Do you believe in God?

[MrAural]

nobody has ever said the Bible is the word of God, not even the most fundamentalist Christian.

What?
I've met hundreds of Christians that have said exactly that.

[JBoy]

nobody has ever said the Bible is the word of God, not even the most fundamentalist Christian.

What?
I've met hundreds of Christians that have said exactly that.

They are very sad and misguided people, i tend to ignore them.

I love this topic of conversation, it reminds me of how sane i am.

[magma]

nobody has ever said the Bible is the word of God, not even the most fundamentalist Christian.

What?
I've met hundreds of Christians that have said exactly that.

Perhaps "no theologian has ever said it's the word of God" would have been more accurate. The bit in the Bible that's closest is the Ten Commandments, which were given to Moses directly but then written down by humans. I can't think of any bits that are directly attributed to God.

The Koran is supposedly the direct word of God given to Mohammed (and the Mormon scripture was revealed to Joseph Smith directly by God), but the Testaments are exactly what they say on the tin.... testimony of the human experiences of God. It's just a collection of witness statements.

I'd posit that the hundreds of people who said that to you hadn't ever studied the Bible very much, it could even be argued they're not really Christians - Jesus certainly didn't teach that scripture was the be all and end all (and the NT didn't even exist for him to live by) - he was big into expressing faith through positive actions and learning from your fellow Man, so it's a bit dangerous to tar an entire religion based on the opinions of people that don't agree with its main character. Hell, even Darwin said that a belief in God and the afterlife was for "every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities"

[cityzen]

I'd posit that the hundreds of people who said that to you hadn't ever studied the Bible very much

I met them at a Bible college....

[MrAural]

I'd posit that the hundreds of people who said that to you hadn't ever studied the Bible very much

I met them at a Bible college....

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

I believe what ever makes me happy. That tends to be nothing because I honestly don't care where we came from ect. I don't think we are supposed to know.

[cityzen]

I believe what ever makes me happy. That tends to be nothing because I honestly don't care where we came from ect. I don't think we are supposed to know.

But that makes it sound like there is something external that decides that we are not to know.

[kay]

nobody has ever said the Bible is the word of God, not even the most fundamentalist Christian.

What?
I've met hundreds of Christians that have said exactly that.

Perhaps "no theologian has ever said it's the word of God" would have been more accurate. The bit in the Bible that's closest is the Ten Commandments, which were given to Moses directly but then written down by humans. I can't think of any bits that are directly attributed to God.

The Koran is supposedly the direct word of God given to Mohammed (and the Mormon scripture was revealed to Joseph Smith directly by God), but the Testaments are exactly what they say on the tin.... testimony of the human experiences of God. It's just a collection of witness statements.

I'd posit that the hundreds of people who said that to you hadn't ever studied the Bible very much, it could even be argued they're not really Christians - Jesus certainly didn't teach that scripture was the be all and end all (and the NT didn't even exist for him to live by) - he was big into expressing faith through positive actions and learning from your fellow Man, so it's a bit dangerous to tar an entire religion based on the opinions of people that don't agree with its main character. Hell, even Darwin said that a belief in God and the afterlife was for "every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities"

Dude, you need to go stand outside churches more.

[magma]

I imagine that people standing outside Churches trying to convert strangers know about as much about Christianity as Alien Pimp does about genetics... just because someone says they're something doesn't mean they really are.

I can honestly say I've come across more atheists looking for people to convert in my life than Christians, though... perhaps I'm just standing outside the wrong churches. Last time I stood outside one for any great period of time, I ended up dating a scientist!

Anyway - my main point was that "Do you believe in God" is not the same as "Are you a Christian?"... I know that's an obvious point, but it seems to get ignored every time this conversation comes up.

If the thread was about believing in Adam & Eve and the Garden of Eden, then I'd be going in *hard*, but it's always surprising to me how something as moot as believing in God produces a 10 page discussion about Christianity every single time. There are a million ways to believe in God.

[cityzen]

In which case, yes, i do. When we allow the term to be slightly more ambiguous than the Abrahamic meaning then I don't think anyone with any degree of ''''spirituality'''' would disagree.

[Blenky]

I think it's part of our culture, well at least my rural middle class culture, to always assume God refers to the christian god wheras the gods of other religions have to be referred to by their specific names for me to think the conversation to be about that god. That's pretty fucked tbh. Might have to work on changing that.

[InternetSlaveMaster]

I was always taught he didn't cause the pain and suffering, he gave us the free will to do whatever we wanted in order to judge those who were worthy of ascending to his kingdom.

Any creationism story and/or based religion is just mankind trying to justify their own existence and place themselves higher than anything else.

In my opinion, the whole Christian ideal of "God seeing who is just enough" is bad story telling because of the human involvement in it, but at the same time, that's the whole reason for the story. If God was all powerful, he could just make some friends for himself in Heaven and leave it at that, but at that point we wouldn't be justifying our existence/making humans seem more important than they really are, therefore the storyline is pointless. (This comes from a video game designer aspect, anyways.) Just seems like an unnecessary detour if God were real, but going by the assumption he's not, it makes sense that God would be so unlogical about it.

My assumption for God not being real?

Could God create a rock so heavy he himself could not lift it?

Discuss.

My personal belief? Live your life the best you can, be kind, etc.. If you need the fear of something larger than you judging you based on your actions to be a good person, you're not a good person..

[magma]

In which case, yes, i do. When we allow the term to be slightly more ambiguous than the Abrahamic meaning then I don't think anyone with any degree of ''''spirituality'''' would disagree.

I hate to be the arch-Devil's Advocate, but I was created (fnar fnar) this way, so...

How about believing in the experience of spirituality as evolved in the human brain (perhaps for reasons for social cohesion or to allow our horribly complex psyches to not descend into non-functioning depression as soon as we realise we're all going to die for nothing), but not believing anything supernatural is implied by it?

I think my personal take is basically that we're fairly reliably spiritual beings, but that that doesn't necessarily imply the existence of spirits.

[cityzen]

In which case, yes, i do. When we allow the term to be slightly more ambiguous than the Abrahamic meaning then I don't think anyone with any degree of ''''spirituality'''' would disagree.

I hate to be the arch-Devil's Advocate, but I was created (fnar fnar) this way, so...

How about believing in the experience of spirituality as evolved in the human brain (perhaps for reasons for social cohesion or to allow our horribly complex psyches to not descend into non-functioning depression as soon as we realise we're all going to die for nothing), but not believing anything supernatural is implied by it?

I think my personal take is basically that we're fairly reliably spiritual beings, but that that doesn't necessarily imply the existence of spirits.

Sorry, I was very unclear. I shouldn't have said 'slightly more ambiguous', I should have said 'a LOT more ambiguous', and I put spirituality in a load of quotation marks because it's the only word I can think of to describe what I mean but I don't attach any kind of spirit to it. You'll have to forgive my poor understanding of English.
I don't have any faith in spirits. 'God', to me, means the ultimate truth/the universe/the absolute/that which has no name and so my 'God' is not supernatural.

[SCope13]

nobody has ever said the Bible is the word of God, not even the most fundamentalist Christian.

What?
I've met hundreds of Christians that have said exactly that.

Me too.

Lol, like every Christian I meet has said exactly that.

[SCope13]

Surely if the God we're talking about created earth and the solar system then why not prevent pain and suffering?

Why prevent it? Said God would also, after all, have been responsible for mortality, pain and suffering. After all He could've made us out of tough, durable rock without any nerves and we would've been free of pain.

It's only if you make the assumption that God is omnipotent AND benevolent that you end up with a dichotomy. And even then, there is the question of what benevolence means and covers.

Well assuming Christians believe God to be omnipotent, then I would think their god had a choice in the matter. Otherwise, that would make him, well, not omnipotent.

Well, he/she/it could be omnipotent, and chosen not to do anything about it. Again, just because this God person is supposed to be omnipotent doesn't necessarily mean that he/she/it is benevolent. And anyway, he/she/it could've seen into the future, saw what sorts of shit man would eventually cause to the rest of creation and thought, "Hmmm...I'd better just let them kill themselves off a bit at a time. Mankind is clearly a flawed creation, and after considerable thought, I prefer the earth with all its butterflies and stuff". Bottomline is, trying to assign human values and notions to an entity with godlike powers is silly.

That's why I put the "Christians" in there - to differentiate their belief of what god is and what other's is.

[magma]

In which case, yes, i do. When we allow the term to be slightly more ambiguous than the Abrahamic meaning then I don't think anyone with any degree of ''''spirituality'''' would disagree.

I hate to be the arch-Devil's Advocate, but I was created (fnar fnar) this way, so...

How about believing in the experience of spirituality as evolved in the human brain (perhaps for reasons for social cohesion or to allow our horribly complex psyches to not descend into non-functioning depression as soon as we realise we're all going to die for nothing), but not believing anything supernatural is implied by it?

I think my personal take is basically that we're fairly reliably spiritual beings, but that that doesn't necessarily imply the existence of spirits.

Sorry, I was very unclear. I shouldn't have said 'slightly more ambiguous', I should have said 'a LOT more ambiguous', and I put spirituality in a load of quotation marks because it's the only word I can think of to describe what I mean but I don't attach any kind of spirit to it. You'll have to forgive my poor understanding of English.
I don't have any faith in spirits. 'God', to me, means the ultimate truth/the universe/the absolute/that which has no name and so my 'God' is not supernatural.

Ah, word. Yeah, I think language is where most of the argument in any of this arises - nobody defines what they mean by "God" when they start a thread like this, so you end up with 200 posts with everyone playing by slightly different rules. Some talk about Christianity generally, some get more specialised and talk about Catholocism, some talk about Fundamentalist Christianity... but very few end up actually talking about God.

The [King James] Bible's a great book. I don't believe most of it, but it really is a charming-as-fuck read... especially the New Testament. Jesus was a pretty cool dude. Of course, some people take it far too seriously, but then some people take Star Trek seriously enough to learn to speak Vulcan. Try as we might, we'll never eradicate morons from the species.

Cheeky addition: I'm impressed with the hundreds of Christians everyone's met. I know two vicars and a Bishop, but I'm not sure I've spoken to hundreds of people about religion in my life. I haven't even met hundreds of Arsenal fans and I've been to a stadium containing tens of thousands of them on several occasions! Most people I meet in Britain are pretty secular...

[Blenky]

Of course, some people take it far too seriously, but then some people take Star Trek seriously enough to learn to speak Vulcan.

I'm impressed, the last thread you likened the blind following of everything the bible says to the learning of klingon. No one can ever assume your metaphors of being repetitive

[magma]

Of course, some people take it far too seriously, but then some people take Star Trek seriously enough to learn to speak Vulcan.

I'm impressed, the last thread you likened the blind following of everything the bible says to the learning of klingon. No one can ever assume your metaphors of being repetitive

But everyone could accuse them of such. At least I'm consistent...



(and I do find people learning 'alien' tongues immensely more amusing than people believing in God )

[Blenky]

Of course, some people take it far too seriously, but then some people take Star Trek seriously enough to learn to speak Vulcan.

I'm impressed, the last thread you likened the blind following of everything the bible says to the learning of klingon. No one can ever assume your metaphors of being repetitive

But everyone could accuse them of such. At least I'm consistent...

I fucking hate fridays