Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Having no belief in a God, I do believe the things that happen are a result of man and "free will." Every action has a consequence. There are no accidents, just bad choices. My husband however, pretty much believes what you do; that God made us and just sits back and does nothing.
No quibble... Just if God did make everything (since none of can definitively prove or disprove, just point to evidence, much contradictory and contextual... Btw, I don't dispute 'science' as I don't find the rational search for explanations and a belief in God as mutually exclusive), but gave free will, it strikes me as odd to say he sits back and does nothing.
I guess I do his actions, indirectly (and only witness based) in 12 step programs where people have a C change in outlook in regards to their personal character flaws. Opiates has decimated this community the last 3.5 years: average one od death a day. However I have witnessed complete turn arounds, addicts and alcoholics, and in those successful, all point to a higher power of their understanding. One even gave a story Thursday about her doctor asking how she detox' without medicine and just couldn't comprehend it.
Anyway, thank you for the respectful response. I don't have answers, including for myself. A bunch of education but definitely not 'how others should...' Fill in the blank. I can answer how to build a deck or fuel a jet, but not affirm or deny, another's belief in God or rationale for coming to the conclusion that God doesn't exist. (Sorry to capitalize God... I wrote that from my belief system, not an inference or insinuation your, or another's, belief or understanding).
For me it's really a matter of all religions definition of God. I believe there can be a God if one starts at the point of existence and leaves their construct of what God is at that point. The bit about knowing what irks god,what it thinks,exactly what it wants. Just happens to be a leap to far to think that one knows the mind of God.
I have instincts,a nature,a brain and along with the majority of humans an over blow opinion of ourselves. Yet I don't mind religious people,they're just are nice or bad as atheist. I don't want them to fold their tents and become non-believers, couldn't care less.
So would most of you consider yourself atheists, disbelieving in any God ever existing. Or would you guys consider yourselves agnostics, or agnostic deists. Not knowing whether or not a God or God(s) exists or existed, but if they do/did, they must not care very much about revealing themselves to people in a way that a logically thinking person would be able to accept and/or understand?
I consider myself a deist now in the sense that I believe there is a God but I believe He doesn't involve Himself in human affairs, as witnessed by starving children, torture, miscarriages, and other natural disasters in which no supernatural intervention is forthcoming. That calls to mind the famous quote by Epicurus:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
I consider myself a deist now in the sense that I believe there is a God but I believe He doesn't involve Himself in human affairs, as witnessed by starving children, torture, miscarriages, and other natural disasters in which no supernatural intervention is forthcoming. That calls to mind the famous quote by Epicurus:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
I cannot figure this one out.
A deist god is sort of inherently indifferent, which is the other thing a god might be who knows everything and is all powerful and does nothing about human suffering. More succinctly than the Epicurus quote, a god can not be all knowing, all powerful and all loving and allow suffering to exist, much less do nothing about it.
True lack of love is indifference, not malevolence. Indifferent, absent and non-existent gods are for practical purposes interchangeable because their existence is irrelevant to human existence and therefore the fact of their existence is not actionable. It would be interesting, nothing more, to detect the spoor of such a being or in some other way indirectly determine its presence, either in the present or more likely the past.
I agree if any deity exists it is probably not actively malevolent. The universe shows every evidence of simply running like a wind-up clock whose works we happen to be caught up in. However it also shows every evidence of being wound up by natural cyclic forces. I think our universe will ultimately be determined to be something poking out of a rupture in some eternal inter-universe plumbing.
Repeat after yourself: "It's nothing personal. It just is."
What is often personal and far more relevant is human malevolence. I believe that to be a byproduct of myriad symbolic human immortality projects that we engage in to sooth our anxieties about death and insignificance (and, most particularly, about the fear our lives have no significance). The solution to that is for humanity to live in an increasingly aware fashion, engaged more directly in reality, constantly questioning its individual and collective illusions, and learning to accept its true scope and how to make its own meaning and purpose within that scope.
We are far, far less advanced than I once thought we were, and the hole of ignorance and superstition we are climbing out of is far deeper than it first seemed. Alas, waiting around for some invisible sky daddy to save us from ourselves won't help and will just extend the pain.
A deist god is sort of inherently indifferent, which is the other thing a god might be who knows everything and is all powerful and does nothing about human suffering. More succinctly than the Epicurus quote, a god can not be all knowing, all powerful and all loving and allow suffering to exist, much less do nothing about it.
True lack of love is indifference, not malevolence. Indifferent, absent and non-existent gods are for practical purposes interchangeable because their existence is irrelevant to human existence and therefore the fact of their existence is not actionable. It would be interesting, nothing more, to detect the spoor of such a being or in some other way indirectly determine its presence, either in the present or more likely the past.
I agree if any deity exists it is probably not actively malevolent. The universe shows every evidence of simply running like a wind-up clock whose works we happen to be caught up in. However it also shows every evidence of being wound up by natural cyclic forces. I think our universe will ultimately be determined to be something poking out of a rupture in some eternal inter-universe plumbing.
Repeat after yourself: "It's nothing personal. It just is."
What is often personal and far more relevant is human malevolence. I believe that to be a byproduct of myriad symbolic human immortality projects that we engage in to sooth our anxieties about death and insignificance (and, most particularly, about the fear our lives have no significance). The solution to that is for humanity to live in an increasingly aware fashion, engaged more directly in reality, constantly questioning its individual and collective illusions, and learning to accept its true scope and how to make its own meaning and purpose within that scope.
We are far, far less advanced than I once thought we were, and the hole of ignorance and superstition we are climbing out of is far deeper than it first seemed. Alas, waiting around for some invisible sky daddy to save us from ourselves won't help and will just extend the pain.
Good observation. I caught "indifferent, not malevolent" exactly. And natural cyclical forces. The only part that catches me is not being able to attribute all this order to a cause. I'm of the persuasion the universe is like a disassembled auto whose parts were thrown into the air and landed assembled. Same with human cells. They are composed of a quadrillion molecules that assembled themselves in the right order and then morphed themselves into a male and female human capable of reproducing. That boggles my mind. Natural development would have favored hermaphroditic species capable of reproducing themselves by parthenogenesis..
Good observation. I caught "indifferent, not malevolent" exactly. And natural cyclical forces. The only part that catches me is not being able to attribute all this order to a cause. I'm of the persuasion the universe is like a disassembled auto whose parts were thrown into the air and landed assembled. Same with human cells. They are composed of a quadrillion molecules that assembled themselves in the right order and then morphed themselves into a male and female human capable of reproducing. That boggles my mind. Natural development would have favored hermaphroditic species capable of reproducing themselves by parthenogenesis..
Both of the last 2 posts raise excellent points. My only difference, observationally, is God, an infinite entity, could create an existence, ours, observe and play a part, but NOT correct our every malfeasance because of the free will instilled in us: our right to choose good and bad behavior, or morals.
The unassembled car analogy thumbs up
Some end of cosmic plumbing (that sounds like Susskinds explanation, or white holes from M Theory) thumbs up
To me scientific rationale and an infinite Deity are not mutually exclusive.
Good observation. I caught "indifferent, not malevolent" exactly. And natural cyclical forces. The only part that catches me is not being able to attribute all this order to a cause. I'm of the persuasion the universe is like a disassembled auto whose parts were thrown into the air and landed assembled. Same with human cells. They are composed of a quadrillion molecules that assembled themselves in the right order and then morphed themselves into a male and female human capable of reproducing. That boggles my mind. Natural development would have favored hermaphroditic species capable of reproducing themselves by parthenogenesis..
The junkyard tornado argument (which was originally stated by an atheist named Fred Hoyle, ironically) is a red herring. No one claims that advanced lifeforms and biosystems appear fully formed out of nowhere. They are the product of countless small advances over vast amounts of time, each one more likely to survive to reproduce and therefore implicitly more adapted to its environment than the last.
The junkyard tornado argument approached from the opposite direction is "I am incredulous that all the biodiversity we see came from an amoeba". But there again ... no one is making any such claim.
The problem is that the human mind has a terrible time wrapping itself around the real meaning and scope of "billions of years".
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Stop the press...'Omnimax deity cannot multitask'. 
