Are you there God? It's me, Margaret.

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jasonlee

The Fly
Joined
Sep 25, 2007
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122
No, this has nothing to do with the book or Judy Blume (sorry to disappoint). Just wondering how many of you believe in God? Or something else? Intelligent design, scientology, Xenu? Or agnosticism or atheism?

Best,
Jason
 
Damn, I'm disappointed this isn't actually about the book.

I believe there is something larger than us out there, but don't believe it is defined by any one religion's view of their god.
 
Seems like every religion has a "supreme being", no matter what he/she is called. Maybe God is an ET, or a being from another dimension? No one knows!

That brings up another question: what happens when you "die"? What is it that makes a person, a mosquito, or anything else "alive"? When that being becomes so old, sick, or injured that it "dies", where does whatever it is that keeps it "alive" go?

Yeah, that's more than two questions.
 
Feel free to contribute your thoughts Purrl! I promise I won't make fun!
 
I guess I would fall into the agnostic category. I don't believe there is anything out there, but I always believe that I can be wrong.
 
I think that religions are man made, they are part of human culture and they work around how peoples minds work, there is no one true faith and there is no dilemma about different belief systems if, in the absence of definitive evidence, we view them in that light.

I think that life on earth is a combination of an initial biochemical reaction under the laws of physics followed by nearly 4 billion years of mechanical undirected (but not random) sorting producing remarkable diversity. This is not a faith based position, evidence of life on Earth goes back over 3 billion years, life does not require any special type of matter or energy and it doesn't disobey natural law. Pinning down the process of abiogenesis is the mystery here, once there is a replicating organic molecule with variation and differential survival then evolution will generate novel forms. Given the smallest/least complex molecule that can replicate with variation, the number of possible worlds this can take place, the number of places on those world where these types of molecules can be produced the origin of life in the universe becomes a question of probability, and we know that it worked out on at least one planet.

I think that the nature of the universe is an open question that religion ignored (by explaining everything from an initial answer/guess) one for which science has begun to scratch the surface.

There is no cause to suppose God when the big questions have better explanations and the mysterious unknowns only leave room for a deity so impotent or malicious that it is pointless to worship.

In principle I am open to the possibility that there is a God out there, but it would demand strong evidence, otherwise my position is indistinguishable from God in nature.

I find it interesting that people view theistic evolution as a good way of reconciling God and the real world, when the blind process of evolution is predicated upon rather harsh Malthusian principles. What entity would use 13.7 billion years, unfathomable quantities of energy, 99.999 ad infinitum percent of beings that ever existed just to bring humans into existence. A deity that relies on so much wastage, death and suffering to produce a single species seems unworthy of worship; and if God further divorced from human affairs as a first cause that set the laws of physics and the rest is emergent then the position is indistinguishable from an agnostic one.

This is not a dilemma in the absence of God, we can place our existence into a natural framework and do away with the need to justify events in relation to any God; we can still experience the pleasures and pains of existence, appreciate the beautiful, feel the spiritual, wonder about the mysterious and do all this without having to suspend our disbelief or accept absurdities.
 
I believe in God. I practice Catholicism, but do not believe in it. I do not believe in organized religion.
 
I believe there's something or someone out there but I am no longer concerned about what exactly it is. I try to live a good and productive life while I'm here and not worry a lot about what happens when we're not here anymore.

I figure if I'm wrong, worst that happens is that when I die, I will simply go back to the same state of non-existence I was in before I was born. That wasn't a bad deal.
 
Spinoza's God is an engineer that's present in the natural laws of the universe, a single infinite substance, with mind and matter being two intangible ways of conceiving the one reality.
 
Currently, I've distanced myself from organized religion and any institutional church. I do believe in God, but I believe in general revelation, that God and God's grace is evident in his creation (so therefore you don't have to be a white upper-middle class evangelist going to church twice on Sunday and Wed. night in order to be "saved"). I have studied theology quite a bit in college and on my own, but the beliefs I hold in that regard have more to do with my interest in that field then wanting to impose them on other people.

If I am wrong, so be it. Personally, believing in something larger and greater than myself keeps me from feeling totally worthless and defeated.
 
Currently, I've distanced myself from organized religion and any institutional church. I do believe in God, but I believe in general revelation, that God and God's grace is evident in his creation (so therefore you don't have to be a white upper-middle class evangelist going to church twice on Sunday and Wed. night in order to be "saved"). I have studied theology quite a bit in college and on my own, but the beliefs I hold in that regard have more to do with my interest in that field then wanting to impose them on other people.

If I am wrong, so be it. Personally, believing in something larger and greater than myself keeps me from feeling totally worthless and defeated.


I basically agree with this. I believe in the Christian concept of God, and that Jesus is the Savior of mankind, but I don't think that people who disagree or believes something else is going to burn in a fiery pit of hell. I don't know or pretend to know anyone's heart. If they feel at peace and content with their concept or lack of concept of God, it's not my place to judge. We all have our own paths in life, and I certainly have no business telling someone that theirs is wrong. I wouldn't want someone doing that to me. I really just tend to strongly disagree on theology and practice with the typical evangelical mega-church, TBN religion that I grew up under. It messed up my concept of God for the first 18 years of my life, and I'm just starting to come out from under it.
 
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