Do you believe in god?

[ringmastery]

I have trouble with organized religion because it's simply not logical to me. If god is actively watching over us, and can always see us and hear us and listen to our prayers or has the power to grant miracles, he's a sadist that nobody should be worshiping.

What kind of god would let millions of people die in his name for millenia and create all of the suffering in this world? Or worst of all, what kind of god would only let one religion or denomination be "correct" and grant everyone else who believed another way eternal damnation?

That God sounds like a fascist asshole. Who would want to worship him? He sounds like someone you would want to escape from!

It just doesn't make any sense to me. For the most part, I think many people believe in god as a crutch. When bad things happen, it's comforting to many people to believe that there is something more to life. That when we die, we don't just decompose and cease to exist forever.

Yet, there's really no explanation for how we "got" here. What was there before the big bang? What caused that chemical reaction? What caused the neutrons, and electrons and star stuff, and all the building blocks of life?

I think there may have been "something" 15 billion years ago that created our universe, but that "something" or "god" may be long dead or gone by now.

Hell, sometimes I believe we are just a little holodeck cube on someone's desk like in that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Maybe "God" is an alien race more technically advanced than our wildest imaginations, and our universe is but an experiment running in some lab somewhere.

[JohnnyFianna1]

1. Cathocism

Actually, Cathocism teaches that God has virtuall no control over our lives thsnx to free will. Any deaths that ccured on earth aren't God's responsibilty. That's why they teach you to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.

[teach1st]

2. "God" is the design...

...I don't try to explain much beyond that - God is the design. I just like to groove with that. It's a really cool design, but I would suggest more papaya and mango trees, perhaps hardy in temperate climates.

I tell people that I'm an Atheist, and I guess it's true, based on what I think most people think Atheism is. But I'm not really an Atheist. Religion and all that is an attempt to explain this design in terms we can comprehend, but I don't think religion can come close. I think most religions have some great teachings, but people can screw-up the teachings based on their own prejudices.

(Edited because God didn't so I'll have to)

[packerssuck]

3. No.

[asthmaticeog]

5. What you describe

sounds way more like pantheism than atheism. Not knockin' your belief, just pointing out that there's a tradition your ideas belong to.

[teach1st]

8. One of my favorite ways to understand the design...

..is mystic Sufism. I also enjoy reading stuff by people who call themselves scientifc Pantheists. Obviously, my thinking has been influenced also by some late sixties dabbling in other scientifically-created stuff.

The existence of all created things is His existence. Thou dost not see, in this world or the next, anything beside God.

Which means, of course, that GWB and his crew are all a part of God.

(Edited for comma confusion)

[Paradise]

4. so many...

smart, thoughtful people on du. new to du, and impressed.

[lowreed]

6. I think you are asking...

spiritual questions and looking for mortal or human answers.
God = Love

[Bertha Venation]

12. God is love, but it's hard to see that when

we are pummeled by the right with their version of God. Their god despises so many people, and roots for warmongers, "giving them victory," and supports the rich and disdains the downtrodden.

The right is wrong. God isn't who we read of in the right's Bible.

[rogerashton]

7. Your ideas are very much the same as my late Dad's.

In his seventies, he felt some regret that he could not believe in an afterlife -- but he had the guts to believe what his reason told him, even as his life ran out. I admire that.

But I don't QUITE agree.

The questions are just not that simple. No, I agree, I don't believe in the God of Thomas Aquinas. The God of Emerson -- if God is the right term! -- comes a little closer. The God of the Deists also comes a little closer. I'm persuaded (I don't say "I believe") that there is a will that urges the universe toward creativity. Now, creativity means conflict -- the cancer that killed my mother was being creative in its own, dumb way -- and so the "problem of evil" comes along with universal creativity. And alongside the Creative Will, there is something like Emerson's Ocean of Consciousess. (Emerson said every individual mind was a bay of an ocean of consciousness; see also Sufi ideas that seem to have influenced Emerson). Are these two "Gods" the same? my best guess is kinda-sorta, but I'm not sure.

As to afterlife, I'm very skeptical. Many of the ideas I hear on that score are just meaningless to me (reincarnation in particular). On the other hand, I tend to think of a human self as being something like a computer program. When the hardware fails to function, the software don't run no more. But could it be booted up again, on new equipment? It's hard to imagine, but 100 billion years in the future of the universe is a heckuva long time, so I don't quite rule it out.

edited for typo

[teach1st]

9. A Fascist God

That God sounds like a fascist asshole. Who would want to worship him? He sounds like someone you would want to escape from!

Very good point! In my opinion, people might do better to step back and figure out what God is for themselves, rather than rely on the reports of others who may have created a God based on their own prejudices.

During one intense excursion in the late sixties, I experienced the end of the everything, which quickly morphed into a chemical soup beginning of the everything. The end came about after scientific thought figured out what God was and the end immediately became the beginning. Closed loop.

Not to put too much stock into what was, after all, a chemically-induced state, but it occurs to me that certain physicists lately are getting a clue. Einstein in particular was keyed right in there.

Man, I would love a nice papaya or mango.

[Torgo4]

10. God Spawned the Universe...

...then She died in childbirth!!!

I don't recall who said that!

[trumad]

11. I say yes

for insurance purposes....

[Skittles]

13. frankly, the idea that an all-knowing being acually oversees

everything on Earth MAKES ME SICK.

[kanrok]

14. God is dead

God is dead.
- Nietzsche

Nietzsche is dead.
- God

[pinkpops]

15. I think there's something going on

but we can't know what it is. I'm pretty sure of this:

1) God does not have an agent, takes care of his (her) own business
2) God does not accept solicitations
3) God can take care of him (her) self, doesn't need defenders
4) God doesn't like me more than he likes you
5) If you are clueless and can't guess what God asks of you, he won't hold it against you.

[kodi]

16. would that be a personal or impersonal god?

makes all the difference.

[TheWhitneyBrown]

17. What is God?

What do these things have in common, other than being aspects of God?
1. Omniscience
2. Eternal Life
3. Creator of Universe
4. Father of all

The answer is that they are all attributes one's own sub-conscious.

1. Sub-conscious can "read your mind", hear your prayers, and does not recognize the existence of what it does not know, ergo, it knows all.

2. Sub-conscious cannot concieve of it's own non-existence, like the conscious can, therefore it imagines it exists after "you" (conscious mind) dies.

3. Sub-conscious cannot distinguish between becoming aware of something and creatiing it. Much like Columbus believed he had 'discovered' America. Therefore, it creates the universe as it becomes aware of it.

4. As the creator of the conscious mind, the subconscious is truly, 'Our Father'

Just my own theory.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

18. I believe in God.

....and there is no rational proof. I guess thats why its called "faith".

[Heyo]

19. A few points...

There is a natural order of things.. so just because things are not working out to your liking, doesn't make God a "sadist"

If anyone or anything has the power to create the universe, I doubt it/he/she is "dead"..

We have free will for a reason... God does not interfere with affairs of the world... the suffering is cause by human's free will, not God...

If I give you a hammer to build a house... and you beat someone's head in with it.... is it my fault?

Heyo

[gorrister]

20. Short answer: no

long answer: noooooooooooooooo.

[Raenelle]

21. Yes, but I strictly distinguish between spirituality and religion

I listen to my own conscience, not someone else's.