Do you believe in God?
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Joey D
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It can bring you peace, that's completely fine. It's still a very inaccurate portrayal of Jesus. Assuming Jesus existed, there is almost zero probability he was white with blue eyes. He likely had olive or brown skin with dark eyes and black hair...like most of the people who are from the Middle East and the Mederterrian.
I guess I don't understand then. Do you believe in Jesus?
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I don't think it's that simple. I had an horrific upbringing - as a child I was mentally and physically abused, and sexually abused while drugged (just for starters). Part of my way of coping with that is to understand that good things can come from good treatment (a sense of security in life,...), bad things can come from good treatment (spoilt/entitled attitude,...), bad things can come from bad treatment (ptsd,...), and good things can come from bad treatment (empathy,...). I doubt that I'd ever be able to completely pick apart what trait of mine stemmed from what particular experience, so what I do is ask myself if I'm generally happy with who I am. I actually am generally happy with who I am and so I can be largely at peace with whatever experiences brought me to this point. I understand that if I could magically strip myself of a certain negative experience I may simultaneously strip myself of a certain type of empathy (for example).
Reframing that to include the question of God makes it all the more complex. I don't believe in God - but if there is a God, where would that God want a "level-of-control slider" set?.... At the point where each and every one of the human population is essentially programmed to exist in complete harmony with the others, and not have any individual character or free will? I'm sure that there are people in the world that would choose a "perfectly" performing android as a romantic partner, but I'm also sure that plenty of people would find that a "soulless" experience. I think it truly matters to most people that their romantic partner actually chooses their own behaviour, including choice of partner, and I would expect God to want something that equally avoided that soullessness.
"The experience of certain low points in life teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way". I'm on board with that abstraction of the quote. If God is reinjected into the equation, should it be as a force that removes the "humanness" that I think is evident in the quote?
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You just believe in the Christian God.
There's a lot of ways that Christians attempt to define themselves, mostly they're very complicated to try and make their particular denomination seem like the one true faith. To normal people, it's reasonable to describe anyone who believes in the Christian God as a Christian, because that's the one entirely mandatory part of the faith. If you don't believe in the Christian God, you're definitely not a Christian, and so if you do that seems like a reasonable line to draw to define you as a Christian. All the rest of the doctrine is up for debate, as that's how we ended up with endless variants of Catholics and Protestants and Evangelicals and so on.
You can say you're not a Christian if you want, but there's functionally no difference between you and a Christian as long as you believe in the Christian God.
The problem with this idea is that it assumes that there are certain things that can only be learned by having horrific things happen to you. That's a big assumption, and I've yet to see anyone even attempt to prove it.
What if it wasn't true? What if anything that you could learn through suffering you could also learn in other less awful ways? Then it seems pretty nasty.
As far as not wanting to change who you are now, of course that's a thing. If you changed your history you wouldn't then be the same person, so most people who aren't suicidal are on board with keeping what they understand as themselves intact. But if we weren't talking about going back in time and changing a person, but instead talking about choosing the course of a life for a new child to grow up with, then it gets a lot harder to justify planning for them horrific things of the sort that you went through.
That child will grow up to be whoever they will be, and if you get to choose whether they get to do that in an environment of abuse or an environment of safety then it gets real hard to say "I'm going to make sure this child is abused when they grow up because they need to learn the lessons from that abuse to become a better person". People come to terms with their abuse because that's the healthiest way to deal with a situation that you can't change, but generally they don't say they would want it to happen to others.
I'm not saying that's what you're saying, but that's where the mindset that produces that quote goes. It's justifying abuse, and it's doing it with no actual demonstration that said abuse actually results in a better outcome in the long run.
Dotini
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That was a very thoughtful and eloquent post. It reinforces the role of experience in actualizing all meaning and purpose. Since "God", if any, is an inchoate and immaterial higher dimension of consciousness, it seems reasonable to me that the entity seeks to become more human by acquiring human experiences through sharing your consciousness.
Exodus 20:4-6: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
Paintings might be ok but statues are definitely out it seems.
UKMikey
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I assume Catholics would say they don't believe Jesus is in the carving and don't worship it directly.
https://www.aboutcatholics.com/beliefs/catholics-and-graven-images/
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With making bad things happen vs letting bad things happen there's a big differential. I think that both can be justified, but only to a point, and likely to different points.
Telling a child that's stolen something from a shop to return the stolen item will often cause the child some level of pain, potentially quite intense pain if the child suffered from anxiety. That's learning an important life lesson though, and making that painful experience happen is not hard to justify in my opinion. Another example might be (under supervision) having a child speak to potentially "unsavoury" types to learn about what to look out for in people. On the other side, it's not hard to come up with an example of making a painful experience happen that is unjustifiable. Even if there could be gain, the idea of an attempt at forced learning of empathy through being abused is not something I consider justifiable.
In terms of letting bad things happen (which is kind of letting all things happen), I'm not going to stand by knowingly allowing a child to be abused on the off chance that they might gain some great level of empathy through the experience. That said, I'm not in the position that God would be in, I'm limited to my immediate surroundings and my impact could only ever be the figurative drop in the ocean. In terms of what God should decide, it comes back the "level-of-control slider". Should God eliminate absolutely all pain? Is that a world we want to live in? Where it takes no uncomfortable patience or soul-searching to write the most epic post on GTP? Where no uncomfortable training is required to reach our peak sporting potential? People can do the "Go to the slums in India to gain perspective", or whatever, but that might involve some level of suffering anyway, and how deep does that kind of thing really go? Maybe sometimes there's just no substitute for actually living the lesson.
Note - I don't view myself as having the answers, so the questions are as much to myself as anyone else who cares to read them.
Extra note - I'd been away for quite a while and had sorely missed being battered around by some of the great minds to be found in here. You included, my pretend Aussie friend.
Danoff
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Generally speaking you don't experience most of it for yourself anyway. If someone is abused, for the most part, it's not you. You end up learning most of these lessons by watching other people suffer. Your capacity for learning about other people suffering is far beyond your own capacity for suffering. So most of what you say doesn't actually get on to your point about "is that a world we want to live in" because we just learn almost all of it second hand anyway.
Some of us live it, but lots of us don't. So how does that jive?
An all powerful god could teach you that lesson just the same without someone real having to suffer it. You're learning it second hand either way.
UKMikey
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I can't say I'm an expert on the afterlife but for the brief time on the ambulance gurney that I experienced it, nothing happened. It was like before I was born (sorry, life-begins-at-conception fans).
One thing I wondered recently is that since we rely on living organisms to help us digest our food, do they come along for the ride? Or is it just humans and we won't need food or digestive capabilities? According to the survey respondents in this article dogs, cats and horses will make it past the pearlies.. insects, fish and reptiles less so.
cvm.ncsu.edu
One thing I wondered recently is that since we rely on living organisms to help us digest our food, do they come along for the ride? Or is it just humans and we won't need food or digestive capabilities? According to the survey respondents in this article dogs, cats and horses will make it past the pearlies.. insects, fish and reptiles less so.
Exploring Belief In An Animal Afterlife
The study, set to be published in August in the journal Anthrozoos, is believed to be the first to systematically explore American’s beliefs about animal afterlife using...
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Empty heads produce empty platitudes.
I suspect because "we" tend to form stronger bonds with certain lifeforms than with others, it's preferable that they'll join us in the supposed afterlife. The afterlife we want is the afterlife in which we believe. Desire makes reality.I can't say I'm an expert on the afterlife but for the brief time on the ambulance gurney that I experienced it, nothing happened. It was like before I was born (sorry, life-begins-at-conception fans).
One thing I wondered recently is that since we rely on living organisms to help us digest our food, do they come along for the ride? Or is it just humans and we won't need food or digestive capabilities? According to the survey respondents in this article dogs, cats and horses will make it past the pearlies.. insects, fish and reptiles less so.
Exploring Belief In An Animal Afterlife
The study, set to be published in August in the journal Anthrozoos, is believed to be the first to systematically explore American’s beliefs about animal afterlife using...
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I mean that's not even certain, that was the point of my earlier post. It's ambiguous enough apparently for people to argue whether god(s) exist throughout history. Can we be sure the afterlife, if it exists, isn't any different? Why would a god's policy change so drastically based on which side of death a person is on anyway?
Interesting that they apparently get to go without souls. Does that mean I can keep my car?I can't say I'm an expert on the afterlife but for the brief time on the ambulance gurney that I experienced it, nothing happened. It was like before I was born (sorry, life-begins-at-conception fans).
One thing I wondered recently is that since we rely on living organisms to help us digest our food, do they come along for the ride? Or is it just humans and we won't need food or digestive capabilities? According to the survey respondents in this article dogs, cats and horses will make it past the pearlies.. insects, fish and reptiles less so.
Exploring Belief In An Animal Afterlife
The study, set to be published in August in the journal Anthrozoos, is believed to be the first to systematically explore American’s beliefs about animal afterlife using...
UKMikey
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I don't really want the afterlife I believe in but I see it as a matter of cold hard scientific fact.
If I'm wrong and the evangelists are correct, it sounds like there might be a ****ton of angry ex-fetuses "up" there waiting for their mamas, but otherwise it seems to be kind of an amorphously defined concept as far as who gets to go is required.
As I understand it the 'vangies believe in entering heaven via faith not works so even if they end up ruining the lives of everyone else they still get a room in His Father's Mansion. Because they're good, and we're the infidels and deserve everything they throw at us. Group "B" in the grand experiment.
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Yes, people should be free to have imaginary friends, but sadly, religion frequently goes well beyond that. If for example it begins to influence peoples rights, because the government believes a bunch of made up stuff from on old book, and it uses the influence of that old book to enshrine certain things in law, then it's gone way too far and the validity of the reasoning needs questioning.
Who here is arguing for holy war and why aren't they reported to the FBI or equivalent? lol
I understand there's topics like abortion but there's a separate thread for that. I just find it fascning that a simple question such as "does god exist" can go on for so long on a forum.
Wouldn't that be organized religion? AFAIK religion and faith are interchangeable. At least in today's world.
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No. Religion is specifically a system of faith. Faith is a belief - and one which is not necessarily bound.
You can have faith without religion; you can believe that there is a higher being and existence after death without any specific structure to it. But you cannot have faith in God (and I note you used the capital G) and heaven/hell without religion.
Belief in deities has its origin in agriculture - and in fact prior to that, in horticulture and even hunter-gatherer times. Something good happens to a human by chance - it could be the sun rising, or the rain coming, or a lost sheep turning up in a hedge - the human cannot explain it, determines that it's magical and therefore some imperceptible being has blessed them. That's faith.
The human then thinks the magic should be repaid to please the being. They leave an offering of some kind - food or rocks (shiny rocks particularly) - to thank the being and ask for continued blessings. If nothing good happens, either it's ignored until something good does happen or the offering isn't good enough and it becomes more elaborate until something good happens. Confirmation bias takes over, and we're getting closer to religion; the human is engaging in a system of behaviour they believe will please the being.
Then the human tells other people about the magic and the offering. Other people want the same good things, so they also engage in the offerings. It becomes ritualised and the first guy, as the guy who "discovered" the being (or to whom the being revealed themselves by their magic) might become, for want of a better word, the priest; they would be in charge of organising the offerings, naming the being, writing all of this stuff down... basically telling everyone what to believe and how to worship because they're the deity's representative. Now we have religion: a system of faith.
At this point it doesn't matter what you believe about the original magic. You might have experienced no magic despite your offerings, or different magic that you think might be a different being. You're locked into what everyone else believes (in fact one etymology for "religion" is "tightly bound" ["ligare" (as in ligature) combined with the intensifier "re"]) because the priest tells you what to believe, and the religion gets between you and your faith.
Organised religion is much, much worse for this, of course. An organised religion is one with a large number of followers and specific rituals, stories, prophesies and so on - and the "best" bit is that there can be a whole bunch of them organised around the same deity.
In either case, the purpose is to obfuscate: you don't have your faith in your deity, you have people claiming to be representatives of your deity telling you what your faith in that deity should be.
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