Religion: What are your beliefs & does God exist? - Page 21

quote Tashur Astur

I understand the theory of Evolution, I just hope that it isn't how it went down. I'll leave it at this though since I don't have too much time to continue this discussion.

Why talk down on evolution? Dont you see the beauty in it?

Do you think god made it look that way to fool us? If so why, because the evidence he left is absolutely overwhelming. God must have purposfully misled humans by leaving transitionary fossils, recycling DNA in a branching sequential manner through various species, he also left animals in an easily traceable geographical distribution which fits 100% so far wuith the theory of evolution. Why?

I mean the world looks 100% as if life evolved. Why would god go to such great trouble to mislead his supposedly beloved followers? Im not asking to be a dick or anything, i genuinly want to hear a religious persons thoughts on that. I dont meet people who doubt evolution often even within strict religious sects so it is interesting to hear these answers.

Do you at all buy into the possibility that Evolution IS gods method of creating life? Most mainstream religion now accepts that.

And i'd avoid this comment in the future:

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Well, last I checked it was still called "The Theory of Evolution" not "undeniable the way of life". It's a theory.

It shows a poor understanding of current scientific knowledge. Evolution is a fact. Mainstream science AND religion and infact all branches of human intelectualism. The only human beings still doubting it are devoutly religous borderline fundementalists. They are also among the people investing the least time, effort and money into genuine scientific research and so are probably the LEAST qualified to comment. If someone does nothing to genuinly investigate an entity then casts doubt upon it that decision is absolutely meaningless. I mean yes devoutly religious scripture following people have a right to an opinion on evolution, it is just usually an extremely ill informed and very basic one.

And be careful implying that EVERYONE is being overly critical in here. First of all some of us are going to great lengths to present our opinion in a balanced and cnscientious way which we are not obliged to do. I dont accpet that i have been in any way offensive with my comments. Second of all critisism is what a discussion forum is for. You cannot expect to post unsubstantiated claims completely devoid of any evidence and have your intelectual oponents simply agree. You may be in the wrong forum.

Oh ok that's the last thing I'll try to reply to. Please have understanding that what I'm saying is of course lacking since I'm trying to downsize a 1200 page book down to less than a page.

Sin causes death because it was the initial misstep in Paradise that meant we weren't fit to live in a world without death. My hope is of course that we eventually will go back there, since love on this plane will always end in pain, as the Greek tragedies very well depicted. As a result everything evil, mutated, twisted etc. was caused by this exact incident. Now there is absolutely no proof of this, so I'm only happy if you're critical toward it. Faith doesn't need proof, I assume that's why alot of you think I'm stupid.

Finally, in Christianity vira and bacteria were not existant for long before human beings. Alot of chronological details in the Bible can mean that the earth has existed for billions of years before Man were born, since there is no accurate depiction of how time was defined before the creation of Mankind. Assuming this is the truth, what you're saying is true, however at the given time there must therefore have been a way bacteria and vira could live in harmony with nature without hurting them.

quote D-G

If your great grandfather murdered someone, should every generation of your family afterwards be put in jail?

He would be thrown in jail during his time, and possibly released.... If Christians are to be believed he would also receive everlasting punishment by torture! How's that even right? I thought that a God was supposed to be better than us humans >.> . We don't torture people for things like lying and stealing (not in jail at least), so why should a God do what we won't?

Tashur Astur
I'm gonna reiterate this, but, we're all friends here. It's just a good ole' debate, no need to get mad or upset at some of the questions that D-G, KR_1250, or myself ask. We ask them because their hard to answer, and we genuinely wanna know your opinion the topic, and how well founded it is.

You mean you think that diseases exist due to natural reasons but God is merely withholding a miraculous cure due to humans being a bit naughty?

But then how do you explain the diseases existing to start with. You said you don't believe in evolution.

Don't you realise how nonsensical that is?

An omnipotent being does not need to use xanatos gambits to achieve his ends. If he wants everyone to go to heaven, he just says "Hm, I've decided that everyone goes to heaven" and poof, it is done.

Without anyone dying.

If God wants to destroy hell, he doesn't need to die to achieve this. He just uses his omnipotence powers to poof hell out of existence.


Also, there's a problem you seem not to have considered.

The concept of a fiery underworld for sinners is pretty much a new testament invention.

Plus Revelations makes it clear that hell and the devil still exist at the end of days, so God cannot have destroyed it.

So a book that only existed after Jesus died specifically states that hell is still around.

The Bible / Torah that existed before he died doesn't really say there even is a hell.

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Like I said, God has to be just, so the only way to do that is take the blame of us all onto himself, descent into the realm of death(assuming it existed) and destroying it.

And why is this one specific method mysteriously "just" when no other is?

Why would it be unjust to simply say "I've decided that humanity is to be forgiven for being naughty. Everyone gets into heaven." and poof it is done?

quote Tashur Astur

at the given time there must therefore have been a way bacteria and vira could live in harmony with nature without hurting them.

So why have them exist in the first place?

quote Tashur Astur

If God did that, he would ruin the entire point in creating evil in the first place! The idea is we can't be free unless we have the choice to go both ways. We can't choose God if he simply does everything without ever involving us. Most importantly, if God didn't die to enter death, he would be forcing his endgame onto us.

Still makes no sense to me at all. You don't need to get yourself killed to give someone a choice on whether or not to follow you.

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Don't understand why you'd ask that, the question should be "Why not?". There is no reason not to.

Except all the suffering to every other species on the planet that can result from such things existing. This is like saying "Why NOT create a bunch of potentially world destroying voracious nanobot swarms? Might as well." Might not be invented specifically to devour mankind, but if something goes wrong they might. And therefore you should have a good reason for creating them.

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One reason would be everyone doesn't want to go to heaven apparantly.

So ask people if they want to go there, or be reincarnated, or cease to exist. Give them a verbal choice.

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Everyone who accepts his forgiveness will be granted it and, as a result, go to Paradise. There is no person who can't be forgiven by God, except those who choose not to. A choice that you can always make.

Ok, so you just destroyed your entire argument about justice.

This is equivalent to letting murderers, paedophiles and rapists out of jail if they simply decide they want to be let out of jail.

If whatever you did was mild enough that you can be instantly forgiven and avoid all punishment merely by asking forgiveness, then you shouldn't be getting burned in hell for it to start with.

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the place the Greeks called "The Underworld". This place could best be described as where all human beings become Zombies. Quite a bad fate if you ask me, so instead of this we're set "free", either to oblivion or Paradise, depending on what we choose.

Actually the Greek underworld contained many different levels which could be nasty or nice. Some were pretty much paradise or close to it.

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The Fiery Chasm of which you speak is described in the book of Revelations as being a prison for Evil forever. Eternal torment, not for human beings though, for them it is "the second and last death". How this is meant I will not even try to explain, simply because I don't have a clue how this'll happen. All I understand is those who don't choose forgiveness will not burn forever, they will simply remain dead. Not undead, not burning - dead.

So who do you think gets imprisoned then? Fallen angels? The angels who God specifically created TO DO EVIL?

You said God created evil. Also it's a general assumption that God has a plan. The fallen must have been part of this plan.

So again, this is unjust. You can't punish someone for doing what you want them to do...

quote Tashur Astur

No, it didn't. In God's eyes every crime is the same, not because they're equally bad, simply because a crime is a crime.

Why would the most intelligent being in existence have such trouble understanding that not all crimes are equivalent?

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What the point of this is the following:
When we die, we are reborn(not reincarnated) through spirit, remade from the ground and share the divinity of our maker.

I'm afraid I fail to understand the significance of this. What am I missing? I mean all I'm really reading from this is that Jesus being killed was symbolic of this rebirth you're describing. Is that it ?

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God didn't create fallen angels, God created angels. Free will kicked in and they "fell".

Well, if you ask a Muslim they'll tell you that angels have no free will, which puts a different spin on things... Then again their "devil" isn't an angel but a Djinn.

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They were created for the sole purpose of serving God unlike human beings who were for comparison created to reflect God.

Ah but if God had a specific plan, and what's happening in reality is part of that plan, then God must have planned for the angels to fall. Otherwise it would mean that the Earth is NOT following his plan, which pretty much destroys all the "God lets bad things happen for a reason" arguments.

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Finally, I didn't say God created evil, I specifically stated that I have no clue how evil initially came into existance. It's clear though that human beings didn't create it, but rather decided to utilize it. I am not leaving it out of the question that God did create evil though, like I said, I don't know.

Well, the Bible says he created all evil. It literally states this.

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and if God really exists I doubt either of us could actually fathom it.

Well you see this is what I find silly about religion. Basically it's clear to me that every major religion is humanising "God" or "gods".

I'm afraid you've fallen into the same trap. You've made statements about "beauty" and "perfection" "justice".

All these things are human concepts. There's no reason to think that even if God exists, he would agree with us about these concepts.

Plus, why should a "human" intelligence, or even ANY intelligence be required to start off the universe? Why can't God be a magic eternal random number generator/sparkplug that starts off a big bang and has no further influence?

I was watching a video on youtube that was trying to prove that islam is the truth... it's a series of videos, and when I was on the second one I decided that I would offer a counter-argument to the video, but I found that the comments would be withheld for approval ... I noticed right away that on the first video and then on the second that there weren't any negative comments, or any that disputed the video in anyway (I know I shouldn't really be trying to debate on youtube....).

what the video was saying is that the qur'an has been unchanged for 1000 years, and it gave some historical evidence for this. I was going to pose the question "how do they know for certain that the book was written with divine help of sorts?" The video clearly states that it was a man (i have no idea how spell his name) who came up with the verses, and then said that God (Allah) told him the verses. It wasn't written or compiled into a book until long after his death, and even then there was many different copies in different dialects.

I'm not going to watch those videos anymore.... they are trying to spread something without giving the contrary a chance.

D-G

Do you know more about the islamic faith? I'm not familiar enough with to have an opinion on it yet.