It's all down to personal perception as well. I mean if I want to speak to whatever is up there, if there is anything up there I can do it where I want to.
I don't have to group up on a Sunday morning at 11 am in a cold stone building with an organ pipe do I to speak to him upstairs?
Like I've said in the past, I believe in something but I don't know what. It could be a God, or even an intelligent being from another planet
Ourkidor, creator of all the Mancs, he who makes the sun shiiiiiiiiine.
Your just jealous ain't you 'our kid'Originally Posted by Stewart
Everyone in Manchester knows there is only one god and his name is Cantona.
Your just jealous ain't you 'our kid'
Everyone in Greater Manchester knows there is only one god and his name is Cantona.
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"Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice: Pull down your pants and slide on the ice"
for the record:
1) good things happen to bad people
2) bad things happen to good people
3) God is not angry with us, and therefore does not punish us - we punish ourselves.
no doubt someone will quote endless verses to the contrary. Go ahead. It's in the details.
Not too sure about your analogy.
During 'difficult situations in life', those who believe are supported by their faith; I'm just wondering how those with no faith manage?
As for neural pathways and the God part of the brain, might not the reason be irresistibly simpler godsdog i.e. you found faith and are now trying to understand it?
Science IS a crucial tool in understanding but it will never produce all the answers. Substitute the word 'faith' for 'science' in Rosaline's profound words - the resultant phrase is no less valid.
Science is the box. Belief is the lock. Faith is the key.
Find the key, put it in the lock, open the box. Hold your breath.
Last edited by santa claus; 22-12-2007 at 04:12 PM.
And you can prove neither one incorrect.
Many people forget that science does NOT preclude the divine, after all at the core of it all, religions fall back to a Creator, who could quite frankly have done things any way it wanted.
Nor would I try to. Faith, by definition, requires belief, not proof.
Faith is ignorance made a virtue.
Faith is a Christians way of saying 'I can prove nothing, nothing I believe in makes any sense, I get it all from a book written by unknown pre-scientific peoples... but I take it all at face value anyway, aint I cool.'
Fair enough if there is an unknown, and the God botherers want to use faith to guide them one way or another, but when you reach the stage of ignoring everything that seems to tell you what you believe is false, dismissing it all with 'faith', you enter the world of the religious nutcase.
If you want to be a Young Earth Creationist, because you have faith, then fair enough, but you better have a water-tight explanation for radiocarbon dating, dinosaur bones, evidence of human remains that pre-date 6000 odd years, and the rest of it.
And just for Fuddam, these are just some of the things that do not qualify as a water-tight explanation:
1) The Lord works in mysterious ways.
2) The Devil fixed all the results to 'trick us'.
3) The methods used to date every rock and fossil are incorrect, sometimes dating rocks that are thousands of years old at billions of years.
4) Its all part of a secret plan by 'evil scientists' to discredit religion.
5) I have faith.
God may have created everything, but he went to a lot of trouble rigging isotope decay rates, making our DNA 98% the same as the great apes, and counterfeiting and hiding all these fossils for us to find.
Geology shows that fossils are of different ages, Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time, Taxonomy shows the biological relationships among species with Evolution as the explanation that threads it all together.
Put your fingers in your ears, say 'la, la, la, I'm not listening' and have faith that the fairy stories are true. Doesn't mean diddly.
Merry Christmas everybody!
Last edited by Stewart; 22-12-2007 at 05:19 PM.
Of course I wouldn't [pray]! The hospital itself is a monument to the patient discoveries of science through the ages, anatomy, modern pharmaceuticals, the germ theory of disease and so on. Talking telepathically to a zombie sky-wizard belongs alongside the vapours, sacrificing goats, dancing for rainfall.
If anybody really believed that praying made any difference at all, why even bother with all the expensive medical equipment? There are plenty of atheists in foxholes - but there are no fundamentalists in hospitals.
I think there are people who perceive God in a different way to you.
Purely out of interest, what life experiences have 'tested' your stance? I understand if you prefer not to say.
There aint mate, hense the saying 'there are no atheists in foxholes' because there are no atheists in foxholes. Because of this people started to say 'there are no atheists in foxholes'
Those people are normally pragmatists and just get on with stuff the way they always have done, they accept and deal with it all as part and parcel of life. Half my friends and family are like that.
The 'experience' left me with an extremely clear mind, a radically different lifestyle, a radically different mindset with a thirst for knowledge, both the big stuff and the minutia, a clearer insight into what goes on in people's heads, born out of my own long standing failings and changing. I can't call it a gradual evolution because it wasn't. It was a stop you dead in your tracks and suffer for x amount of weeks till you get your head round things and move forward experience.
Do I have faith? am I now trying to understand that faith? uumm, I have a greater understanding of me - which in turn has a knock-on effect on my outlook on everything...if I have developed anything, it's an awareness and a spiritual awareness...understanding.
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"Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice: Pull down your pants and slide on the ice"
By 'tested my stance', you are essentially asking what life experiences have indicated to me personally that there may be a god, and since presumably we all accept that there is absolutely no evidence of god at all then answer to your question is that nothing at all has ever happened along those lines.
Life is pretty easy but I don't think that future hardships like diagnoses of cancer or nuclear wars would provoke me to suddenly start believing in bronze age gods - how would I even know which one to pick anyway?
Impasse (but nonetheless interesting).
I believe the grief process is the same regardless of any beliefs held. Having been through the mill a couple of times I think I understand why people get comfort from having such beliefs / faith but it's still not something I can personally relate to (the faith part that is). There are similarities too between the way people feel about things - for example if someone dies a painful death there is still the thought that they are at least released from suffering. And it is still important to honour someone's wishes, spirit, etc after death and to remember them - whether happy or sad memoeries... Even if I don't believe they are living on in any way in any other place. These things are morally / culturally right - programmed into me one way or another - but not through faith or religion.
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