I strongly believe there isn’t. But a couple of factors (the fact that I am amongst a significant minority. The fact that there seem to exist intelligent people who believe. The fact that even though there are different religions, moreso as you go further back in time, however they share an idea - that there is one or more creators.) make me question my own objectivity on the subject.
If there turns out to be a God. I adopt the ‘meh’ position. I.e. I don’t really care. You [God] (assuming for the sake of this statement that you ever existed) created a being which is capable of denying your existence. If by some warped plan you decided that all of those you created who refused to believe in you should be condemned to an eternity of suffering then who am I, a mere sinful imperfect human, to try to argue my case. If I should go to Hell then fuckit. send me there.
I firmly believe in the existence of a creator, and that our physical being and thoughts are all fragments of it. And that it regards me in a simlar way that I might regard a bone cell midway down my left tibia: necessary to the whole, even though alone it is insignificant. I expect in some way that bone cell might have a consciousness of some kind, and that it might be able to guess that it is a small part of a whole, but that it could never guess its actual purpose to ME.
The trouble starts when one cell gets all malignant and thinks its purpose is to multiply itself beyond the natural pattern of things and then destroy surrounding tissues. The body dies. Religious zeal sucks.
British Cynicism aside - The IOM is more heavenly than hellish. Even the supposedly geographically indiscriminate sky seems to do favours to the beauty of this place. No, if you want hell on earth try Northwest England. The closest thing to a post-apocalypse extant that I’ve experienced.
I don’t know what I am right now. I guess agnostic fits. I was raised Catholic and it’s hard to let go of some of those beliefs. I think there may be a supreme being or beings but I have a lot of issues with how it is represented. If a being could do *all * of this in such beautiful and intricate detail would it be so petty as to treat so many of it’s creations like shit? The whole believe in me or fry in hell for eternity doesn’t sit well either.
From what I understand of basic parenting, you love your child. You want the best for it. You want it to make the right choices and succeed but if it doesn’t you don’t abandon it. You may expect it to do as you say up to a point but when it reaches a certain age you realize it will make decisions on it’s own and it may not listen to anything else you have to say. But you love it because it’s a part of you.
Okay, so there are some people who don’t make good parents and these things don’t apply to them and there are some kids that will do things so heinous as to be unforgivable even by the most loving and forgiving parent. However, if there is a supreme being it should be the best damn parent around and be able to forgive us just about anything. I don’t think refusing to believe in it ison a par with mass murder as an unforgiveable sin.
That said I am having a lot of doubts recently when I see the hypoChristians of the world getting everything their way when all they do is treat others like crap and then pray a lot and those people who just try to do their best and treat people well but don’t pray get all sorts of crap piled on them. So maybe God does exist and he’s really just a big jerk?
Eh, I’m rambling because I have a headache.
Psst, don’t stand too close to me if you don’t want to get zapped by the lightning.
I believe the idea of a god is simply to keep the illiterate masses from getting out of control. We’d be nowhere as a civil society without a code or morals, and having an invisible supreme being watching us is an easy way to keep us in line.
Just like we invented a Santa Claus to keep children from misbehaving.
It made sense to pray to gods for good weather or to believe we caused poor weather because of a sin, but only because they didn’t have the scientific knowledge we have today.
Yeah, but that’s assuming everything you’ve been told about Him and what you need to get “saved” by Him by some of the less savory memebrs of his fan club is true. If He does exist, He might just be a benevolent being beyond our comprehension who wants us to have a relationship with him (and by extension the universe in which we reside) for our own benefit, rather than a capricious player of mind/word games who will send us for eternity to a burning place if we don’t enter into an odd contractual relationship to be his friend.
Mind you, I’m not saying that this is the case or that these are my personal beliefs at all, but if God does exist, He would have to be significantly different from what some would have us believe to be worthy of our worship. Maybe He does and is, maybe not.
I agree with the OP. If God exists, and he’s really all that, why should he want his creatures to pay any attention to him? That’s like worrying about whether the ants in your farm like you.
I’m familiar with that attitude/theory (opiate of the masses, cavemen needed some way to explain why the sun sets each night, yadda yadda) but it doesn’t seem to me that this accounts for the scope and range of religious faith. You’ve explained why faith serves a purpose for idiots and primitive cultures, but faith in some higher being extends well beyond those populations.
But it sure would suck if your ants didn’t do anything interesting.
Lobsang, you seem really hung up on the subject of God in general, and SDMB threads don’t seem to have given you any real insight on the topic. Have you considered going off the board with it? Even if you don’t ‘believe’ it, you may find it interesting to read some theology that’s a bit more sophisticated then the whole “God sends people to hell who don’t believe in him” schtick. Maybe something by Paul Tillich, if you’re up for a challenge, or John Spong, if you want some lighter reading…
Lobsang, have you ever taken a course in comparitive religion? Not all religions teach the idea that one must believe in order to escape eternal punishment. Even amongst the big Three Monotheisms of the West, it’s still a minority view.
Yet you seem to relish wallowing in this misconception. Yes, the “hellfire and brimstone” preachers exist and make lots of noise. I think they’re over-reported in the news. What’s going to make for better ratings? The local church (or mosque or synagoue or coven) raising money for disaster relief, feeding the homeless, caring for orphans or Fred Phelps on one of his crusades?
If God exists, that’s cool with me. I just wish he’s stop being such a dick about whether or not he exists. I’m a tired, overworked campaign shlub. I don’t have time for fucking riddles where if I get the answer wrong, I fucking explode. God, seriously. You are not some existential Monty Hall. Out with it already.
Now that’s just way too harsh. I can imagine a being that, while superior, in fact BECAUSE of being superior, loves his creations on a personal level, regardless of their inferiority.
Well count me in the most decidedly non-meh crowd. I think getting some sign from the Almighty would elicit either extreme awestruck wonder or terror, depending on if I could glean from the encounter some indication of whether or not I’m headed straight for H-E-double toothpick.
if there ever really was a god, i believe he was extinguished in a puff of logic in the late 1970s.
seriously, if there really is a god (i do not believe there is, and haven’t seriously entertained the idea that there might be since the age of about nine or ten … but for the sake of argument,) i agree with the sentiment of “meh.”
and continuing ftsoa, if i got to meet some actually existing god, i think my first question would be: “so, your name’s andy, right?”
it’s from that song… you know the one – “andy walks with me, andy talks with me…”
Well, I’m sure we’re not disappointing him in that department! Human affairs are very interesting . . . in, you know, the Chinese sense . . . better than a tank full of Siamese fighting fish!
“Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolan Colluphid from making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up For God.”
Sorry about the drive-by, I just couldn’t resist slipping in a Hitchhiker’s quote.
:dubious: Loves us so much that he expects us to work out exactly the right answers about what he is and what he wants us to do and exactly what he wants us to believe, on pain of eternal suffering? :mad:
Not at all. Douglas Adams was a much better theologian than St. Augustine, and certainly closer to a human being than that whirling bastard St. Paul, may he and Yahweh roast on the same spit. :mad:
