God

this forum has been pretty lonely, so i thought i'd start a thread about God.

i used to believe very deeply in God. in fact, I was a missionary.

now i'm about 99% convinced that there is no God.

i'm not happy about this, but i just don't believe anymore.



(how's that for a conversation starter? ;-)

That's quite a statement from an (ex?)missionary.  When or what happened in your life to make you change your mind?  How long were you a missionary and what part(s) of the world did you serve?

i was in thailand with a group called the navigators. i can't say what exactly changed my mind. i guess it was the implausibility of me being absolutely right and everybody else being absolutely wrong.

"i guess it was the implausibility of me being absolutely right and everybody else being absolutely wrong."

If you are referring to God and Christianity I doubt you found many believers there, but I wouldn't give up my "faith".  I was raised a catholic and really didn't have much faith in religion back when I was younger so I left the church after 30+ years.  There was alot of tragedy in my life (before and after leaving the church) that finally turned me toward God and that is when I found my "faith" and the strength to go on in life.  

I know that God exists.  I see it everyday, especially in the little things.  When people tell me they don't believe in God I always say; "Well, maybe you don't, but God sure believes in you."  I know it's kind of sappy but it's true.  By the way, I'm not the type that tries to convert anyone.  To each his own, on their own and in their own time.

i would love it if you could covert me. i don't want to give the impression that i'm happy about my fall from grace.  i was much happier when i believed in god, and i would very much like to have that faith again.

the problem is i don't see God everyday, in the "little things" anymore, like you do. if God believes in me, I wish he would tell me about it. for ten years, i interpreted all kinds of things as signs from God. but God only sends you signs if you believe he does, so it's kind of circular reasoning.

there was a women i knew in thailand who was supposedly possesed by a deamon. all the missionaries made a big fuss over her, especially when she would have her "fits". they all saw this as proof positive that spiritual forces were at work. to me, it seemed pretty clear that she was just trying to get attention.

i think that once you decide to believe something, you fit your experiences to what you have decided to believe. for example, if you are crossing the street and a car almost hits you, you might believe that God sent an angel to protect you (i'm not saying that this is what you believe, it's just an example).  if a thai bhuddist had the same experience, he might think that his good karma protected him, but since it was a close call, he had better go to the temple and do some good stuff to recharge his karma for next time.

but i've come to believe that life is just something that happens to you, and there's no master force in the universe directing it all. that's kind of a depressing world view, but it's the one that makes the most sense to me after 36 years on this earth.

of course, i could be wrong. if so, i'm f***ked for eternity. that would be a real bummer. but what if i lived my life according to the teachings of jesus, and it turned out that bhudda was the real deal. how do you know?

Like I said, I don't try to convert anyone.  It may be harder for you to rediscover your belief.  For me, seeing the "little things" makes it easier to handle the big nasties in life.  I don't try to interpret things as signs from God.  He gave us free will so if I do something really stupid it's my fault not his.  Most (not all) of the unbearable things that have happened to me are not because I did something wrong but because someone else caused the problem.  I don't blame God for these things, nor do I think he is out to get me.  

My experiences have taught me that while I may forgive someone for their wrong, I won't forget (Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me) and just go on.  I have become wise beyond my years, discipline and use of common sense are good traits also.  If something in your life is amiss, change whatever it is (lifestyle, friends, family, job, etc).  And most importantly, don't let  the past haunt your future.  

Sometimes it's impossible to change things fast enough and you just have to live through it.  It helps to see the light at the end of the tunnel and keep a positive outlook during this time.

bash, how plausible is it that there is one God and one Jesus and they only care about Christians?

I've gone from atheism to fundamentalism over the years, and what I've come up with is this:

There is no "God" as purported by the various religious groups.  The entity that we call God isn't  a seperate being, but rather a part of each and every human's person - call it your soul or spirit, whatever.

If you read the Bible, you'll find that all evidence points to this.  I'm not talking about the watered-down version they teach you in church or Sunday school, but the real honest-to-goodness read it yourself Bible.  I'm an Old Testament kind of gal - I love history and the OT is rich with it - stories of human nature that hold up even today, because people don't really change, they just think they do.  You'd recognize our world leaders, your neighbors and possible even yourself in the stories of David and Nathan, Naomi and Ruth, Jacob and Esau.

We laugh at Greek and Roman "mythology", but what gives Chrisitanity any more credence than stories of Zeus, Hera and Aphrodite?  There are many different religions in the world - who's to say that one is "right"?  Because, by definition, if one is "right", then the others must be "wrong" and I'm not willing to believe that a small segment of the population has all the answers.

Why is Jesus the savior and not Buddha or Mohammad?  Their lives virtually parallel one another.  Also, why is Jesus always depicted as a blue-eyed Caucasian when he was most certainly dark like his middle-Eastern country mates?  None of it makes sense, which I guess is where faith comes in.

I think that if you find the God within yourself, you'll have no need for organized religion.

it sounds like me and blonde have walked similar paths.

the bottom like for me is, i don't know the answer, and i'm not even sure i'm asking the right question.

i have a hard time beleving that evolution is responsible for life as we know it on this planet. there's just too many holes in the theory, especially how it all got started. even the simplest amino acid is impossibly complicated, and putting one together by chance from random chemicals in a swamp is highly unlikely. then you need a bunch more of them to get together to form one protein, which you need a bunch of to form dna,  and after all that you still don't have life. even a zillion monkeys in front of a zillion testtubes for a zillion years couldn't make an ameoba.

if fact, francis crick, who discovered dna, believes that earth was seeded with dna by aliens from another planet.

given that option, god makes more sense.

but, be honest blonde, the God of the Old Testament isn't anything like the God you describe. you don't find him in yourself, you find him killing babies in egypt, or raining fire on homosexuals, or smiting the phillistenes. if he were doing that today, we'd be slaping him with trade sanctions ;-)

i'm just yanking your chain...

"if fact, francis crick, who discovered dna, believes that earth was seeded with dna by aliens from another planet".

That would certainly explain the sudden explosion of life on this planet. Earth was a completely lifeless ball for a few billion years, and then wham! life covered the planet. Of course, once life got started, even if randomly, you'd expect it to spread fast.

I have a lot of feelings on the subject as well. I once was a fundamentalist, and I once gave up my job in hopes of becoming a missionary (it didn't work). And I'm not sure what I believe now. I want to believe that my existence continues beyond death, but I can see no reason to expect that, from nature - I was created from practically nothing and grew into what I am, and beyond my intelligence, I see no reason to suspect I have a "soul" any more than I'd expect it to be in an insect.

I guess what I've wanted all along is enough of a mystery to give me hope that there's more to life. Something I can't explain away, and convince me that hope for life beyond death isn't just wishful thinking.

it's depressing as hell to be an exsitentiallist.

why do we worry about what happens to us after we die but not about where we were before we were born? if life is eternal, shouldn't we have a past as well as a future? this is where bhuddism has a better argument than christianity.

I'm gonna get profound on you...ready?  Of course this is all just MHO and open to debate

You can have life beyond death if you do it right.  The Christians call it "heaven" and the Buddhists call it "rebirth".  I call it legacy - if you touch people's lives, you will live on in their hearts long after you're dead.  You can live on through your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, whatever.  We know that Martin Luther King, Jr, Abraham Lincoln and even Princess Diana  are dead, but their spirit lives on in so many ways.  

There is no mystery to life, much like there is no meaning to life.  You have to GIVE life meaning and you do that by affecting people's lives.  Take the forum posters, for example - all of us have touched each others lives in some way if for no other reason than that we've shared ideas and expanded each others thinking.  So if you were to die tomorrow, rest assured that you'd live on through not only your friends and family, but through people you've never even met face-to-face before.

But humans, because they're, well, HUMAN, feel this need to humanize God as well - give him a physical shape, a personality, a gender.  They all want a God they can relate to, that looks like them.  And, PS, they want him to be the ultimate Father Knows Best so they have someone wise and all-knowing to look up to.  But, as bash pointed out, the God of the Bible resembles Attila the Hun a lot more than he resembles Ward Cleaver.

Fascinating topic - thanks, bash, for starting it!

Well, gosh!  I didn't mean to run everyone off!  Hopefully you all are just busy and not bored of the topic already.  I enjoy hearing other people's opinions on religion because I always think I have the answers until someone has a better answer than me

In defense of the Bible - it's definitely true that the God of the Old Testament is sometimes portrayed as a petulant jealous deity. Sometimes writers of the OT - such as in the Psalms - make horrific requests of God in their anger. But there are many accounts that show, even in the OT that he is very very patient, and willing to welcome those who change.

I always liked the story of Jonah, who is sent to warn Nineveh of God's wrath. He doesn't go - *mainly* because, he doesn't want them to be warned. He wants them to fry. You know the belly of the whale part, but when he finally reaches Nineveh, he does what he's told - he gives a one sentence sermon, warning them in forty days, wham! they all get it. Then he climbed a hill to watch the fireworks.  But the Ninevites got the message, and they changed - and were spared. Meanwhile, Jonah is throwing a fit, because he REALLY wanted to see them "get it". He gets upset because a vine he was resting in the shade of, God withers up, and God asks Jonah, why is he upset over a vine, but not over the 125,000 people of Nineveh?

Some of the butchery elsewhere can seem out of context. For example, you'd see cases where a prophet would tear down pagan altars to gods like Moloch, and kill all its priests. But traditional worship of Moloch involved massive sacrifice of infants - somehow, I have to say they got what they deserved.

In many ways, it seems to me that the God of the OT is written in such a way to describe a powerful but just God who IS merciful and understanding, but nevertheless, just. Today, if a judge let every person off easy, we'd throw him out of office as a pushover. A good judge has to make hard decisions.

The New Testament tends to describe this judge kind of God as something further, more personal - as a father. God is NOT addressed as a father in the OT, but as a sovereign, a king. There's a difference.

Anyway, didn't intend to go on for so long.

bash,

      I'll just intrude here and you can take it or leave it.

Judging by the dates, this thread is dead, but, what the hell.

Anyway, you, like, most people, wanna believe in something because you have the brain power to conceptualize life and death.

Why are we here? What’s the point? Why be good? Et al…

Vrai simplifies it as best I’ve ever heard it: Life has NO meaning. YOU (the one searching for faith, truth, blah, blah) must give it meaning.

There is a concept in the military: There are no atheists in a foxhole.

The point is that you’re facing it, the end, and you wanna cover all the bases! The urgency of impending death is said to make believers of all. So, lets’ slow that idea down and remove the urgency so we don’t die of stress.

If you know the difference between right and wrong, if you understand forgiveness and contrition, if you can develop wisdom and do a little teaching, then you have it made.

If there is a God and you croak after a life of loving and learning and being a good person and he won’t let you into heaven because you had the wrong colors, well, you don’t wanna be there anyway. This would be the God who created all things, including Satan and Stalin and ABBA.

If you pass on and that’s it, well, you gave your life meaning and you probably meant a lot to some folks. You’re dead but you done good.

Every religion in history has had one goal: Organization of the people in order to ensure its, the societies, survival. This leaves out the Comet folks and other nihilistic loons whose idea of life is apparently death.

Religion is the ultimate in marketing: You need this product so bad that your life AND afterlife depend on it. You can pass on the game, settle for the steak knives and just be good. Sounds like you know enough to do it.

Of course, IF…LOL

You mean that you no longer believe in an imaginary figure living in space?  
Me neither....but have you noticed how EVERY group of people on this planet believe in a God of some kind.
I find that interesting.

I do believe in God, I do not believe in religion.  I never went searching for God, never was really raised religious, sure we went to church on occassion and did the week long vacation bible school in the summer as a kid for something to do (mostly for the free cookies).  There have just been too many strange occurrences in my life to discount as "the natural order" of things.  I've never gone looking for God, just seems that he's found me despite every attempt to stick my fingers in my ears and chant "I can't hear you I can't hear you na na na".  It's very difficult to explain, it's not some profound Joan of Arc vision or anything like that and my intent is not at all to convert anyone.  I just happen to have this very strange guiding force that when I follow it, everything (even the impossible) always falls into place, when I buck against it and think to myself "what? Are you effin nuts?  No way am I going to do that!"  Everything seems to go to hell (sorry about the pun) in a handbasket.  

I reckon it's gotta be God, or there is always the chance I'm insane, either way, I'm harmless.  My God lets me eat pork.

OHHH - this topic is touchier then politics.. Never mix the two.. Well the difference between christianity and alot of other faith-based things.. Jesus rose from the dead. There is a trinity - The father - Jesus - and the holy spirit.. Buddism - huddism - islam - all their prophets never rose from the dead.. And you have to do works in order to be saved. You can not go to God without going through Jesus.  In the OT - they sacrificed animals to please God and get forgiveness of their sins.. When he sent his son to die - he was the sacrifice for all mankind - then the animal killings stopped.  Man is born into sin.. He cannot be saved - without faith - and the Grace of God.. Whether you believe this or not - is entirely up to the individual.. There's more then just going to church - you can't expect to be a doctor if you don't study and go to school.. Well learning about God is the same way.. If you just go to church - and as soon as your out of the building - your cursing - hating on people - and not reading your bible.. YOu haven't gotten anything out of it anyway.. No man can convert you over to God or change your mind.. You have to want it in your heart.. Thats where God judges you.. In your heart.. If its blackhearted - then he will know.. No preacher can save you - or judge you - there are devils in the church also.. There is a spiritual realm that we cannot see - and that is were the real war is.. Nothing bad comes from God - Satan rules this world.. There is a plan for everyone.. Reading the bible and Understanding the bible is two different things.. Only understanding can come from God - if you pray for it.. Religion is a word that man made.. Im being very short about this posting - because there is no need to break it down like that.. I don't dislike anyone for not believing in what I believe in.. I just dislike when people make fun.. And really what are you making fun of - Because you can't see God or Jesus with your own eyes.. I can't see my money going into my account every two weeks -because of direct deposit - but I know its there when I need it.. Death is just the beginning - Born- living - dying thats the circle of life.. Jesus was not accepted by his people and many others.. So as a christian I know I will not be accepted.. But its my choice..

I hope Bash is still around...

I sorta have Christy's perspective when it  comes to the concept of God.  Amazingly enough I also agree with some of Vrai's points....I believe this is a first.

I believe in God...I don't believe in religion.  For some people religion provides them with identity and such...for them...more power to them.  For me, I find religion to be limiting my relationship with God.  Like Bash, I have come across the questions of how can any religion be completely right.  There are so many religions that believe they are completly right.  Each have their own members that absolutely feel moved by God.  Then why the hec are there differences.  The possibility of one religion being absolutely accurate is slim.  So, I say, why choose.  Who says you have to choose?

Afterlife is an idea that many hold so dearly...I think it is because humans are so afraid of death...afraid that their life will cease to be...so there is this creative concept of heaven and hell...so be good.  People love to live in fear.  Why be good so that you can enjoy your after life?...If there is a God that is omni-blah blah blah, then he knows your motives.  Is he going to appreciate your good deeds for selfish reasons of maintaining a good afterlife?

I do believe that there is an afterlife...not a heaven and hell type deal.  I am not into the whole reward thing.  It doesn't matter to me if there is life after death or not.  I also believe there is a before-life also.  I don't feel that our existence started at birth.  This phase did.  Have you met someone that you felt like you have known before...you just met them but you feel like you have known them for years?... Maybe it is because you do know them...just not in this lifetime.

To me, there is a God.  There are too many things that cannot be explained through science.  There are forces that control us...we don't have full control of ourselves no matter how much we think we do.  There are too many "coincidences" in life...I give God credit to such things.  I never really went through a finding God process.  I always knew he was there...and didn't need proof of it.  It all stems from faith.  For me, religion stems from conforming/following rules.  

I don't believe in the whole physical form of God... I don't believe he is human either... if he was, he would be imperfect like us... he is not one of us.  He is God.  To me...it's sorta like we all have souls....they have no physical form in its purity.  So, God is like the higher soul...in charge of all the souls.

I refer to God as "he" for reference purpose.  I don't think God has a sex.

Bash, I noticed that in your first post...you said you weren't happy with having given up God.  That bothered me...that is why I chose to respond.  If you don't believe in God...and you are happy...fine!  If you are unhappy about your new thoughts...then maybe that is not how you really feel...maybe you feel it is the right thing to believe based on reasoning... but you really don't feel that way.  There are things in this world that are beyond our level of reasoning...such as love...  Some things you just feel...you don't reason..  faith is sorta like that also.

AP - God isn't human.. If you do remember this story - when baby Jesus was born - he was born to a virgin.. No man touched her.. Because she was pregnant by the holy Spirit which is God.. Jesus father was God. He had to be born of the flesh - so he could be sacrificed. to save the world.

don't know your history on things - but instead of listening to your parents teaching - or the church teachings - maybe you should read the bible - if nothing else get some history.. Theres alot in there..  

True, the Bible is filled with lotsa history.  However, there are many interpretaions of the Bible...it's amazing.  I will never question that the Bible is filled with lotsa goodies.  I do realize that the Bible has been translated...therefore some of the original "history" has probably been lost... So, I don't see any good in following the Bible "word-for-word".

TT...believe it or not...there are many denominations of Christianity that believe God is a human... they read the same Bible you do...but interpret it differently...

Trust me...most of my opinions don't come from my parents nor the church.  My parents would disagree on a whole lot with me...I try to avoid those "debates" with them  tho... My dad would agree with most of the opinions of the forum members.