If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out...
- Thread starter HolyForce
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JetSetDizzy
[11] Champion
If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..
Belief in God is not fundamentally irrational, can you explain what fundamentals of rationality that are contradicted by a God?. You do not need proof to believe that something exists because unprovable things could be true and cannot be disproven so they remain as a maybe. The idea of God is at least an attempt to explain the creation of the universe. Nothing can come of nothing right? And its mathematically impossible for the universe to have existed forever, because with an infinite regression of events you would never reach the now since an infinite cannot be overcome.
Felix the freewill thing was on of the biggest things that stopped me from believing for a long time, but before I beleived in God I did not believe in freewill at all. I actually ended up just thinking that maybe God doesn't know everything that is going to happen. Or maybe if God exists outside of normal space and time its not as simple as God knew before you did it because God isn't an entity that moves forward in time in a straight line like we do.
I have to say that I don't think being gay is a sin, its only real mention is in an old section of the bible with a lot of other "guidelines" that have been overruled by new testament writings such as not eating pork (pork was very hard to keep properly clean in that era), and you wouldn't go to hell for it. Christians who shun gay people should be ashamed because even if it was a sin, they are driving people from God. You would however go to hell for a load of other stuff you probably do daily. However since Jesus accepted the burden of everyone's sins when he died on the cross, you only have to accept his sacrifice to be totally forgiven. I would say that I definitely don't like that people who don't believe got to hell, but that's why I would try to convince whoever was willing to listen that God does exist.
Some translators of the Bible have taken it upon themselves to make minor changes (I don't understand what makes them think they have the authority to do so.) For example the name of God is mostly or totally absent from most English bibles, and because of this a lot of people don't even know it.
Let me know if I am mistating something because its late and I am speaking from memory.
Belief in God is not fundamentally irrational, can you explain what fundamentals of rationality that are contradicted by a God?. You do not need proof to believe that something exists because unprovable things could be true and cannot be disproven so they remain as a maybe. The idea of God is at least an attempt to explain the creation of the universe. Nothing can come of nothing right? And its mathematically impossible for the universe to have existed forever, because with an infinite regression of events you would never reach the now since an infinite cannot be overcome.
Felix the freewill thing was on of the biggest things that stopped me from believing for a long time, but before I beleived in God I did not believe in freewill at all. I actually ended up just thinking that maybe God doesn't know everything that is going to happen. Or maybe if God exists outside of normal space and time its not as simple as God knew before you did it because God isn't an entity that moves forward in time in a straight line like we do.
I have to say that I don't think being gay is a sin, its only real mention is in an old section of the bible with a lot of other "guidelines" that have been overruled by new testament writings such as not eating pork (pork was very hard to keep properly clean in that era), and you wouldn't go to hell for it. Christians who shun gay people should be ashamed because even if it was a sin, they are driving people from God. You would however go to hell for a load of other stuff you probably do daily. However since Jesus accepted the burden of everyone's sins when he died on the cross, you only have to accept his sacrifice to be totally forgiven. I would say that I definitely don't like that people who don't believe got to hell, but that's why I would try to convince whoever was willing to listen that God does exist.
Some translators of the Bible have taken it upon themselves to make minor changes (I don't understand what makes them think they have the authority to do so.) For example the name of God is mostly or totally absent from most English bibles, and because of this a lot of people don't even know it.
Let me know if I am mistating something because its late and I am speaking from memory.
Felix007
[01] Neophyte
If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..
Actually, see Quantum Mechanics for "things coming from nothing", or the possibility that some things are self caused (not to mention the Casmir Effect). There's also the difference between a potential infinite and an actual infinite with the concept of the universe. I'm not a physicist, so I don't think I would be able to do the explanation justice.
How did you come to that conclusion? I believe the Bible is pretty explicit in the idea that God is omniscient.
1 John 3:19-20 [19] This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence [20] whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
Job 37:16 Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge?
Which also raises an interesting question: If God is omniscient, he knows where you will go before you are born. Does that mean he creates souls for the sole purpose of burning in Hell?
Why assume we are born broken? That we require some divine forgiveness to be whole? Did God not create (or know his actions would lead to) Hell? If he is the primary cause of everything in our Universe, ultimately, we only need "redemption" from sin because he created it. He should not need to send Jesus down for a blood sacrifice, he would be capable of snapping his fingers and we would be saved.
I also have a problem that, ultimately, belief in God supersedes morality. To use an extreme example, someone that worked in an orphanage and devoted their lives to the betterment of others would go to Hell regardless should they deny God. However, someone who lived a truly atrocious life, possibly even a murderer, could repent (as in truly repent and be sorrowful for their actions) and be saved.
Again, the irony being that you require salvation from something that God ultimately caused in the first place.
Actually, see Quantum Mechanics for "things coming from nothing", or the possibility that some things are self caused (not to mention the Casmir Effect). There's also the difference between a potential infinite and an actual infinite with the concept of the universe. I'm not a physicist, so I don't think I would be able to do the explanation justice.
Dizzynecro said:
How did you come to that conclusion? I believe the Bible is pretty explicit in the idea that God is omniscient.
1 John 3:19-20 [19] This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence [20] whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
Job 37:16 Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge?
Which also raises an interesting question: If God is omniscient, he knows where you will go before you are born. Does that mean he creates souls for the sole purpose of burning in Hell?
DizzyNecro said:
Why assume we are born broken? That we require some divine forgiveness to be whole? Did God not create (or know his actions would lead to) Hell? If he is the primary cause of everything in our Universe, ultimately, we only need "redemption" from sin because he created it. He should not need to send Jesus down for a blood sacrifice, he would be capable of snapping his fingers and we would be saved.
I also have a problem that, ultimately, belief in God supersedes morality. To use an extreme example, someone that worked in an orphanage and devoted their lives to the betterment of others would go to Hell regardless should they deny God. However, someone who lived a truly atrocious life, possibly even a murderer, could repent (as in truly repent and be sorrowful for their actions) and be saved.
Again, the irony being that you require salvation from something that God ultimately caused in the first place.
Codemaster92163
[09] Warrior
If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..
Well actually some believe he doesn't predetermine where you will go. That is a whole other term that not many people are familiar with, but I won't bore you with details.
Well actually some believe he doesn't predetermine where you will go. That is a whole other term that not many people are familiar with, but I won't bore you with details.
LKV
[09] Warrior
If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..
i think there might be a misunderstanding concerning my use of the term "irrational". i don't mean it to be a synonym of "crazy" or a symptom of a chemical imbalance or anything of the sort. what i mean is that there is no 2+2=god type explanation. you can't come to the conclusion that there is a god by using the same cognitive tools (logic, reason) in the same way you can make any other kind of discovery about the world (in fact, my original post in this thread essentially stated that you typically come to believe in a god because of precisely what you don't know). and even if you could, it is not really a testable explanation because there is no predictive power in the theory that is verifiable in any objective sense (at least yet). gods are not directly observable, so there is nothing that can definitively show that they are there, and they are not even indirectly observable. sure the bible or some other holy scripture can make predictions about stuff, but nobody can say anything factual about what those results are, and be able to say that, without a shadow of a doubt, that it was god who did it. the system simply doesn't allow it... it is not falsifiable. the god of the bible is possibly the worst offender of this because he can do anything... his power is limitless... there is nothing that he can't do... (although it is curious that there are several things that he won't do.....).
the only way that you come to the conclusion that there is a god, unless you came up with the idea yourself, is that someone told you that's it's true, or at the very least possible. that's it. this is not a rational belief in the sense i alluded to above. this is merely an act of faith (essentially believing because you want to, which is fine), and because of that, it doesn't really make sense to apply a rational understanding of the whole thing because it isn't rational to begin with. therefore as i tried to say in my previous post, a dialogue about proving the existence of something that you know exists simply because you know it exists really can't go anywhere-- the person on the other end of the dialogue is asking for things that you can't provide. the setting is logical (i.e. let's have a logical discussion about something using human language which is composed of logical relations between words) but the subject matter is something that resists logical explanation, because a god can't be broken down, not even in theory.
and yes you're right-- you don't need proof to believe anything. but the question is this: if you get proof of something, and it contradicts or falls in the same slot as a belief you held, and you can try that proof over and over and it keeps coming out exactly the same, what do you do with it?
i'm not sure you can say that god is an attempt to explain the origins of the universe, exactly. the book of genesis is an attempt to explain the beginning of what they thought the universe was, way back when the story was first uttered. but this is a small issue-- i know what you're trying to say. but my point again is that god is used as a way to explain anything that we didn't understand, or couldn't agree on, or simply didn't know.
about math and physics with regards to problem of the big bang: the interesting thing about them is that they are systems that can keep growing in explanatory power and/or descriptive power, and one day might provide an answer, if someone hasn't figured it out already. a god is a closed system, and so the answer that a god can provide right now is the best one that they could ever provide. neither gives a satisfactory account at the present time, IMO, but there is more hope in a system that can grow and adapt to the challenge, rather than one that is allegedly so powerful it can't even be questioned or refined.
well i haven't slept yet but i'll try to answer this anyway.
i think there might be a misunderstanding concerning my use of the term "irrational". i don't mean it to be a synonym of "crazy" or a symptom of a chemical imbalance or anything of the sort. what i mean is that there is no 2+2=god type explanation. you can't come to the conclusion that there is a god by using the same cognitive tools (logic, reason) in the same way you can make any other kind of discovery about the world (in fact, my original post in this thread essentially stated that you typically come to believe in a god because of precisely what you don't know). and even if you could, it is not really a testable explanation because there is no predictive power in the theory that is verifiable in any objective sense (at least yet). gods are not directly observable, so there is nothing that can definitively show that they are there, and they are not even indirectly observable. sure the bible or some other holy scripture can make predictions about stuff, but nobody can say anything factual about what those results are, and be able to say that, without a shadow of a doubt, that it was god who did it. the system simply doesn't allow it... it is not falsifiable. the god of the bible is possibly the worst offender of this because he can do anything... his power is limitless... there is nothing that he can't do... (although it is curious that there are several things that he won't do.....).
the only way that you come to the conclusion that there is a god, unless you came up with the idea yourself, is that someone told you that's it's true, or at the very least possible. that's it. this is not a rational belief in the sense i alluded to above. this is merely an act of faith (essentially believing because you want to, which is fine), and because of that, it doesn't really make sense to apply a rational understanding of the whole thing because it isn't rational to begin with. therefore as i tried to say in my previous post, a dialogue about proving the existence of something that you know exists simply because you know it exists really can't go anywhere-- the person on the other end of the dialogue is asking for things that you can't provide. the setting is logical (i.e. let's have a logical discussion about something using human language which is composed of logical relations between words) but the subject matter is something that resists logical explanation, because a god can't be broken down, not even in theory.
and yes you're right-- you don't need proof to believe anything. but the question is this: if you get proof of something, and it contradicts or falls in the same slot as a belief you held, and you can try that proof over and over and it keeps coming out exactly the same, what do you do with it?
i'm not sure you can say that god is an attempt to explain the origins of the universe, exactly. the book of genesis is an attempt to explain the beginning of what they thought the universe was, way back when the story was first uttered. but this is a small issue-- i know what you're trying to say. but my point again is that god is used as a way to explain anything that we didn't understand, or couldn't agree on, or simply didn't know.
about math and physics with regards to problem of the big bang: the interesting thing about them is that they are systems that can keep growing in explanatory power and/or descriptive power, and one day might provide an answer, if someone hasn't figured it out already. a god is a closed system, and so the answer that a god can provide right now is the best one that they could ever provide. neither gives a satisfactory account at the present time, IMO, but there is more hope in a system that can grow and adapt to the challenge, rather than one that is allegedly so powerful it can't even be questioned or refined.