No. One’s beleifs about one’s god are based on one’s holy books. The reality of one’s god may be (and almost certainly is) wildly different.
Yeah, that’s what I meant. Happy?
I will be when you start saying what you mean.
I did say what I meant. One’s god is based on one’s holy books because that god doesn’t actually exist. Ya know, I’ve watched you hover around this board being a gnat on one’s ass and it’s bugged me. Now that you’re one on mine it’s a real pain in the ass.
So BG you are joining my Cult of the Worshipers of God Who Doesn’t Give a Shit? We’d have regular services but none of us care enough to show either.
Of course I could also make up a story that God knows that belief will guide us to do Right things and therefore cares about our praise not for its own sake but for ours. Or that God is one insecure and potentially jealous critter and needs the constant reassurance. Or that the mind of God cares for its own reasons that are as far beyond us as your mind is beyond the comprehension of those ants in that farm of yours. Can a single neuron understand a brain? But does a brain need the neurons to function as they should?
Who knows what might be true if God exists?
I guess it is correct to say one can not prove the existence of one specific god, however, I think I can see the point of the OP, and there is evidence that we really do not mean much to the god many people are thinking about.
If one wants to talk about human ancestors, then one has to deal with even more time:
However, just to make it simple, and because the strongest evidence shows the more human like ancestors controlling fire 125,000 years ago, I will use the latter date to say that, according to the best estimates of the faithful, 6,000 years it is a very small and very late time for the bible god to come into the picture.
At best, the God you are most likely referring to was a johnny-come-lately that decided to be an insufferable narcissist instead of being helpful like Prometheus, and now he/she/it is not showing up like before…
On a more serious note, it is the whole picture of time and the vastness of the universe that has convinced me that we are even less than ants to anything that we could imagine as god in this setting, and we are not important to him/her/it.
Perhaps you can start a thread about that elsewhere. I’ll leave it as an exercise for you to determine where is appropriate.
Nah, you’d probably enjoy that too much. I’m guessing you don’t get much attention in the real world.
But GIGO what is time to God? Assuming God exists time is as malleable as matter and it may matter not. To God all may be as a moment and a specific moment may be all that matters.
The problem with that is the waste of “souls” that took place for god not showing up sooner, time was and is still important to us, just not to that god it seems. It is better then IMHO to realize we just continue to misunderstand the extraordinary and miraculous with the acts of that god.
Fantome, DNKGWAS–particularly do not violate the rules of this Forum prohibiting personal insults based on what you, yourself, describe as an irritation.
Q.E.D., this place would be a lot more pleasant if you stopped poking other posters with sticks.
Knock it off, the both of you.
[ /Modding ]
The point of all theology is to try to understand the mind of an omniscient god. (Assuming the theology in question assume’s God’s omniscience, which is not universally true of theology.)
I like to imagine our universe is some kid’s 5th grade science project somewhere.
Hey maybe I’m the fiend you speak of, razncain. Haha, anyways, what I find interesting is that while everyone here agrees that God means something personal to the believer, many believers feel the need to converge together to worship. This could be the result of God’s insecurity, but most likely Man’s doubt in his own belief system (which of course is addressed within said system as a “sin”). So maybe if there’s a God he doesn’t give a shit but also maybe he (or she or it, whatever) does care but assumes that free will is the ultimate judge. Agnosticism is like a yardstick for people’s imaginations, is it not?
Nonsense. If God cares deeply about humans (having created them, after all) and if God knows that humans can only be happy when they know him, it will matter immensely whether they choose to seek him or choose to turn away.
You are presupposing an impersonal and indifferent God. All the Abrahamic religions disagree with your presupposition.
Strangely enough, it may not be important whether you believe in God, or not.
Regardless of religion, faith, or lack thereof, we are tested against our own concept of morality.
Belief in God has the ability to hasten one’s spiritual development. Walk, take the car, train, or plane. Matter of choices, perhaps.
“Hey, Odin! Odin!”
“Yah, what is it, Yahweh, ole buddy ole pal o’ mine?”
“Come look what I got for my birthday! It’s a world-making kit! You can do anything with it! Look at this planet here . . . I make a race of self-aware sentients on it and [snerk] I made them so they have to piss and fuck with the same organ! And they have to live with that! :D”
But you are making a great many more, and less plausible, assumptions. They are so obvious that I hope I don’t need to enumerate them.
It is notable that the key difference between Hinduism and Buddhism is that Buddhism is essentially atheistic. Not that Buddhism denies the gods; Gautama simply assumed, or at least never expressed recorded doubt of, the existence of the gods he was raised to worship. But, in Hinduism, all religious devotion is intended to unite the worshipper with God – “yoga” is a Sanskrit word meaning and cognate to “yoking,” that is, yoking the devotee’s soul to the divine. In Buddhism, the gods, even if real, are beside the point. You can’t get enlightenment by praying to them – they’re in the same fix we are, trapped in the world of Maya and strapped to the wheel of karma. You have to go above and around all of that.
Enumerate them? I’m making three:
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God exists
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God created humans
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Humans can only be happy when in a relationship with God.
As I read it, the OP makes an equal number of claims without support: -
God may exist, but doesn’t care about human opinion
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If God cares, it is because he is a petty tyrant that cares only for his own amusement
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God not caring much explains human history
But thanks for dismissing my three claims without adressing the OP’s three claims.