AIBU to ask your opinions on God?

[Violetduck]

Do you beleive there is a God? I would like to, but how can he exist alongside modern science?

Aibu to believe in something more?

I don’t believe in any higher beings. Very much an atheist. I believe in the afterlife though. Make of that what you will.

It amazes me that people are quite willing to believe that the universe just sprang from nothing, rather than an eternal god who created and designed it. Takes more faith to believe in the former. Gravity, consciousness, morality etc still can’t be explained by science. But people who choose to believe there isn’t a god are sure taking a hell of a lot for granted.

The most difficult part of atheism is accepting the post death nothingness.

But to me it's no different to before someone is born.

The thought of all the years before I was born and the nothingness then doesn't worry me. So that's what I anticipate after death too.

Those we've loved and lost stay in the memories of the people who they touched. And that's enough for me.

If people who knew me talk of me fondly then that's a great kind of afterlife.

My daughter never met my grandfather but she knows lots about him and feels the love we had for him. Loves animals fiercely because he taught me the joy of animals and that's passed down to her too. That's a wonderful afterlife in my books.

@winterberries77

It amazes me that people are quite willing to believe that the universe just sprang from nothing, rather than an eternal god who created and designed it. Takes more faith to believe in the former. Gravity, consciousness, morality etc still can’t be explained by science. But people who choose to believe there isn’t a god are sure taking a hell of a lot for granted.

Gravity, consciousness, morality etc still can’t be explained by science. Science is making progress on all those fronts. And on how everything can come from nothing.

I can't understand how anyone thinks a rational solution to the origins of the universe is to posit a vastly more complicated, conscious entity. Where did that consciousness arise from? Claiming it was always there is a thought-terminating non-answer, a cop-out.

Religions do a pretty crap job at 'morality' too. Some of the laws laid down in the holy books are now seen by many people including adherents of those religions as irrelevant or abhorrent. Religious morality has trailed secular advances on matters of equality - many religious groups still haven't hauled themselves into the 20th century let alone the 21st on matters of women's rights and not being absolutely shitty to homosexuals, for instance. And then if we consider how immoral the leaders of these institutions show themselves to be - covering up if not committing child sex abuse is the most obvious example but far from the only problematic area.... religions don't even serve the purpose of instilling ethics well.

@ArrowsOfMistletoe i'm sorry you've had a rubbish 4 years. I still believe God has been at your side. i lived my life without God until i went through a painful divorce, almost died in a car accident, had two majour surgeries, have been rushed to hospital a few times on my own in an ambulance. I remember particularly when my car was spinning out of control onto oncoming traffic and i was about to crash and at that moment i said to myself this is it and i knew if i died i would have gone straight to hell and i called out to Jesus to save me and almost instantly the car went into a ditch and stopped. I have seen an angel who was sent to comfort me at a time i was being rushed to the hospital. I've also seen situations turned around for good. I don't know why these experiences happened but my faith has been strengthened because of it.

@ErrolTheDragon Science is making progress on all those fronts. And on how everything can come from nothing.

Maths is supposed to be the Queen of the Sciences. Did you know that the human ‘discovery’ and use of the number Zero apparently came from an Indian spiritual concept of nothing?

India’s impressive concept of nothing This is ground zero for zero.

“The invention of zero was a hugely significant mathematical development, one that is fundamental to calculus, which made physics, engineering and much of modern technology possible.”

@winterberries77 - I don’t believe in god - what am I taking for granted?

[quote Parker231]@winterberries77 - I don’t believe in god - what am I taking for granted?[/quote]
Sorry if this sounds confrontational, but......pretty much everything.

[quote 80sForever]@ArrowsOfMistletoe i'm sorry you've had a rubbish 4 years. I still believe God has been at your side. i lived my life without God until i went through a painful divorce, almost died in a car accident, had two majour surgeries, have been rushed to hospital a few times on my own in an ambulance. I remember particularly when my car was spinning out of control onto oncoming traffic and i was about to crash and at that moment i said to myself this is it and i knew if i died i would have gone straight to hell and i called out to Jesus to save me and almost instantly the car went into a ditch and stopped. I have seen an angel who was sent to comfort me at a time i was being rushed to the hospital. I've also seen situations turned around for good. I don't know why these experiences happened but my faith has been strengthened because of it.[/quote]
This is what makes people hate religion.

Imagine how you'd feel if I said to you that god hasn't been at your side.

Keep it to yourself. You know the person you're talking to doesn't believe in god.

Gravity, consciousness, morality etc still can’t be explained by science.

Science is making progress on all those fronts. And on how everything can come from nothing.

But it absolutely isnt.

@winterberries77 - sorry I don’t understand.?

I don’t take health for granted - I go to the doctors. I work so I can pay bills, food etc. I love DH, DC’s and our families so am happy

LastChristmas20 thank you for that - saves me having to reply. It's amazing how some religious posters just completely miss the point. Here it is again:

Just as religious people take comfort from their faith, so do I take comfort from not having a faith. You can sympathise with me because yes, I've had some tough years - but I don't need your sympathy. I don't need faith either - living through the tough times has made me stronger, better, kinder and more caring but I am still an atheist. My faith position is as valid as yours is. Let it go and accept my right to not believe as I accept your right to have a faith.

The same applies to Winterberries - I take nothing for granted. Nothing at all. I strive every day to be the best person I can be. And I don't need a God to do it. Your contention that those of us who do not believe take what we are and what we have for granted is ridiculous, patronising and offensive. Learn to respect our lack of belief.

@ArrowsOfMistletoe - also sending sympathies for the crapness you've endured lately.

Have you ever seen Book of Mormon? This thread is making me want to listen to "I Believe"

Yes I believe in God & JC. I have a faith...can't explain it and see no reason why I'd have to. Found my faith 18years ago. Wasn't expecting to find it....but it's amazing. It works for me.

[quote TellitToTheStars]@LastTrainEast Victims? To be fair the only victims are those who live without hope once this life ends. How sad it is that you think there is nothing left once you die[/quote]
Yes victims. I don't hate believers and blame them for their belief as they were mostly trained into it while young. Normally if a person said they find it pleasing when children suffer and die horribly I'd want them locked up, but I make allowances for religious people who don't know any better.

In return for the promise of eternal life you must give up earthly morals and that's too high a price for me.

Also I hope the men who made this promise to you are trustworthy.

Don't forget other men make a similar promise in all the other religions so we know that nearly all must be lying to trick their followers into obedience. Wouldn't it be sad if the Muslims were right and you'd wasted your life following a fairy tale character.

And what about this reward? You know it isn't you as such that is promised the afterlife?

Ask a Christian if someone could attack you in heaven or even be mean to you and they'd say no. Which means no one has free will there.

Ask them "but won't people be sad that their children didn't make it to heaven?" and they will explain that your mind will be altered so you won't care.

You might be sitting next to the man who murdered you and your family and then found god but you won't mind that and you will love him anyway as you will be altered so you must love him.

So it's lobotomy and a place at the feet of a mass murderer of children** where you will praise him for eternity. People are really tempted by this?

** If you're not sure what I mean here then read Exodus. In fact read all of the bible. I wish everyone would.

I think that's probably the idea many people don't want to engage with - that the universe will go on without our consciousness, just as it managed for billions of years before humans in general evolved or our own consciousness emerged.

Its odd that people can't accept the idea of a creator yet accept that the universe suddenly came into existence and will one day end. Did it come from somewhere? What'll happen when it ends? The idea of oops the universe started is just as odd as there must be a god. Somethings we just aren't set up to understand and the belief there is no god is as valid as there is a god.

BigFatLiar I think that many atheists just accept there are things we don't know and then live at peace with not knowing. The issue with a Creator is that you're then left with the quandary around the origins of
the Creator - ad infinitum. You've either got a universe that popped up out of nowhere or a Creator who popped up out of nowhere. Both things are equally impossible to underdtand.

@ArrowsOfMistletoe

BigFatLiar I think that many atheists just accept there are things we don't know and then live at peace with not knowing. The issue with a Creator is that you're then left with the quandary around the origins of the Creator - ad infinitum. You've either got a universe that popped up out of nowhere or a Creator who popped up out of nowhere. Both things are equally impossible to underdtand.

Yes exactly

@BigFatLiar

I think that's probably the idea many people don't want to engage with - that the universe will go on without our consciousness, just as it managed for billions of years before humans in general evolved or our own consciousness emerged.

Its odd that people can't accept the idea of a creator yet accept that the universe suddenly came into existence and will one day end. Did it come from somewhere? What'll happen when it ends? The idea of oops the universe started is just as odd as there must be a god. Somethings we just aren't set up to understand and the belief there is no god is as valid as there is a god.

I'm not sure they are comparable actually.

nonamesavail why are they not comparable and in what sense?

You've either got a universe that popped up out of nowhere or a Creator who popped up out of nowhere. Both things are equally impossible to underdtand.

I don't accept that a non-supernatural explanation is forever impossible. The fact we don't understand everything now doesn't mean we never will - though it could be beyond our capacity of understanding.
But that no way implies that a supernatural consciousness eternally present is needed.

On the subject of zero - the concept seems to have arisen completely independently several times in human history. The Greeks maybe confused the western strand of thinking by philosophising about it rather than just doing the maths.

Errol agreed - should have said 'as things stand at present'. Science continues to advance after all.

@winterberries77

It amazes me that people are quite willing to believe that the universe just sprang from nothing, rather than an eternal god who created and designed it. Takes more faith to believe in the former. Gravity, consciousness, morality etc still can’t be explained by science. But people who choose to believe there isn’t a god are sure taking a hell of a lot for granted.

Gravity, consciousness, morality etc still can’t be explained by science.

You missed out one vital word there - 'yet'.

Science isn't a set of answers it's a process.

A few thousand years ago - 'God did it' (which is all belief in a creator boils down to really) was a good, solid working hypothesis. Since then no solid evidence - other than the assertion that it must be true because people think it's true - has come forward to back it up.

A few hundred years ago the stating the hypothesis "The world is not the centre of the universe" would have got you tortured and burned at the stake. These days, through the process of evidence based scientific debate and analysis, we know that to be true. Question, hypothesis, theory, research, proof.

One day it is perfectly conceivable that science will come up with provable theories that will explain gravity, consciousness, and morality - whether the layman will understand them is another thing but the layman doesn't need to understand any of the hard maths behind rocket science to use the GPS built into their phones.

On that day I'll bet you that people will still be saying, 'God did it'.

On that day I'll bet you that people will still be saying, 'God did it'.

To be sure. Just as the response of many people in the 19th C to the theory (and supporting evidence) of evolution was to accept that's how the diversity of life arose, but to claim it was god's methodology.

Such an interesting thread. Thank you everyone.

So "84% of the world’s population have faith in something more". To those who believe - there are two explanations for this.

1. Yes, there is something more
2. Humans do well when they ascribe meaning to stuff, we get evolutionary benefits, so now to modern humans it just feels nice and "right".

How do you know - I mean how do you actually KNOW, not FEEL - because they are different- that the answer is 1) not 2)? It would FEEL the same to you either way.

When it comes to knowledge I think we have to use our reasoning power. For example a PP said "the universe sprang into being" and thinks God is as likely as anything to be the prime mover. Well, our idea of "springing into being" is a concept which exists in time. Nothing, then something. We only go one way in time and to using, things do not usually just appear, in the mid-level 4-d physical universe we naturally inhabit. However science and mathematics allows us to cogitate beyond our natural physical limits and use metaphors to think about "before the big bang" or what have you. So we can infer that there are natural processes we can't at the moment fathom. It is surely far more likely that we can't see how something works, than it is likely that our personification of causality (Gods) is true.

It's this lack of humility in religion that annoys me. Ironically, for people who claim to bow before God, they set their own internal feelings up as the arbiter of reality. It is dangerous, in fact.

Those of you who say "I have my faith, it's lovely and it works for me" - doesn't it matter if it's true or not? You are saying you get comfort from a feeling or belief, and this seems to be separate from trying to understand how the universe works. So why don't you say "it's probably untrue, but having the feeling, living as if it's true, gives me a better experience"? That, to my mind, is what's really going on.