so is there a god, how did we get here? i love a good debate

[kimbles1984]

So what happens when we die? is there a god? how did we become? so many questions that i cannot answer, and i doubt you can either grrrrrrrrrr i neeeeeedddddd to know what happens!!??? driving me mad i tell you!

Read the Bible.

It's a history book as much as anything else.

Genesis (which is the first book explains how the earth was made), the New Testament details the birth, life, death and rising of Jesus.

Start with that then over time dip into the other books of the Bible. You can jump about and read different bits, it's not like a novel that you have to read cover to cover.

Well the Bible is one interpretation - there are lots of religions each with their own ideas. All have moral codes, virtually all have after-life beliefs, most you can convert to if you are so inclined.

But all of them will have a huge amount of followers who don't follow the doctrines 'religiously', and there is as much (if not more) division within a religion as there are differences between them; Catholic, Protestant, Orthodoxy in Christianity; Hasidic, Orthodox, and Reform Judaism; Shia, Sunni and Sufi Islam, endless versions of Buddism, loads of variation in the Hindu family of traditions....need I go on.

Buy a 101 to religions guide and then take your pick!

is there a god - well is there some perfect creator being? is the word around you so perfect it requires a perfect creator being? or is randomn physical process good enough - I tend to side with the latter..

do you believe there is something non-physical in your body - or that your mind (and consciousness) are the product of a physical existence - if the latter, then when you die, that's it, chips in...

Yes I think there is a God, who created the world and us, most likely through evolution.

I believe that when you die, some part of your energy, so to speak, some esscence of who you were, goes somewhere else. Maybe to some eternal place, maybe back here to learn more.

Mho, when you die?, you die, your put in a box, and burned, or put in the ground, and you live on in the memories of your loved ones.

Is there a god? I don't think so, but who am i to judge those who believe in such things, but yes there are so many religons maybe you'll be able to find your answers there.

Well i believe in evolution, so believe we evolved from apes, but i'm sensing that is not what you want to believe.

What happens, well isn't that up to human nature to decide, how we will continue evolving?

Nothing happens when you die, you are just dead. There is no God, that was made up to make people feel better about dying. We are just living organisms that have evolved....party pooper or what?

the origins of life are rather complex, not just in the 'first cause' (big bang (?) and before) but also in things like abiogenesis (how life might have emerged from inanimate chemicals).

The issue of human intelligence is also interesting - there are about 80 billion galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, and therefore vast numbers of earth-like planets, and therefore potentially trillions of intelligent lifeforms

And yet, we are apparently alone, and in 13.5 billions of years of existence recorded history dates back only 10,000 years on a single planet (so far as we can see).

In other words there are no answers, but we will keep on looking....

I believe that there is something about humankind that exists independently of biological and neurological process. An 'over-arching reality', if you like - a sort of continuation of human 'spirit' and drive; a consciousness that 'links' us to all humans that went before and all who will come after and an awareness that we, as individuals, are not central to existence.

The best word I have found for that reality is 'God' and the best expression of 'God' that I have found (ie, that makes the most sense to me) is in the Bible.

Whatever it is that 'God' is, I believe Jesus was its most perfect human manifestation. That makes me a Christian.

I have no idea what happens to us when we die and I don't think it matters. My faith in this 'God'/ reality guides me through THIS life and informs the way I choose to live it. I don't hang onto the notion of 'God' simply for reassurance that death isn't really death.

No, sorry God is something dreamed up by men to subjugate women and other citizens. Zeus, Ra and the rest of them are figments of somebody s imagination. There have probably been some men who have wondered around and fooled a few people, a bit like today's Scientologists, Moonies or the rest.

An after life? Please, this was a way of control. Be good here and you will have everything you want when you are dead. When you're dead you're dead. If you are lucky, some archeologist may come along in 10,000 years time and dig you up and you get immortality being put in a museum.

Sorry to be such a downer.

You are not being a downer, Jo. It's what you believe and you've a right to that belief.

MrsCad, that is exactly, but exactly what I believe and how I feel! You put it very well, thanks.

people say there is no God, and imagine God as a separate entity to themselves...

yay, MrsCad