asset to me. The bible also contains great wisdom, but atheists such as yourself dismiss anything which does not concord with your equally dogmatic belief in logic. Logic is not the perfect tool though, for example it cannot the answer the simple question of what came first, the chicken or the egg? Faith attempts to answer the question by asserting that God made the chicken, but the atheist declares there is no scientific evidence of that! And the question remains unanswered...

How you view God is your choice, but I think that having faith and learning about God in earnest provides a pure relationship with him. And demonstrates that God values us individually.

[Jklint]

What you're describing is the placebo effect. Believe hard enough in whatever you choose to believe and there is no doubt - proven many times - that it can have a very beneficial outcome. It's a fact for you but not factual per se. We believe what we want to believe and do so because it helps many to cope. That indeed is an asset. Belief for some is like a lubricant in that one is less worn out by the downsides of reality. It's easier to go with flow if you can "channel" yourself according to your faith. But not everyone needs it and would rather keep faith with the real discoveries of history and the world than with beliefs which can never be historically validated.

As for being an atheist, I always found the word completely superfluous, non sequitur and an oxymoron to boot because it completely contravenes every definition of common sense to deny the existence of something which never existed in the first place unless you believe, as you seem to, that Jesus was God - a reputation built on the biggest swindle and subterfuge in world history which even the Popes were aware of. Jesus the man made into a God was nothing more than a pawn for the everlasting benefit of the church. Maybe you don't' know that the "First Christians" (Gnostics) were almost eliminated by the later ones, especially their beliefs, and this is how the history of the Jesus movement begins to manifest itself. As for wisdom in the Bible that too is nothing more than a refrain of what was already acknowledged long before the Bible was written. The "wisdom" you refer to is older than the Bible which is not entitled to claim it because Wisdom did not originate with it.

If there were a God, what's the quid pro quo in THAT relationship? Nothing for Nothing? If we start with nature - the only God-like power we're aware of - and go a notch below that to that extremely hypothetical divinity - for lack of a better word - which may have created it, what are we left with? What are we to "glean" from it except that completely impersonal powers (processes) rule the Universe and that there was never an infringement of that in the entire history of this planet. We certainly wouldn't create a God like that. What would be the point? It would amount to a Nothing for Nothing proposition.

Logic is not the perfect tool though, for example it cannot the answer the simple question of what came first, the chicken or the egg? Faith attempts to answer the question by asserting that God made the chicken, but the atheist declares there is no scientific evidence of that! And the question remains unanswered...

Are you serious?? From this it's easy to see how God is born in the minds of some people. Shall I attempt to resolve this quandary seemingly beyond the perimeters of logic?

Eggs came first! Why? Because eggs were around - or maybe not so round - long, long, long before chickens were. Why is that? Because reptiles were already laying them long before chickens laid THEIR first one. So how did we get from reptile eggs to chicken eggs? Chickens are birds and birds are very closely related to dinosaurs which as a group are a distinct form of reptile and chickens weren't about to change an old custom. That's the best I can do.

Of course you can now ask what came first. The reptile or the egg. I don't know but if you go back far enough it may be that God laid the very first egg but that couldn't be correct, least of all dignified because God was a Male according to the Bible. I don't know why HE had to be male except that it was a very "patriarchal" society which created HIM.

[eyesofastranger]

The chicken and the egg conundrum is one we pose to children. As adults of course we realize that a evolutionary process of multiple marsupial like stages moved live bearing capacity into an neat package called the egg to free up the adult to better utilize her time in the environment. In today's world we don't sit around fires and wonder at stupid things like lightning, tornado's and earth quakes. We understand their origins as the ancients didn't. Making their words gospels they didn't understand so it must be truth. The last corner god is still hiding in is DNA. As if he has a divine typewriter clacking out design. It has been clearly shown that removing the DNA from a cell doesn't hinder it's complicated function in any way. So the DNA has but one purpose. To replicate and in the case of changing environments to mutate. Even with our modern techniques, it seems DNA has mutated in fits and starts. So that's the tiny little place left where god could be hiding behind the curtain clacking away on his magic typewriter. It seems DNA mutates according to the needs of the mind. If your looking for god a mirror would be handy.

[Dreager]

Jklint,

Logic is not the perfect tool though, for example it cannot the answer the simple question of what came first, the chicken or the egg? Faith attempts to answer the question by asserting that God made the chicken, but the atheist declares there is no scientific evidence of that! And the question remains unanswered...

How you view God is your choice, but I think that having faith and learning about God in earnest provides a pure relationship with him. And demonstrates that God values us individually.

The chicken and the egg is not an example of the flaws of pure logic. We must discuss this topic in our capacity for argument which is built on logic. Blind faith (example being god made chicken) is by definition illogical, which might explain a disregard for logical thought.

Building on the pure relationship argument though, perhaps god has not the capacity to determine which humans are of greater value to him according to their degree of illogic. He must rely on his absence to prove the value of the illogical persons via faith. Although the problem with this is that it supposes god is not omnipotent, which is a condition of the existence of god as I understand it. So logically the only other option is he does not value us. This holds unless you disregard logic, in which case we cannot have this discussion, since our discourse is based on logic.

-- Updated April 17th, 2012, 3:37 am to add the following --

An illogical conclusion can not be secured by scripture that recognises the illogical reasoning it attempts to overcome. In my opinion if god made an appearance you would not recognise it. It has no human image that we could recognise. How can a god that creates a worm that eats into a child's brain be seen as anything we could explain or understand. The only god that is constantly with us is nature. If nature was engineered by a sentient creature what a arogant and cruel creature it is.

I agree, although your comments are logical, which makes them unacceptable for a person with faith in the existence of god. God would not be able to be recognized, but furthermore, requiring proof of his existence is the antithesis of how god values humans - via a capacity for illogical thought, via faith. If we are in his likeness, or even if the world is in his likeness, he would not have created so much suffering. Therefore he is not like us or this world, and cannot be represented in this world. Therefore, further to it not being in his best interests for ascertaining human value, it is not possible for god to prove himself.

But all of this is redundant for two reasons. Firstly, if this was to support an argument for god, the fact it is based on logic negates the value of the argument. Secondly, if this argument was to be used against god, we would assume there is no god in the first place without proof.

[Filkaya]

My first post here, so with apologies if this doesn't fit. God performed plenty of miracles in the past. Think of Moses and Jesus. However, according to Judaism and Christianity, despite the endless stream of public miracle working, we are still expected to believe, without evidence.

You can't have it both ways. Either there were, hence still should be miracles, or the past was no different from the present, and those who wrote religious texts knew that the miracles they wrote about were unbelievable. They then attempted to find excuses for the lack of evidence, and cover up the problem by writing about the nobility of believing without proof.

Either way, there's a contradiction. You can't write about a god who performs endless, public, dramatic miracles in two of the greatest empires on earth (Egypt and Rome), and then wax poetic about the nobility of believing without seeing.

[Fanman]

Dreager,

How would logic explain faith in God yielding benefical and positive results in someones life, and scripture from the bible coming true in someone's life?

Filkaya,

After the sacrifice of Christ, what need would there be for further blatent miracles? Even so, I'm sure that there are people with miracle stories, but would you believe them? I have little doubt that your logic would find a way to rationalise the event.

Take what happened to me for example. One day I was messing around near the edge of a train station platform. As the train was approaching I lost my balance. As I was about to fall, I felt something pull me back to safety, I know that I did not regain my balance. When I looked around there was no one in my vicinity. I perceive that incident as a miracle. And, it is one of the reasons that justify my faith.

[Xris]

Dreager,

How would logic explain faith in God yielding benefical and positive results in someones life, and scripture from the bible coming true in someone's life?

Filkaya,

After the sacrifice of Christ, what need would there be for further blatent miracles? Even so, I'm sure that there are people with miracle stories, but would you believe them? I have little doubt that your logic would find a way to rationalise the event.

Take what happened to me for example. One day I was messing around near the edge of a train station platform. As the train was approaching I lost my balance. As I was about to fall, I felt something pull me back to safety, I know that I did not regain my balance. When I looked around there was no one in my vicinity. I perceive that incident as a miracle. And, it is one of the reasons that justify my faith.

So if tomorrow you are walking to the shops and a car mounts the pavement and kills you, we must all assume there is no god?

[Fanman]

Jklint,

Is it logical to believe in the placebo-effect? it doesn't seem logical to me, to believe that if a placebo is given to someone that has an illness. That the mere thought of being better will make that person better? Evangelistic preachers, preach that very same thing "mind-over-matter" only they call it having faith... If the placebo effect is real and works, then it is something which defies logic, because the person has been given no actual medicine, but gets better.

Xris,

I don't think the loss of my life would indicate that there is no God. The fact that he saved me once, does not mean that he will save me again. We all have to leave this world sometime and somehow...