Wake up and discover that God never existed - Page 3

I can be sure because God is the only deity that has ever been able to respond to my questions. That means He is at least the most powerful.

hmmmm

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How can you be sure that your 'God' exists but other 'Gods' don't? What makes one religion more genuine, realiable, legitimate, accurate, sincere, trustworthy, than others?

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logic. if you really want to know why Christianity makes more sense then other religions, read the first couple chapters of "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. Other religions arn't wrong, not entirely. they have a shred of truth to them. some come closer then others to the truth. The more you research them the more you realize that Christianity stands out. Christianity, Judaism, and Muslims, which all worship the same old testament God, are the only religions, for instance, that do not hold death to be natural. Jews and Muslims are both forrunners of Christianity, the only difference between them and Christianity is that they do not consider Jesus to be the son of God. Hinduism believes in a sort of dualism, which doesnt make sense because the nature of dualism doenst make sense. if you want me to get into that i will. basically, if you can tell me the general makeup of a religion, i can tell you why it does not logically make sense.

You say that both God and Satan are social constructions. tell me, then, where we get our moral law, our conscience, our idea of what is fair?

'I think that being in a state of religious devotion and reverence to a 'God' is being sheltered from the 'real world' of belief in 'non piety' philosophies.'

Where do you get your idea of the real world? it differs quite extremely from mine. How do you know you're perception is the correct one?

'it is better to be open to knowledge from both sides (and/or explore new realms) rather than closing in on a mainstream belief (ie. major religions) and hiding away.'

Unless of course that mainstream belief is true, in which case not believing it would be quite silly, comparable, in fact, to refusing to believe in gravity.

'I was once a Christian'

I agree wholeheartedly with ethereal on this one. You can not have once been a Christian. Once you have accepted Christ you cannot go back. Once He is inside of you you belong to him. you would never want to go back anyways. God is the source of all joy. Why would anyone want to turn their back on joy?

'Jesus is the best friend anyone could want and so it would not be logical to just abandon Him one day that is why real Christians will never convert to anything else.'

Indeed. You clearly know Christ Ethereal.

'Only understanding or accepting a 'God' doesn't make you certain whatsoever.'

How would you know, having never done it?

'When I was younger I once wanted to see who was more powerful God or Satan and so I prayed to both asking them to perform some sign of their existence. I got no response from Satan'

That was dangerous. Satan is powerful, if not so much as God, still be careful.

sorry to answer all those posts in one, but i havnt been following this thread up to now.

secret07 the truth is you can't be sure that your 'God' exists and other 'Gods' don't. What makes christianity more genuine, realiable, legitimate, accurate, sincere, trustworthy, than others?

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You say that both God and Satan are social constructions. tell me, then, where we get our moral law, our conscience, our idea of what is fair?

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The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong is obviously socially constructed. That doesn't mean that all social constructions such as 'God' and 'Satan' are right or wrong.
my idea of the 'real' world is a postmodernist realm, that there is no one truth.

Our brain is developed to interpret senses that detect internal and external physical properties of your surroundings (which makes up our image of reality- as this is what we only perceive). reality only exists in the mind. Therefore, obviously, the only way we can reason reality of 'god' is through our own 'image' of reality. Peoples philosophical thoughts, theories, spiritual ideas of 'God' and or a 'creator' are natural by-products of your brain attempting to question your existence. That is what seperates us humans from other species- the conciousness to be able to know or think of our existence (reality only exists in the mind concept). You should realise that your ideas which only come from your brain are inheritantly natural yet consequently a symptom of the function of curiousity and the quest to question the origins or reasons for 'god' and life. so i believe.

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Why would anyone want to turn their back on joy?

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do u really believe that everyone who isn't christian has turned their back on joy?! you can be joyous without believing in christianity. there are 4.5 billion other people who aren't christian. do you really think this 4.5 billion aren't happy?

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How would you know, having never done it?

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i do know. i once understood and accepted god.

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The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong is obviously socially constructed.

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all human beings since time began have had the same basic moral code. civilizations that had absolutely no contact with one another have the same moral codes. it is far from obvious to me how completely different cultures from comepletely diffferent times with absolutely no contact could have all obeyed the same basic laws. Murder is bad, tretchery is bad, stealing is bad. bravery is good, honesty is good and a miriad of other things all cultures have had in common.

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reality only exists in the mind.

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what a terribly arrogant philosphy. that is not meant as an insult, just an observation. the entire world exists in your mind? nothing exists outside of your mind? if a tree falls in the forest, and no one heard it, it didnt fall at all? one statement to that. prove it. i could not disagree with you more. reality is absolute, truth is absolute. there are answers to all questions. if reality exists solely in your mind, then why does everyone see esentually the same reality?

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do u really believe that everyone who isn't christian has turned their back on joy?! you can be joyous without believing in christianity. there are 4.5 billion other people who aren't christian. do you really think this 4.5 billion aren't happy?

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you misunderstood my statement. God is the source of all joy. there is joy in sin, and there is joy for people who are not christians, because they live in a world that God made, and hence there is joy in the world. but god is the source. think of a room with a single lightbulb. the light shines all over the room, but it is brightest at it's source. once you have bathed in the brightest of lights, the most intense of joys, the others pale by comparison.

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i do know. i once understood and accepted god.

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we went over this. if it was the Christian God you thought you accepted, and you later denounced Him, you did not really accept Him. it is not possible to turn your back on God once you are truly a Christian. you did not experience what it really is like, because you were never really a Christian.

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secret07 the truth is you can't be sure that your 'God' exists and other 'Gods' don't. What makes christianity more genuine, realiable, legitimate, accurate, sincere, trustworthy, than others?

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i already answered that question.
if you really want to know why Christianity makes more sense then other religions, read the first couple chapters of "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. Other religions arn't wrong, not entirely. they have a shred of truth to them. some come closer then others to the truth. The more you research them the more you realize that Christianity stands out. Christianity, Judaism, and Muslims, which all worship the same old testament God, are the only religions, for instance, that do not hold death to be natural. Jews and Muslims are both forrunners of Christianity, the only difference between them and Christianity is that they do not consider Jesus to be the son of God. Hinduism believes in a sort of dualism, which doesnt make sense because the nature of dualism doenst make sense. if you want me to get into that i will. basically, if you can tell me the general makeup of a religion, i can tell you why it does not logically make sense.

Damn! again i got logged out before I finished.

I wonder whether a point in time existed when men started to become less the hunted and more the hunter. I will be juggling around history here, placing implicit assumptions: I am not a historian, paleoanthropologist or a archaeologist.

What made us suddenly have the ability to build, talk, communicate, make tools. My quest however is more deep than this. I refer to ancient structures like the Pyramids. At the same time civilisations were making similar buidlings...yet I think I am right in saying space prevented them access to ane another by speech or hearing...i.e. travel was insufficient and the geological record points to no freezing of the oceans?

What caused this. Is it just that humans develop things at about the same time...just a step in evolution. Is it that there is more than just recognition based on the 5 senses or is it some external influence like UFO's or some other environmental influence.

In any case the question should be asked:

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You say that both God and Satan are social constructions. tell me, then, where we get our moral law, our conscience, our idea of what is fair?

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I symapthise with this view because it is being lost by 'rational' thinking. Science has become so intrigued with precision, so clinical and technical, it starts to tend towards actualisation rather than realisation. Nonetheless the true art of scientific method is the best we have...but lets not get blinded by these questions for it is these that often initiate the frontiers of science. Do not let tradition stand in your way of the new....The questions are sometimes more important than the answers.

Biblically all people lived together up to a point when they split off and covered the earth. since the earth was once a single land mass it wouldnt have been difficult at all for them to cover the earth. once the land masses moved and split up the people were isolated from each other, but they had already formed the basic knowledge of tools and languages that we see now in the most primitive of modern cultures. some simply needed to develop more skills to survive then others. that's my theory anyways, and i can't prove it, but it seems to make sense.

One problem: timescales.

Humans lived for perhaps a few 100,000 years. Gelogical timescale goes back millions of years and the earth is about 4.5 billion years old supposedly.

Look at a picture of the Miocene (about 14 million years ago) and then see how similar it is to now....It was the dinosaurs that travelled across the single land mass...not humans.

However, you may have a point by coincidence:

1. The extent of previous ice ages (i dont think the last one, which was 18,000 years ago) was big enough.

2. All humans originated in the same place and the migrated...but even then there must have been either the point above, high civilisation (ships etc) or some UFO's which came down and moved them.

timescales are highly debatable. according to the movement of the tetonic plates for example the earth is much younger then that. also, i know that mammals moved across the land mass. marcupials first, then placentals. the reason essentually the only marcupials are on Australia is because Australia broke off before the placentals could reach it. dating bones of fossils is very sketchy. a bone that has been covered in ash or lava can be instantly fossilized and said to be millions of years old. in order for a scientest to date a fossil, he has to know which level in the ground it was found at. if he doesnt know that, he wont date it. they say that a bone must be so old because it was dated to that age, but also that the level is so old because the bone is so old. circular reasoning. also, primitive cave drawings and stories talk about dinosaurs. if humans and dinosaurs never coexisted, how would they have known what dinosaurs were?

Debatable yes. Not highly debatable. It is approximately 65 million years that seperate us from dinosaurs (at least estimate). Our current species only came into existence approximately 15,000 years ago, although evidence of some form of human does date to around 10 million years ago. To get this wrong by this extent would be almost beyond absurd.

Geology works on the principle of superposition..the further down in a sedimentary sequence...the older the rock. But it is only accurate to date when this rock is layered with ash or volcanic sediments at which point radiometric dating can take place. If you wish to question this we will need to go into the science of rediometrics and half life stuff.

It is interesting that no human bone has ever been found with a dinosaur bone and that generally all evidence correlates in time. This is surely more than a coincidence?

The cave drawings may have something in them but Komodo dragons, lizards and other discendants of dinsosaurs were around then also. I have seen some evidence of drawings that could suggest otherwise but these are very rare. Unfortunately because geology is inexact religious groups seem to be pounding it wherever there is a gap. This is fine but I think the certainty of their evidence is far inferior to geological evidence.

some cave drawings have pictures of dinosaurs that have evidently long necks, are much larger then people, etc, etc.

as to the rest of your argument, i agree the data on both sides is insufficient. i would be wary of basing too much on geological dating because it really is very scratchy. it can obviously not be scientifically tested because it is dealing with millions of years.

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as to the rest of your argument, i agree the data on both sides is insufficient. i would be wary of basing too much on geological dating because it really is very scratchy. it can obviously not be scientifically tested because it is dealing with millions of years.

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Data on both sides is insufficient? Carbon dating is pretty accurate, and the margin of error is much less than the gap between humans and dinosaurs. as for the cave drawings, these people had just invented drawing. They didn't have the best drawing skills, and i'm sure that the kmodo dragon or lizzard seemes alot bigger when they were hunting it.

secret07-

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the entire world exists in your mind? nothing exists outside of your mind? if a tree falls in the forest, and no one heard it, it didnt fall at all? one statement to that. prove it. i could not disagree with you more. reality is absolute, truth is absolute. there are answers to all questions. if reality exists solely in your mind, then why does everyone see esentually the same reality?

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The world "out there", external reality, is a shared universe of common experience. It is the lowest common denominator of all our experience. We take it for granted and it supplies us with a common field of action. That is all it is. Your realm of personal "mind" is another sort of universe. You experience it every second 24/7. From your inner mind comes all meaning about everything in the "outer" universe. You may be influenced by the external world of common experience, but this inner universe exists, is very real, and is ultimately of more value than anything "out there". Why? Because what happens "out there" depends totally on what you do or what occurs with your own mind. Your personal universe is the only thing able of deciding value. What you perceive from the 'outer' universe is received and detected in your 'inner' reality.
When one's inner reality is destroyed through belief systems, one can only after time become a shadow of raw matter and energy - which in itself is meaningless and dead

In the end, what you end up believing "in" or "about" is basically an action of your own mind to attach meaning and significance to something.

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if it was the Christian God you thought you accepted, and you later denounced Him, you did not really accept Him. it is not possible to turn your back on God once you are truly a Christian. you did not experience what it really is like, because you were never really a Christian.

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if one had a chance to lead a better life without christianity, would Jesus dissaprove of this? I don't think Jesus or god would like to bring sorrow into one's life.

Do you think then that 4.5 billion people will go to hell
because they aren't christian? if so, then christianity isn't very nice is it.

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God is the source of all joy. there is joy in sin, and there is joy for people who are not christians, because they live in a world that God made, and hence there is joy in the world. but god is the source.

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this is only apparent in your realm of belief. do you really think non-christians believe that the christian 'God' created their world?

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if you can tell me the general makeup of a religion, i can tell you why it does not logically make sense

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ok tell me how for instance Taoism doesnt make 'logical' sense. obviously you would have to know it first.

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all people lived together up to a point when they split off and covered the earth. since the earth was once a single land mass it wouldnt have been difficult at all for them to cover the earth. once the land masses moved and split up the people were isolated from each other

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The single landmass your referring to is called Rodinia which formed about 1.1 billion years ago. Gondwana and Laurasia split up around 650 million years ago. modern human beings (Homeo sapiens) only arose approx 120,000years ago, hence they didn't exist when the land masses originally moved and split apart let alone when there was one supercontinent (Rodinia).

The fossil and mitochondrial DNA data both suggest that modern humans arose from a comparitevly small population (perhaps 10,000) in North Africa.

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order for a scientest to date a fossil, he has to know which level in the ground it was found at. if he doesnt know that, he wont date it.

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you don't need to know the level in the ground it was found at. ie. carbon dating, radiological dating.

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if humans and dinosaurs never coexisted, how would they have known what dinosaurs were?

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answer: fossils

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geological dating because it really is very scratchy. it can obviously not be scientifically tested because it is dealing with millions of years.

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carbon-14 dating isn't used to date dinosaurs as it is only accurate to about 4000-5000 years. However dating artifacts from the eras of the dinosaurs is complex. you don't simply take a bone and measure its date. comparitive dating with geological artifacts such as rocks, and evidence from the bone's surrounding environment help to estimate reasonably accurate dates of the bone. Radioactive dating such as uraniam dating can be used for geological dating.

thanks for your opinions peoples. anyone else have any thoughts?

For those who have once 'woken up' one day and discovered that there isn't a 'God': which direction have you gone? have you explored new horizons of religion, or philosophies or have you just led an agnostic life? or have you become an athiest?