A belief of God without religion.
Offline I'm a person who believes in a God because i can't find the logic of everything coming into existence from nothing. The material things of the earth that are used by man have been created by man. They weren't created from nothing. Materials, labor and knowledge were required.
As for the verses in the Bible that explain how the Cristian god created the earth. That's not something i want to go into. My intention here is to express what i believe in and why it is that i believe it so i can see what other people come up with in response to those beliefs.
The subject of Heaven and Hell.
This is what i think about those two locations that traditional Christianity believes one will go after death.
-Hell
As someone pointed out in the thread with several questions for theist. The notion that a loving Creator which knows your every action will send you to a place of eternal suffering is a contradiction.
- Heaven
A place of perfection where no sin can exist. The home of God and Jesus Christ.
Sin is the disobedience of God's law which consist of the ten commandments.
In order to be perfect one must follow the commandments which is impossible.
And not just for one day. It has to be for your entire life. Even more impossible.
To be completely perfect it has to be followed from birth to death. Can't happen.
That brings us to the conclusion that it is impossible for anyone to enter heaven.
Whether it exist or not. By using the logic that i have proposed there is no way anyone can enter.
Guess that means everyone is going to hell which would make God evil and illogical.
There is no sense or purpose in creating something just to have it be destroyed for eternity once its predetermined time has expired.
I don't really have any religious preferences.
I'm just a guy trying to make sense of things.
The uniqueness of all the physical things i see through my functional intelligent eye leads me to believe something had to have created these things but it is an entity that has chosen not to interfere or interact with its creation because it made it capable of functioning on its own, able to adapt to its environment and learn ways to be efficient. Like an intelligent script that you have executed and chosen not interfere with, even if it starts breaking over time because you programed it to adapt and learn to fix itself.
The more i live as i observe the physical world around me. The more i come to the conclusion that everything has an intelligent process to it. The belief in a god or creator can not be universally agreed with but maybe the belief that the earth is intelligent and each planet in our solar system is different, having its own process of functions that differs from the other.
I hope what i have said has not been posted yet and can result in some good arguments as to why i shouldn't believe what i do. I did some searching but the amount of post on this forum is overwhelming. I apologize in advance if i have repeated what has already been said before and "refuted" I'm also sorry if i happen to ramble or be redundant in this post.
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Hello Nathan2009. Welcome to the forum!
You don't have to believe that everything came from nothing. I don't believe that the universe came from nothing. I just don't know the origin of the universe.
Applause. Applause.
Eh...well, a lot of this is debatable.
For one thing, many Christians would claim that we are no longer subject to the laws or punishments of the Old Testament since Jesus 'fulfilled' these laws.' Ergo, you may have noticed that most Christians no longer have any biblical complaints to doing work on Sunday. So, for most Christians, sin is not the disobedience of the ten commandments anymore. Instead, it's.....I'm not sure what it is. I'm positive it has something to do with the Bible, but I can't quite get a handle on it because Christians themselves don't agree on what's a sin and what's not.
Additionally, if you recall, the entire reason for Christ's crucifixion was so that he could be sacrificed for the sins of humanity. So, after Christ died for us on the cross, we no longer had to be perfect to reach salvation because our sins are relieved whenever we put our faith in Christ. Even if you're Joseph Stalin, if you honestly repent the moment before you die, then presto!, no more sin, and you're on your way to heaven.
I sort of understand what you're saying, but I don't understand the logic of it. You state that the 'uniqueness' of physical things leads you to believe that something must have created these things. Does uniqueness indicate design in some way?
Perhaps you are implying what a Creationist would refer to as an irreducibly complex system?
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
but creation ex nihilo is a basic doctrine of all three abrahamic religions. it tells us in genesis and the quran that god brought forth the universe out of nothing, so your analogy of materials to work with doesn't jive.
i don't know of any scientific theory that says the universe came from nothing. i believe the two basic big bang theories are quantum singularity and a collision of matter and anti-matter, both of which require preexisting matter. i think the area that science doesn't recognize is an intelligence behind all this, but science never says that everything came from nothing.
as far as finding an analogy to this in religion, the hindu idea of cyclical universes, eternally dying and being reborn, is the closest.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
I also can't help but wonder if the people that aren't aware of Jesus will burn because they didn't know him. I believe in him. I just don't know how i can go to his paradise so easily. Theirs also the part of his return. What would be the point if his people are with him already.
I had never heard of the term "irreducibly complex systems" until today XD
I see the same problem with the hindu idea. where is the source of the universes that are dying and being reborn. That's the part that no one can figure out unless you come up with the idea of an entity that isn't made of matter and has always existed. This sounds far fetched but we have to put into consideration that we are physical beings living in a physical world. Anything that isn't physical to us is illogical because the physical things are what we can interact with and prove with our hands to be existing.
You have fallen for the complexity argument which is completely false.
You don't think the wind is cognitive when it blows snow into a pile. One snowflake is not complex, but in a pile it is part of a larger complexity caused by a non cognitive event.
One molicule of water H2O is not complex but the ocean is. Do you think a tsunami is cognitive? Is the ocean cognitive?
All of these things mentioned above can be reduced to SIMPLE atoms. The atoms are not complex.
When you presume complexity as a starting point it begs the question of infinite regress. If God is complex then something even more complex would have to had created that, and then something esle even more complex would have to had created that, and so on and so on and so on.
Complexity is a cumlative emergent process, not a starting point.
And what about the bad shit in life? Aids, cancer, ecoli.....are you going to atribute these to a magical watchmaker too?
A sperm and egg are less complex than a fully grown adult. The DNA of the sperm and egg are less complex than the sperm and egg. The adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine are each less complex than the DNA, the atoms that make up the adenine, ect are less complex than the molecules of those. The atoms can even be reduced to smaller parts such as protons, neutrons and electrons all the way down to a quark.
If you can accept that a meteor does not think about what it hits and is not manipulated by a fictional super hero, why would an atom that comes in contact with another be magically manipulated?
You are postulating an invisible, magical, disembodied super brain with no cerebelum or neurons, floating out there everywhere and nowhere at the same time meddling in the affairs of humans.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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why does it follow that there has to be a source for everything? you're thinking in linear, temporal terms, and as science and mathematics advance it's becoming clearer that time is just another relative thing. if you believe in something outside the universe then why is it so hard to accept the fact that there was no absolute beginning, nor will there be an absolute end? "beginning" and "end" are human ideas we use to explain the dimension we live in: they are not necessarily universals. this is what the upanishads tell us, and this is increasingly what people like stephen hawking are telling us. the matter and anti-matter just were and still are. in order to apprehend more, we would probably have to break out of our time-conditioned reasoning, and we can't.
that's why i value the teachings of the buddha so much, which i like to distill down to what follows: take everything as it is, while accepting that it isn't really that way at all (i.e., existence as we know it is totally conditioned by our senses and perceptions--which is the very first verse of the dhammapada), and flush the speculative bullshit down the toilet.
on a side-note, it's well known that many writers have tried to speculate what the buddha and jesus would have had to say to each other, but i wish someone would write a hypothetical conversation between the buddha and einstein, or the buddha and hawking. i think there'd be a lot more common ground.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
We cannot think about these kinds of problems in such simple terms. As iwbiek explained, our way of thinking is restricted by the dimensions of this universe. If time and space, as we know them, are characteristics of this universe, then before our universe, it's possible that there wasn't even any "time" or "distance" or "blackness" in any way that is familiar to us.
Also, the origin of the universe could be the result of some outside influence, but if it was, it does not follow that this cause was intelligent. Throughout history, when humans didn't know the causes of natural phenomena, they always come up with supernatural explanations: gods, dragons, fairies, leprechauns, etc. In the end, it always turns out to be some determined, natural process. So, I don't know the origin of the universe, but if I had to guess, I would wager that it's some kind of unintelligent determined process as well, assuming that this is meaningful under the circumstances. Then, if it was intelligent, there's no reason to conclude that it has any of the properties typically attributed to "God."
Plus, intelligence, as far as we know, only exists as a characteristic of central processing systems in organisms i.e. brains. It doesn't make sense to simply steal this concept and claim that it exists without any substance.
Actually, I think we can answer that question pretty clearly now.
If you are familiar with how evolution works, then you know that there is no perfect chicken or threshold at which an organism that is unambiguously not a chicken becomes unambiguously a chicken. However, if we do draw an arbitrary line in the sand, then we can answer the question because there is no change from the egg to the chicken that hatches from it. The egg contains the materials needed to make the chick. However, there is a genetic difference between the egg and the hen that laid the egg. Thus, the egg obviously came first.
Well, you have to be sincerely believing in him and trying not to sin when you die, so it's not quite that easy. But, the problem is still there, so yeah, I have trouble believing it too.
Heck, a lot of it doesn't make any sense. I have dozens of issues with just the first two chapters of Genesis.
But, organisms can speciate into many different types over time; we even know how it happens. Why does this require intelligence?
Hmmm, again, you're simply saying that it's complex. Therefore, it requires a designer. How do you justify this conditional?
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Actually it's a Quantum Vacuum. A singularity is a point on a function which is not analytic (generally you have a break in the continuity of the function there). The quantum vacuum is really not a singularity at all, and it's kind of ironic to call it one since quantum theory works as perfectly as you like in the vacuum level energies but, quite the opposite, big (high energy) stuff is seemingly undefinable in quantum terms.
The Quantum Vacuum is about as close to nothing as you can get in a purely material and empirical sense. It is saying that the universe came from "nothing" only nothing is not a vague concept, it's quite precisely defined in contrast to the material sciences of "something".
Also note, the same science will tell you that it didn't change and the universe is still equal to that same nothing, so the idea of universe origins at vacuum level energies is not exactly something from nothing.
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i stand thoroughly corrected and i knew i never should have opened my mouth on the scientific side of things. it's for guys like me that hawking wrote brief history, and probably shouldn't have. we labor through 150 pages of trying to explain the foundations of a unified field theory to joe slob and we feel like we have license to shoot our mouths off.
still, the last sentence of your post intrigues me because it reminds me of the idea that nirvana is samsara and samsara is nirvana.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson