Interesting debate on existance of god, worth a read 2

[AlphaWolf]

Thats a good point, and there is no good way to answer back on it. I only think of it like this, in the 5 origional books, God was watching over moses as he was writing the scriptures. God claimed himself as being jealous and vengful for even the smallest of mistakes. I don't believe God would have allowed Moses to make even just one mistake (or at least if he did, then correct it), if the bible describes him correctly. Now it's believed that the current scriptures we have are not the origionals, instead they were copied a few times up until the ones that were found in jerusalem a long time ago. So this leaves room for much error. Even if these stories were completely true, they should not be held as unquestionable fact to anybody.

I myself believe that these are just stories. Like greek mythology, lots of it was accepted as fact until the major religions of that time ceased to exist.

To that extent, heres a little "rant" (I guess) I would like to add on to my last post:

To me telling somebody that what they believe in is wrong is like telling a child that there is no Santa Clause. If one kid tells another kid that there is no Santa, the response would probably fit somewhere along the lines of "Looks like you won't be getting any presents for Christmas this year.". The child would more than likely refuse to accept "facts" which are contrary to what he has always believed, and would continualy hold true to his belief in that only by being good you get rewarded in the end. However, the child will eventualy see the truth. Some day the child will come to the realization that fat men can't fly or fit into chimneys.

Some poeple have such a great passion for their beliefs, that they will never accept anything to the contrary, unless they are presented with some absolute fact which they absolutely cannot disprove. Even if they are proven wrong, they will be in constant disbelief and confusion for some time until they sort it out with themselves. How long did it take to accept that the Earth isn't in the center of the universe?

In the words of morpheus, "After a certain age, the mind has trouble letting go." :sly:

I know that a lot of people who read what I write must think "God have mercy, this guy makes life sound so meaningless.". Well thats just your oppinion, I just view everything completely differently than you.

 

[Tri-Force]

HOLD UP. NO SANTA????????????

ok AlphaWolf you dont view the world the way I do. i believe what i do based on what i have read and learned and been taught. i believe that there IS a God. you dont. however the way we gathered our beliefs is very much the same. now going back to the Bible. I know for a FACT that the Bible was edited and censored becsue i did a report about censorship and dug up that fact. but i believe that the meaning of storys are still good to live by. and I believe that These people lived. but i also know that i used to play a game called Telephone when i was younger and the Story alwasy got twisted wether it was done on purpose or not. but the general meaning was usually the same. have you ever told a story to someone and they forget that it was you who told the story and then they tell story back to you with things that wern't in the original story. it's happened to a lot of us. but the story is the same story with some details added and some left out. that's how i think of the writing of the Bible

 

[AlphaWolf]

Hehe *grins* I never said there is not a god. I said if we have been created by another being, its existence is beyond us (in a manner of speaking, who is the creator of the creator?).

As for the censoring/altering, you are correct on this, the king james edition (both of them) are believed by many scholars to have been censored from the dark ages. However, the current NIV translation is based off of the oldest known texts, of which came before the dark ages. Despite that though (note this is going back in your desired direction), the bible can be interpreted in many different ways, and everytime a new translation is due (changes in any given language over time that naturaly occur as the result of new words adopted from slang, old words being discarded, and accents/spelling changing over time), the cultural bias of the time will alter how it gets translated. This is very unavoidable, hell just look for how many footnotes an NIV bible contains that explain so many different possible ways of interpreting the translation of a language (or at least the form of a language) thats been dead for several millenia. Much of its actual meaning and cultural value is lost and not recoverable.

Now that does not exclude the possibility of these stories being either true, or untrue. My personal belief is that the whole thing (or at least the majority of it, theres always the possibility that some of these events actualy happened) was fabricated. Now, even if *some* of them are true, the texts used for the NIV may have still been altered very much from their origional form. Hell, half of the stuff might be something that some high public figure (like a king, emporor, pharoa, corrupt religious official, etc) might have just added for their own propaganda purposes (which could have easily been done since very few people actualy had access to a bible).

 

[Tri-Force]

my bad i must have misread something you wrote then.

now going back to the Bible. I believe that all the storys have a base in truth espically the ones in the New Testement because there are accounts of these people living besides what you see in the Bible. now i know someone will point out that history books in germany blah blah blah but this is just what i believe.

 

[sytaylor]

, standing up to wat u believe, defeating authority or wateva u oppose in a personal revolution, rather than anticipating some mass reform.

why does everyone hate authority? why does everyone instantly dislike any form of it?

 

[sytaylor]

You have missed the most important part. Jesus had to become a human to carry out the plan of God to save people. That means he was like human and acted like one as you have proved with credit. But Jesus never committed a sin that's why he could rise from the dead and got back to sit on the right side of Father. It was kind of risk to God to send his Son on the earth as human but we know the result. It's a different thing who believes it, I do.

he trashed a chapple

 

[sytaylor]

and to the point who created the creator? that is only a question if you believe there is a creator... start with a blank canvass... the judgement "something cant come from nothing" is based on our daily experiences... so if there is a god that defies logic, hell some would say even maths then why is it so hard to believe something came form nothing?! i mean really if you believe its not a physical entity of any sort, that can create a universe and defy maths then surley you could believe that something can come from nothing?!!!!!

but that would mean letting go of the creationalist theory, which so many are incapeable of doing it pains me... i mean is it just me or is the creationlist theory extreemley elaborate to say it has no proof or theory beyond a question "how can you make something from nothing"... i mean who is to say the universe came from nothing?! who:sleepy:

 

[sk8bloke22]

i shall repeat...."standing up to WAT U BELIEVE IN, defeating authority OR WATEVA U OPPOSE". a personal revolution is not necessarily like a marxist/anarchist/anti-authority type of revolution, in fact its just more of an active philosophy of physically uprising against anything that makes u feel oppressed. as i already mentioned that can be wateva u oppose. of course its more complicated that....

i never said everyone dislikes authority...obviously that would be wrong as otherwise authority wouldnt exist if no-one likes it. i also said "OR WATEVA U OPPOSE"....

 

[sytaylor]

one last thing, i dont define the remarabley hard to proove religious scriptures as proof of god, but more proof of humanitys will to believe in god

 

[sytaylor]

i shall repeat...."standing up to WAT U BELIEVE IN, defeating authority OR WATEVA U OPPOSE". a personal revolution is not necessarily like a marxist/anarchist/anti-authority type of revolution, in fact its just more of an active philosophy of physically uprising against anything that makes u feel oppressed. as i already mentioned that can be wateva u oppose. of course its more complicated that....

i never said everyone dislikes authority...obviously that would be wrong as otherwise authority wouldnt exist if no-one likes it. i also said "OR WATEVA U OPPOSE"....

bah

 

[AlphaWolf]

I am probably the least anti-authoritave person you will know. My last non-self employed job involved lots of respect for authority.

========================================

It starts with an idea, about the sun being the center of the cosmos from Copernicus in 1517 (called Copernicanism). It is instantly rejected by church officials. Galileo follows up on the idea, supporting it as being true, and is punished for doing so. It takes the roman catholic church 474 years (with multiple accusations of heresy) to finaly accept it.

It starts with an idea, a book called "Origin of Species", published in 1859 by Charles Darwin (called Darwinism). To this day is still rejected by church officials. At the current rate, we have another 331 years to go until its accepted .

EDIT:
Actualy these arent the first people to come up with the ideas, but they were the first ones to put them into wide practice.

 

[Tri-Force]

no matter what you believe in be it God, evoultion or the Big Bang theory, something had to come from nothing. and since i think we all believe that this isn't possiable then we all believe that ther was always something. I believe that that Something was God.

there are those who believe that God created a big bang and there are those who God created evolution. there are even those who beleve that humans created God through belief in him.

 

[sytaylor]

but we didnt exist to create belief in him.. so whow could we create god? why do people instantly believe that god created everything and then on top of that they throw all their moral eggs into one basket and follow a religions ideals and beliefs. It baffles me it really does how people can not see that there is an infinate number of possibilities of their not being a god and yet thats the one they choose!

Think of it like this; we live on earth, isaac newton discovered that what goes up must come down... gravity, a law of physics, everying is pulled down... well thats true until you go into space where you defy this "law" as was to a certain extent. You float freeley, yet the law of physics has not been broken because you are still within a gravitational pull, gravity still has the same effects, it just works different. Now if something as every day and simple as gravity can be so different mere miles in the sky, imagine how different our galaxy and even universe can be once we start to explore? Are you REALLY telling me that even though there is every chance of a tangible answer (we just cant see it yet) that thats the reason youre believing in god? Or is it everything else that comes with religion? Because believe me morals can come from elsewhere, beliefs too and a happy life can be had without religion...

 

[RPGlover12]

If something can't come from nothing, then who created the creator?

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hehe thats the easiest question answering u by the quran and bible and torah now if we say that allah/god came without a reason ofcourse u will hit me with the same bomb that also universe could come without a reason i know u guys anyway here it is with religion and science
they discovered that everything that has a beginning must have a creator which they found that earth and all the universe have a beginning except god which is written in his books that there he had no beginning so he doesn't have a creator thats why and also something how the heck the creator of everything could have a creator now we made of god a creator and a creature does that make sense :/ dunno its ur choice to believe or not but i think that there a big secret over that dunno

 

[sytaylor]

who is this "they" you speak of?

 

[AlphaWolf]

And my point has gottten across It's beyond current human comprehention.

You believing that we only exist because there is a god who created us, because we can't come from nothing, but then that god would have to have come from nothing.

See, you can't exactly say that something can't come from nothing, and that you can't turn something into nothing. If you believe there was an absolute beginning, and there will be an absolute end, then you are also believing that in the beginning, everything was made from nothing, and at some point, eventualy everything will be turned to nothing.

Giving you a headache right? Heres two things to consider:

If you were a scholar in the pre-colombian times who believed that the world is round, you would probably have been reguarded as a moron. How could the earth be round? How come all known geography is flat? Your saying that if you walk far enough that you will end up standing upside down?

If you were a scholar in galieos time who believed that the earth moved around the sun, you would be reguarded as stupid with the argument that if the earth moves like that, how come we don't feel the constant wind? You mean to say that after you go so high there is no more air? Its just empty space? Thats rediculous!

There is some truth about quantum physics, or some other science, that is currently unknown, and until it is known, there will be no definite answer to the debate of weather or not there exists a god.

 

[Tri-Force]

It baffles me it really does how people can not see that there is an infinate number of possibilities of their not being a god and yet thats the one they choose!

there are also many different possibilites for God exsisting. but to break it down even further, there are many theorys about how the universe got here. you can't just ignore Creation as a possibility if you are talking about posibalitys. so out of the "infinate" options to chose from I believe in one just like you believe in one. even though there are so many posibalitys that go against the one you chose you still choose to believe it.

 

[sytaylor]

yes but i dont believe one i honestly dont know, so how can i believe something there is NO evidence for?

 

[AlphaWolf]

That argument brings another thought to mind (and note this is going a bit further into the argument than I have went in the past, and will probably cause a few of you to discredit me): The key to most religions is 'just have faith'.

Many religions have some sort of failsafe mechanism that they instill into their followers to prevent them from converting to other beliefs, or ditching religion completely. For example, all religions based on the torah (aka old testimant, which includes judiasm, christianity, catholicism, and all of their derivatives) have a few. The most noticeable is somewhere in the bible (not going to bother looking where exactly, people who have read it should know) about how God claims that if any prophets come around who denounce him, then they are false, even if they are able to predict things happening so absolutely perfectly, perform miracles, etc, its just a test from God to see how loyal his followers are. Another one being that if you or somebody else makes claims or discoveries contrary to what the church teaches, then you/they are being influenced by satan, in order to get you to do his bad work. Both great ways of making somebody hold on to the faith.

(Speaking of which, I venture to guess that many people who read this would want to think that I follow satan. Why would I want to follow somebody whose sole desire is petty revenge on somebody over the fact that he is not respected? Thats one of the most pointless things I can think of.)

 

[sytaylor]

alpha: i've been saying that for the last 22 pages, but guess what? people dont accept it... and yet its so very true! tis a failsafe, and to be hoesnt one that i find childish... a belief structure does not allow questioning, not alloing quesitnoning is close minded, close mindedness causes problems (see: facism, racism etc)