Belief systems poll

[Terxpahseyton]

An unconscious God sounds to me like a natural phenomena rather than a God.
Behold gravity, and bow mortal, for he is your immortal God! He won't care weather you bow though because he is unconscious.

 

[Kyriakos]

An unconscious God sounds to me like a natural phenomena rather than a God.

Maybe, but in part of my example the god was rendered unconscious through his own doing.

edit: Personally i find it far more likely that, if there is a god, that god would be (by our standards) unconscious or closer to that.

 

[El_Machinae]

Perhaps god dispenses evidence according to one's capacity to understand and accept it.

Yeah, I can see that. It doesn't even require any type of personification. The laws of physics dispense evidence according to the capacity to understand it. Or, put another way, the information is already present and the true limits is our own ability.

 

[Traitorfish]

An unconscious God sounds to me like a natural phenomena rather than a God.
Behold gravity, and bow mortal, for he is your immortal God! He won't care weather you bow though because he is unconscious.

That's the kind of deity a man can get behind!

 

[El_Machinae]

Yeah, so, I actually have more expanded thoughts on my belief.

What is god?
The deliberate creator of the Universe? Well, our specific universe could have been created intentionally. I'm agnostic on whether it was.

The personification of morality? No, there's no real reason to believe that morality is personified, even if I believe in objective morality. Atheist there.

What else is there? I've no reason to believe in an afterlife, though I guess 'agnostic' might be the best description there. I've no reason to believe that any putative 'universe creators' are involved with any putative afterlife, either.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

It's not cowardice. Would you subject yourself voluntarily to eternal pain? No right-thinking man would do so.

You and I have rather different definitions of "voluntarily". Nothing voluntary about it.

Your God is a funny one. Love me or go to hell. Love is unconditional matey. You can not force me to love such a horrible entity. All I would be able to do is act as if. And God would see through that.

No right thinking God would pose such a horrible condition on love.

I fear to think what God would use as a pickup line. "Hi, do you come here often? Now love me or I'll punch you in the face until eternity"

 

[Traitorfish]

Say I hate God. Really, deeply despise him. And then I'm sent to hell, where I will suffer for all eternity. But in hell, I continue to hate God- and, indeed, my punishment merely stokes my hatred, demonstrates to me what a cruel and unjust tyrant he is. My hate, like my torture, endures eternally, and nothing God does can change that.

My hate will be greater than God.

And isn't that something?

 

[strijder20]

I'm not trying to be arse (since I am sure I will succeed)

Sorry to disappoint you, but you haven't succeeded.

How do you lean towards atheism? Do you believe a little bit in a god? Are you open to the possibility you believe in god?

The latter. I believe we cannot know whether there is a God or not, but I tend to act like there is none.

 

[Kyriakos]

Say I hate God. Really, deeply despise him. And then I'm sent to hell, where I will suffer for all eternity. But in hell, I continue to hate God- and, indeed, my punishment merely stokes my hatred, demonstrates to me what a cruel and unjust tyrant he is. My hate, like my torture, endures eternally, and nothing God does can change that.

My hate will be greater than God.

And isn't that something?

Maybe that's the point. If your hatred>god, then you become ready for the next level.

Think of it as a mafia-trial kind of thing.

 

[LamaGT]

Our God, if He exists, is the creator of all that Is. He has the right to be jealous and demand worship. If someone chooses not to believe Him and is condemned to hell, God is still righteous because He provides numerous evidence that He exists through miracles and signs which the Bible says only fools would fail to notice, such as how the movements of the sun and planets are ordered and the trees bear fruit.

But if god created all of us and governs our lives then it's his wish for atheists to exist. Because if he didn't want them then they wouldn't exist. So if atheists and heathens are going to hell it's only because god chose some people and condemned them to hell without them having any say in the matter. So there are three options:

God will still send heathens to heaven if they behave (which suffers from the same line of thought i.e. he condemned some people to be evil)

God is a really irrational and evil being who takes pleasure in the suffering of others

God doesn't exist, at least not in a human form and he can't directly influence events.


Excuse me for finding the third option the most likely.

 

[Borachio]

Our God, if He exists, is the creator of all that Is. He has the right to be jealous and demand worship. If someone chooses not to believe Him and is condemned to hell, God is still righteous because He provides numerous evidence that He exists through miracles and signs which the Bible says only fools would fail to notice, such as how the movements of the sun and planets are ordered and the trees bear fruit.

This is just OT stuff.

So, you're Jewish, then?

 

[El_Machinae]

To be fair, the Bible gets a lot of stuff wrong about the concepts of seeds and fruit.

 

[Kyriakos]

To be fair, the Bible gets a lot of stuff wrong about the concepts of seeds and fruit.

At least it mentions that the crocodile is a wise being (book of Job), so that balances things out

 

[Akka]

How do you lean towards atheism? Do you believe a little bit in a god? Are you open to the possibility you believe in god?

It's more like "it seems there is no God, but I'm not totally sure".

I picked variable for a various number of reasons.

1) There is no evidence to support either argument. There is no evidence to suggest there is no higher being and there is no evidence to suggest there is. Any evidence for the denial could be seen as an intentional act by a higher being while any evidence for the belief could be seen as a mental disorder or wishful thinking.

Sorry, but that's absurd.
There is a crapload of evidences supporting the lack of God. The only thing lacking is absolute proof, and only because we can never know something absolutely.

Saying both are equals because none are absolutely provable is just like saying 1 and 1000000000 are both smaller than infinity and as such are equal - which is, obviously, completely false.

 

[Kyriakos]

^I don't see that as true, unless you are strictly thinking of specific gods (eg christian and so on). Again the OP specifies this is not about specific god(s), but the idea that a god may exist.

That there is a god around, even an unknown one we have no grasp of at all (and that god might even not really 'know' of us either) is not as easy to regard as highly unlikely.

 

[Antilogic]

It's right handy, being able to say "check the Bible" every time you can't be bothered to make an argument. I suspect that might be the real reason people take up this Christianity business.

Pascal's Wanger is an interesting one. For me, I look at it from the opposite point of view: don't believe in or worship God, but live what you think is a good life and:

a) There is no God, I've not lost anything
b) There is a God, but he accepts that I have been a good person and forgives me for not believing in him, in which case I've not lost anything
c) There is a God, and he condemns me to hell/denies me eternal life/etc. solely for not following him, in which case he is evil and was never worthy of my worship in the first place, and I'm better of not living for eternity in his abhoerent presence

You and I have rather different definitions of "voluntarily". Nothing voluntary about it.

Your God is a funny one. Love me or go to hell. Love is unconditional matey. You can not force me to love such a horrible entity. All I would be able to do is act as if. And God would see through that.

No right thinking God would pose such a horrible condition on love.

I fear to think what God would use as a pickup line. "Hi, do you come here often? Now love me or I'll punch you in the face until eternity"

All of these get a +1 from me.

But my greatest fear is that maybe there is a god. Because if there is a god, then the universe is a vastly more terrible place than if there is not a god. If there is no god, then all the horror and misery just happens. But if there is a god, then all the horror and misery is part of the plan.

Think about it. If gods existed, they allowed movies like The Room to be created. These so-called deities really need to get their acts together and stop trolling humanity.

 

[Akka]

^I don't see that as true, unless you are strictly thinking of specific gods (eg christian and so on). Again the OP specifies this is not about specific god(s), but the idea that a god may exist.

That there is a god around, even an unknown one we have no grasp of at all (and that god might even not really 'know' of us either) is not as easy to regard as highly unlikely.

If you're going to water down the definition of "god" until it can fit whatever vague notion of force existing in the universe, sure. But by then the question is meaningless and the entire point void.
If you're going with something like "some supernatural entity with magical powers that is interacting with humans", then no.

 

[Kyriakos]

If you're going to water down the definition of "god" until it can fit whatever vague notion of force existing in the universe, sure. But by then the question is meaningless and the entire point void.
If you're going with something like "some supernatural entity with magical powers that is interacting with humans", then no.

I wouldn't think that this is a "watering down" of the idea of a "god". In fact i agree with Descartes on his point that a god of the variety of some supernatural being which is hugely more powerful than humans, is not really something different from the ancient panthea like the Greek or Norse one.
(which is not to say that i agree with the rest of Descarte's thoughts on a god).

In my view some sort of incomprehensible, not really conscious as we think of that term, but significant for the entire cosmos, being, can be termed as a god. That god does not really have to know of humans, though. It might. Then again i am not in favor of the idea of a god who looks like a human (or similar; there are sort of conflicting biblical passages there) and is just super-powerful and controls another plane of existence yet cares about the earth and its history. In my view that idea is rather pedestrian.

 

[Synobun]

Sorry, but that's absurd.
There is a crapload of evidences supporting the lack of God. The only thing lacking is absolute proof, and only because we can never know something absolutely.

What evidence is there that supports the lack of God? Because there is no divine intervention? Why must a God interfere with our lives? Is there no God because there is physics? Why must a God be the one pulling all the strings like a puppet master?

There's a ton of evidence to suggest that an Earth-based religion is false, but on the topic of a higher being itself, no, there is no evidence whatsoever.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Which suggests that it doesn't exist.