Why don't people believe in God?

Great Debates
722

What you have described sounds more like a “demiurge” or “creative spirit.” It doesn’t sound like a person, but could simply be a “force.” You might be describing “The Force” from Star Wars.

It isn’t a bad religious viewpoint. It is held by a great many. A number of Christian offshoots hold this view. Life and Love are “natural forces” that impel the universe toward “good.” It tends to be universalist, and to de-emphasize sin, punishment, hell, judgement, and so on. It partakes somewhat of the austere deism of some of the American founders and framers.

Being non-religious in the formal sense – no revelation, no dogma, no ritual obligations – it is a very liberated theology. I don’t have to tithe, I don’t have to follow the teachings of any ministers or priests, and I can eat all the ham sandwiches I want. It certainly is vastly healthier than whatever it is that Pat Robertson is driveling about.

723

You are correct. What I was attempting to describe is a decentralized creative force. Something that unlike GOD is actually everywhere all at once.

Just to clarify, in my analogy we are not the monkeys, we and all of exsistance are the product of their random efforts at the keyboard and they are not monkeys but instead represent the creative processes that are at work all around and inside of us. Just as they would make gramtical errors’ the creative force produces results that we deem undesirable and label as mistakes when in fact all results are creative. Create order or create chaos.

724

Romanticizing the universe is such fun.

Here, you’ll enjoy this if you’ve not read it before:

“We are the stuff of stars…” - Carl Sagan

Or maybe this is more your speed:

“We are stardust/We are golden…” - Joni Mitchell

725

Fair enough. That is, in fact, how I interpreted the metaphor. We are the monkeys, the keyboards, the paper, and the words. We’re part of it all. Simply by living our lives, loving our neighbors, eating and pooping, and occasionally writing mini-essays on internet discussion boards, we are participating in the vast creation of order.

Thing is…it doesn’t really advance us beyond the ostensible, which is that the impulse toward order may merely be Darwinian, resulting from the flow of energy through the biosphere. There is no “drive” toward increased complexity, only the random walk of the molecules. Nothing in the “creative universe” model is necessary. The conventional interpretation is sufficient.

726

Jesus explained to his own disciples that they did not chose God

God chose them to be His disciples, His followers, His believers

In fact many left Jesus when he tried to explain the bread as his body being broken for them, then he added the wine represented the blood that was shed for them.

They could not understand this concept of sacrifice for their sins and left him with just the original 12 men God chose, one being Judas who later betrayed Jesus as the scriptures had foretold would happen.

Many were simple fishermen … humble men called to serve God’s son.

Unless you hear God calling you … you can’t very well consider yourself a Christian.

There is a song we sing in church called, “I have decided to follow Jesus” “No turning back” “even if no would follow I will still follow” “No turning back”

727

No wonder. It is a stupid concept. Sacrifices were originally done to Gods who seemed to have a taste for some sacrifices over others. (See Cain and Abel.) But why does a God need sacrifices? Wouldn’t since repentance, like during Yom Kippur, do better than someone sacrificing for someone else?
The whole thing is a mixture of Judaism, which had already outgrown such nonsense, and the pagan religions which may not have.

728

What constitutes a “call” from god? Can god call you to be a muslim, or a hindu?

I don’t understand. Either you’re “called” by god or you “decided”, which is it?

729

They decided to follow jesus, which got them on his friends list - then God could call them… its all very facebookie.

730

God, or some gods, or the OT God, seem to like killing and the glorification of it. It’s probably a reflection of the scribes’ psychoses and ego trips expressed the only way they could.

731

Well, God calls me all the time, but he always calls collect so I hang up.

732

Nah, more the desire of those living in a county which just its ass whupped for the mythical glory days of old when they whupped everyone else. And massacres were just the way you did things back then. God always has the moral code of the people inventing him.

733

Cheap bastard. First he wants a BBQ goat, now free phone calls. Next he’ll want to borrow your lawnmower.

734

Does following Jesus mean you are willing to accept His teachings and follow them also.

735

According to the Psalmist all men are gods, or at least Jewish men. Jesus backs this up in John 10. You believe your personal experience is with God, but that doesn’t mean it is God, just a feeling you like to feel. One can believe the earth is flat and for a few centuries most people did, but they were wrong.

According to the Bible the world would have ended by now. There are many quotes about the end of the world an most were expecting it in their life time. The generation in which the Bible is mentions is the work of some human who said it didn’t mean that Generation, but Matthew used the same meaning for generation that we do today. The church leaders decided since the world had not ended in the first century. It must have some other meaning. Nor did Jesus return in his Father’s Glory with his angels while some of the people listening to him are still alive.

One must never had a sermon in their churches to think about this. One man (who we know) that studies the Bible didn’t know or have read the psalm that said You are gods and sons of the most high. Jesus reminded the Pharisee’s of this when accused of Blasphemy.

736

What you write of why, and what you believe, and is far from any proof. Belief in your self or others is just belief not fact. If it was true you could prove it.

737

Does “accept his teachings” mean accepting everything he says?

738

It is still a belief in some human’s words God didn’t write anything and because another person’s words, who we know can be untruthful or have hallucinations and Because some one wrote something because they believed God was speaking to them, doesn’t mean it was God. It is in their own mind. Just some people belief it and some don’t…no proof has ever been given.

739

The book of Job shows an unjust being who to prove something to an enemy of his, which raises the question of why a God who created a monster in the first place would Kill a man’s family to prove an unnecessary point to the monster. God surely is more powerful than the monster he created, and would have known Job’s situation so even that was not an honest bet! The book of Job is just a story created by some human who thought it was a good idea even though it contradicts they traits of a Loving, honest, Just Supreme being!

740

Crom does not answer prayers, as well you know.

741

Why do you bring it up? You know God is not like that.