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When the universe was created, all the souls were created too. These souls were asked 'Who is your Creator and who will you worship?' All of them replied 'We worship only You'.
Thus each soul is then send down to earth in its appointed time. By the time, these souls emerge from the womb in each's own physical form, their future upbringing,worship or non-worship etc depends on their parents,environment,society etc etc.
Why then the innate need within Man to worship? Just because of the Unknown, Superstition? No, its because deep,deep down within (their souls. dna,genes?) they have the the need,the urge to worship - maybe somehow the promise each soul had made to its Creator is still somewhere 'burned' in it. Only, somehow along the way, some got sidetracked into worshiping idols, nature, multiple gods etc. And of course there are those who totally forsake their Creator.
Sounds like a fairy tale or an introduction in a fantasy book.
No offense. Thats just what it sounded like.
"Then the leprechauns and fairies danced about and made the wings of butterflies glow like the light of the moon on a spring night and they sang soothing songs to bring the stars out of their hiding places in the sky and twinkle in time like diamonds."
Something along that lines.. (I just made that up on a whim byw). lol Anyone can. Doesn't make it real just because its written down somewhere.
Sounds like a fairy tale or an introduction in a fantasy book.
No offense. Thats just what it sounded like.
"Then the leprechauns and fairies danced about and made the wings of butterflies glow like the light of the moon on a spring night and they sang soothing songs to bring the stars out of their hiding places in the sky and twinkle in time like diamonds."
Something along that lines.. (I just made that up on a whim byw). lol Anyone can. Doesn't make it real just because its written down somewhere.
You mean to tell me with a name like JackyFrost you don't believe in Leprechauns or the little people, and I'll bet you're not even Irish.......
God does not exist, he creates (Kierkegaard). This is a page for philosophy people not an opinion page. If you say god does not exist then prove it-or attempt a proof. Philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge not opinion-who gives a rats ass what you think? Unless you are god your opinion is like a butt hole, every one (unless it was removed for some reason) has one. Existence, well, is existing. Existence means movement and that means coming into being and leaving it (Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, the Greeks, and etc; your own experience!). God only in an incarnation (not limited to Christianity by the way and actually a recognized part of logic in the form of the syllogism {Hegel}) becomes subject to existence, but then he loses true being because he now changes. Christianity covers this by a resurrection with a return to the god, or into relation with pure being or true being, or a removal from the temporal, or existence. For god to be present by sight as a condition for proof (cheapo minds work here) he has to exist or to "become". The G-O-D concept means "it" does not become or is eternal. That is why an incarnation of the god is not readily visible to the human eye or mind-St. Paul actually calls it a "scandal"-pure being as becoming (that is why it is humorous for a man to say he is god; becoming claiming to be pure being). So the cheapo mind would not accept any proof that was physical in nature-not even coming down off of the cross. When the god is produced by the mind, the god is an abstraction which means it has no existence-its a thought! Which means that the only way for the god to be known, by an incarnation (god's own subjectivity not your objectivity and one should remember that their human mind is an existing mind), as existence , is withdrawn. Christians are even guilty of this by the way. The proof that there is no god is a very hard task since man has only "existence" to work with and can not utilize pure being as he does not have it. The big question is how does something (men) that have no being but are in the state of becoming actually "exist"?
Historical proofs are no proofs. History is an approximation. I ask you, what was Abraham doing on the night of the 8 of July-or what ever calendar they were using? Did hemorrhoids affect his judgment? A nagging wife? What actually happened at the battle of Waterloo,was it a tactical loss or was Napoleon worried about Josephine screwing around? Who was there to take it in and could he possibly take in every detail-people have a hard time getting their zip codes right. History is a puzzle missing many pieces (see Lessing)-I would say, given the number of people in the past and their individual stories, that the majority is lost to us; all these people are simply abstracted into a few details and promptly forgotten and the historian looks backward and constructs the chain from his loffty advantage point. History was/is written by whose historians? From whose ideology? If Kant is right, then the "thing in itself" is not accessible to the brain but only the idea that is formed of the "thing". Actuality is mediated by the senses and then an idea is formed-how can one become the object that he is studying in order to know it; we only know the idea formed-the idea is the object of thought. A man then sees the other man as idea; one can not know another because one can not be the other-one is left with an attempt to know onesself (but perhaps even that is idealized, but it is intimately closer as I have direct access to my thoughts). Anyway, when the historian looks to the past, he is also in the process of mediating it-he can't know the past directly. Doctrines brought into a religion from other sources or religions have no affect on the doctrine being "true". A pagan doctrine, brought into christianity, for example, does not affect christianity's use of it, nor does it imply that the pagan use of it was surperior. One invents an airplane in a capitalist socieity and then the technology goes to a commie country. Does the fact that the technology was transfered and adopted, modified, make it not an airplane in the commie country and perhaps a superior one? Hegel has shown that all religions are actually monotheistic (a process of the mind using the syllogism). If the christian god is the true one, does the fact that the Greek pantheon of the gods was actually an expression of a single god nullify the christian? When Moses takes the Babylonian concept of creation and modifies and uses it for his needs, does being taken from the Babylonian discredit his use? The trinity is another example. Hegel has shown that all religions (positive) have this concept within them, christianity gets it out in the open; does its use of the trinity mean that the preceding religions, or which one, was the correct one. If paganism thinks up something and it is improved by another; what if the improvement has more truth in a later religion than paganism? Who then is closer to the truth? It makes no difference where this stuff comes from-it matters how the religion uses what it takes to construct its dogmatics or theology and christianity has no problem with this.
If Christianity is an attempt to cement down and formalize an existance paradigm, it's just as valid to state that it's simply one of an infinite number of possible interpretations, including the "null interpretation", to wit: that there's nothing here but us echos.
I find it spectacularly arrogant that Christians (and Muslims and many other structured dogmas, for that matter) assume their little interpretation and take on things is the only one that has the potential to be "real".
If one truly opens one's mind to the entirety of possibilities (well, at least to the very strictured but still creative limits of our humanoid IQs and imaginations at any rate...), there's so much more than JCism.
Why limit yourself to black-opaque glasses? Try "rose-colored" for a change!
If Christianity is an attempt to cement down and formalize an existance paradigm, it's just as valid to state that it's simply one of an infinite number of possible interpretations, including the "null interpretation", to wit: that there's nothing here but us echos.
This is an absolutely valid argument. However, I'd ask that the question be considered from another approach as well. Studies in childhood language acquisition have come to some conclusion that we're hardwired at an early age to be, for example, English speakers. That's not to say we can't learn other languages, only that we're not only English speakers but English "thinkers" as well, language and cognition being inextricably linked. There has been some literature on language and time perception (English vs. Mandarin), for example--incomplete, though interesting, but I'm only using this example for the purposes of this point: That the "infinite number of possible interpretations" is only rhetorically valid, and identifying and embracing one's native approach to the issue of God is not at all the failing of vanity, but perfectly, well, natural. Does English fail or have less worth because it expresses ideas one way and not the myriad other ways possible using the many tongues that exist on this Earth?
This is only something to consider, to the contrary. In fact, as an aside, it seems to me too that I'm sounding argumentative in many posts. That's not my intention. My purpose is only to ask consideration that some categorical statements made on this forum are...maybe not so much.
This is an absolutely valid argument. However, I'd ask that the question be considered from another approach as well. Studies in childhood language acquisition have come to some conclusion that we're hardwired at an early age to be, for example, English speakers. That's not to say we can't learn other languages, only that we're not only English speakers but English "thinkers" as well, language and cognition being inextricably linked. There has been some literature on language and time perception (English vs. Mandarin), for example--incomplete, though interesting, but I'm only using this example for the purposes of this point: That the "infinite number of possible interpretations" is only rhetorically valid, and identifying and embracing one's native approach to the issue of God is not at all the failing of vanity, but perfectly, well, natural. Does English fail or have less worth because it expresses ideas one way and not the myriad other ways possible using the many tongues that exist on this Earth?
This is only something to consider, to the contrary. In fact, as an aside, it seems to me too that I'm sounding argumentative in many posts. That's not my intention. My purpose is only to ask consideration that some categorical statements made on this forum are...maybe not so much.
i just love what i am reading here.
thought and speech (in any language) seem to become tied to "fixed information" evolving from established teachings that can be traced back to ... this has become so habitual that it deceives us to interpret it as natural.
but natural is another perception, another correspondence with all that is ... to "return" to such a state of being in communication and interaction would surely mean at least questioning our current lifestyles and the system on which they are built (failing as it is).
and no, i am not hostile or "argumentative" either.
Christianity as just one of a multitude of interpretations is absolutely correct. So is atheism, a return to nature hippie-ism, science in all its forms, ethnic awareness, racial social structures and etc. Christianity has no absolute philosophical right to dominate what we call "truth" but then neither does any other structure of thought. Ethics should guide the interaction of the people holding these various view points. In society, if one of these interpretations comes to dominate and the "others" are prevented from investigating it, criticizing it, and even in some cases tearing it down, then the interpretation becomes dogma or a religion. Atheism in the Soviet states is an example of an interpretation becoming a dogmatic religion (along side of the state itself). Science in a technological state such as ours is approaching such a point and perhaps the political has reached it.
Christianity as just one of a multitude of interpretations is absolutely correct. So is atheism, a return to nature hippie-ism, science in all its forms, ethnic awareness, racial social structures and etc. Christianity has no absolute philosophical right to dominate what we call "truth" but then neither does any other structure of thought. Ethics should guide the interaction of the people holding these various view points. In society, if one of these interpretations comes to dominate and the "others" are prevented from investigating it, criticizing it, and even in some cases tearing it down, then the interpretation becomes dogma or a religion. Atheism in the Soviet states is an example of an interpretation becoming a dogmatic religion (along side of the state itself). Science in a technological state such as ours is approaching such a point and perhaps the political has reached it.
agreed. but where do those ethics originate? imho they are NOT the invention of some brilliant intellect.
agreed. but where do those ethics originate? imho they are NOT the invention of some brilliant intellect.
On the other hand, as "brilliant intellect" is a human value, that's a way of diminishing the opposite in order to dismiss it, much like calling narratives that have deeper meaning "fairy tales" with none. We're limited in our perceptions, it's true. Therefore one accepts, or rejects, the idea of Mind beyond our own, Purpose beyond our understanding. And we who can accept this can only express it analogously, imperfectly through language. (On a more worldly level, I can't even be certain my position is understood, but not to try to communicate it would make me a poorer human being.)
Rather than the original OP thesis, I'd say the question is more about accepting or rejecting the humanity of believing in God--a more productive, purposeful, anthropological, perhaps less antagonistic discussion--rather than analyzing God, which is futile whatever position one assumes.
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Existence
