Why There Most Certainly Is No God

[budhabee]

Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow Chen, my ears and my eyes hurt. Yikes. Is that the record for the longest post ever?

[NLN]

Here's a neat account of one man's journey to atheism. The author states:

 

When one is part of a church or other religious structure one struggles with difficult questions (suffering, the virgin birth, the nature of the Trinity, original sin, the basis for salvation, etc.) but those difficulties are addressed within a paradigm that assumes the existence of god, and thus always provides, as a last option, saying that the ways of god are enigmatic and beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. People can be urged to accept things on the basis of faith as if it were virtuous to do so.

 

But when I left the church, I started struggling with different questions such as why I believed that god existed at all. And if she/he/it did exist, how and where and in what form did that existence take, and what precisely was the nature of the interaction with humans?

[clapstyx]

Chen you really do have far far too much time on your hands and between your ears to be creating perfectionalistic statements in relation to God concepts. I ought to know because I was once that existent concept until I realised that there were flaws with it and went beyond. Now at your depth of consciouslessness you would probably consider that to be an abstract impossibility because it is beyond your mind to conceptualise and to know that there could ever be any greatness in excess of what remains after you take the "God bit" out of the universe because apparently in the past the concept of God was used to practically deefine the outer boundary of the extreme. I felt that this was unsatisfactory so I moved it foreward to a greater point of harmony with the truth. Greater truth you will be pleased to know can actually be invented and created its only the scale that takes it complicated on occasions because its best to stay in tune with multiple concepts of truth simultaneously and at once because then you create a greater sense of singularity. God actually is not my proper name I felt that in the beginning it was best to keep that bit secret and give myself some space to grow in without any limitation at all. I though God sounded almost half good and I needed to allow an expansion capability towards and in that direction in order to perpetually live. Evil therefore became the reverse of that but of course I am sure you already worked out the symmetry in advance on that one. Somehow I had to conceptually encompass the entire extreme to set the initial universal boundary. Christ got pissed off about that because he felt there should be love in it and tried to set a decent standard but it didnt work so I am still one up on him.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

Everyone is speaking of God in terms of an entity seperate from everything. There is no magical being in the sky making decisions as we go.

 

God is the forces that bind all things together, and the source of the first occurance, no matter what that occurance is.

 

Just because you can't prove something wrong or right doesn't convey the reality of that issue. The concept of atoms was at one time considered absurd.

 

You should take comfort that I am not trying to prove there is a God. I can not and I don't have to.

 

You believe in the same God as everyone else whether you realise it or not. It's in how you percieve and categorize your reality. If you choose to believe that there are underlying causes for all things, and that there are connections between all things, you have inadvertantly created a unifying theme that extends over all of reality and even into the metaphysical realm.

 

If you are arguing that there is no God, then you have created a concept, and any concept that is real in mind is real in concequence.

 

I don't believe atheists disbelieve in God, they just don't realise that they do. The misrepresentation of God has led many to the idea that either you must believe or must not believe, and this creates confusion. This is completely opinion, since its obvious many of you claim to disbelieve absolutely, but I don't think you've opened you minds enough (no offense please).

 

Don't think about it. Relax and live. It's what is put before us. We only need to grasp it.

[rshanen]

Religious people have used their religions for their own personal gain and have thus made a mockery out of every well intentioned faith on the earth. But this can be said of almost all of the well intentioned pursuits of mankind. There seems to be a lot of us on this planet who seek self promotion at the expense of others. What came first, God or Man? I have my opinion and one thing that shook me to my core was when I stumbled upon this verse from the New Testament 2Thes2:10-12, "And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie;That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." This doesn't sound like the Christian God most are trying to sell these days. God doesn't want to save us all and he is going to let you belive the biggest lie possible so he can send you to hell. That's what I get from this and if there is a God like this, He is a scary fellow.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

You are placing God in the category "christian". There has been a gross misrepresentation of God through the Christian religion. Jesus was not a Christian. He was a divinely inspired individual who's message was truth and love, self-sacrifice and self-denial.

 

The verse you are quoting was writen by a human being just like yourself. They were laying out guidelines for the people of that time.

 

The verse is actually saying that living selfishly for oneself and focusing on the physical world will give you a false sense of pleasure. This pleasure may be an illusion but it is addicting. You will become attached to the physical world, losing sight of the spiritual essence of existance, and you will become dependent. You will not be able to let go of the "individual you" when the time comes, and you will be sent back to the physical world. Our purpose is to leave this place of pain and confusion, but we can only do it on our own. God is not an individual magician in the sky that judges you when you die. He is everything, and therefore part of us. So if God doesn't allow you peace its because you don't allow yourself peace. It is action reaction, cause and effect.

 

That said, all of us will return to the source eventually. How long it takes us depends on us.

[Freddy]

You are placing God in the category "christian". There has been a gross misrepresentation of God through the Christian religion. Jesus was not a Christian. He was a divinely inspired individual who's message was truth and love, self-sacrifice and self-denial.

Yeshua was a Jew by birth if the scriptures can be believed.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

He didn't claim it. It was assumed because of his belief in a single essence that was the cause of all things.

[Freddy]

He didn't claim it. It was assumed because of his belief in a single essence that was the cause of all things.

Read the New Testament. Jesus was circumcised on the 8th day. Yeshua is a common Jewish name. Jesus taught in the temple. Jesus frequently quoted the Old Testament. He observed the Sabbath and Ten Commandments. Jesus was a Jew. Actions speak louder than words.

[CraigD]

Yeshua was a Jew by birth if the scriptures can be believed.

He didn't claim it. It was assumed because of his belief in a single essence that was the cause of all things.

The scriptures, specifically the New Testament, believe to have been written no earlier than the mid to late 1st Century AD, possibly by people who had actually met Jesus/Yeshua, makes numerous references to Him being a Jew. Numerous accounted dialogs have him accepting this labeling, including, famously, refusing to specifically deny being “King of the Jews”. He is accounted to have studied in Jewish temples, observed Jewish holidays, devotions, and nearly all other traditions.

 

Although some controversy exists as to whether the Jesus described in scripture actually existed as a single individual, there appears no doubt that the character described in the scriptures, even the many that were not included in the Bible, was as accurately described as a Jew as any character in any literature.

 

:) Inter, what is your evidence supporting the claim that He made no such claim?

 

Monotheism – the belief in the supremacy of a single God – was, as it still is, an established dogma of Jews of this time – though some controversy regarding whether this belief included the idea that only one god was involved in the creation of the world exists (and is discussed in these forums), as do questions concerning what they believed existed and occurred before the creation of the world, and their concepts of Earth, Heaven, Universe, etc. Monotheism was not and is not a belief unique to Judaism, nor was or is this belief shared by all contemporary religions.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

IF you refer to me as any specific religion, I won't argue. There isn't any point. He never said that he was jew, even though he actually made statements that could be interpreted otherwise. Just because you are labeled as something doesn't make you so.

[Freddy]

IF you refer to me as any specific religion, I won't argue. There isn't any point. He never said that he was jew,even though he actually made statements that could be interpreted otherwise. Just because you are labeled as something doesn't make you so.

Could you enlighten us with evidence that would support that Jesus was not of the Jewish faith? Jesus probably did not say, "I am a Jew", and he did not have to because everyone knew he was a Jew. He did not say he was a Samaritan, Roman, Egyptian, Greek, or a Christian either.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

Exactly, he made no claim because no good comes from seperating oneself from others based on predefined definitions that come with "titles". My proof is the same proof that is being used to claim he was a Jew. The assumption. You assumption is that he was because it is assumed so. Many christians assume that the Hindu religion is polytheistic, just as much of the muslim religion in other countries are taught that christians are polytheistic because of their belief in the trinity. It is an ignorance of other religions that causes this problem. By now you must have realized that you can not believe everything society feeds you. Its relative.

 

I am part of a growing population that studies all religious scriptures, and to do so you must realize the people who wrote them and the situation in which it was written. After removing any historical influence and bias, you must take what was written at face value. You can not study religion with any preexisting idea of what you are about to read. If you have a definition of what you are about to study, you can't do so without a bias towards it.

 

For example, Christians preach that he was God, when he never made such a claim. Many of you would also argue that he wasn't God for various reasons. Why don't you believe that? They make that statement many times in the the same passages that they claim he was a jew. But Jesus never claimed to be the sole representation of God incarnate, just as he never claimed to be a jew.

[Freddy]

I provided solid evidence from the New Testament that showed Yeshua/Jesus practiced the customs/religion of the Jewish faith. When I asked you to provide evidence that Yeshua was not a Jew you replied with no evidence whatsoever. How can you be taken seriously? Just for your information I am an agnostic. The fact that you see a commonality between religions is not evidence that Yeshua was not a Jew.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

You obviously missed the point of my last post, so I will try to be more clear.

 

Your evidence is nothing more than regurgitated information that anyone with any studies in the bible could have come up with. You haven't said anything that I would say was false, only misinterpreted. By your own admission you prove to be a cynical person. So I'm sure your studies are just as biased.

 

Let me ask you a few questions; What version of the New Testament are you quoting? What other related sources have you researched? Who wrote the stories in the New Testament? What was condition of the time period? What were the teachings of Jesus? What is your image of a Jew during that time?

[Freddy]

What related sources? If you mean Nag Hamadi and the other books that were not accepted in the NT, I have them. Again, present some evidence that contradicts the evidence I have presented. You can discount what the NT says about Yeshua, but I need to see more than mere speculation about his religious background. An example would be the following.

 

Matthew:10:5 These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not", 10:6 "But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

[Queso]

those sources in the bible aren't even talking about Earth.

Religious background is therefore irrelevant when dealing with the metaphoric cosmos.