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| What do you believe? |
| A Supernatural/Higher Being that cares. |
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60% |
[ 3 ] |
| A Supernatural/Higher Being that doesn't care about us. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Many Supernatural/Higher Beings that care. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Many Supernatural/Higher Beings with some that care. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Many Supernatural/Higher Beings that don't care. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| There is no Supernatural/Higher being than us. |
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40% |
[ 2 ] |
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| Total Votes : 5 |
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 Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:02 pm
What do you believe?
Is there a God?
Or maybe Gods?
Does he love us?
Hate us?
Not care at all?
Did we evolve?
Or intelligently designed?
Or is it Adam and Eve?
I realize that a lot of this questions might be from a Christian point of view (There are other tales of creation than Genesis). Tell us what you TRULY believe in.
If you were raised in or told about a religion that you don't agree with 100% tell us about that too.
BUT!!!
While there can be debates, both sides must agree to it and there shall be no cruel remarks (aka, no saying things like "Well, that's stupid". While I'm pretty sure that the people I've talked to in the guild won't do that, I haven't spoken to everyone. So this is just to be safe.)
I'll try to put up a new poll every month or so. I'll start with the questions in this post. I'll add more from people's comments unless you say you don't want your opinion in a poll.
NEXT MONTH'S POLL! 5 MAJOR RELIGIONS (aka, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islam, Buddhism(I'll also have Atheists because they seem to be growing in number)), WHICH ARE YOU (or which are you closer to believing?) ?
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Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:31 pm
lol I actually love this topic.
I find the concept of religion very intriguing. Of course, after being in over 30 countries, I've seen or heard probably 100 or more versions of God. Thing is each religion seems to be (quite naturally) "We are right, everyone else is wrong" or "other religions won't save you- only ours will." I've talked to enough people to figure in some ways they pretty much all believe the same thing, and the things they always argue about probably don't mater anyway. As far as me, I spent years looking for evidence of a higher being. I sort of natually assumed with as many people believe in religion, that there would be some abundance of proof... but alas there seems not. Unfortunately, one's opinion does not constitute fact. I'm sure most people could imagine the madness in the legal system if people were sent to prison or pardoned based on someone's opinion. My life deals constantly with cold-hard evidence- proving positives over negatives. Basically, without evidence it - most likely (key words) didn't happen. I've dug deep and I've dug hard. If there is a God out there, he sure is doing good to cover his tracks... of course... supposedly this God wants people to know it... so why all the hiding? In the end none of it made any sense to me, so I just stopped searching. It just seems like God and heaven are people's ways of immortalizing the things that matter to them most. This reflects in asia where honor- more than good and evil- determine your place in the after life . In the middle-east, the more of God's enemies you remove from power determines your supposed reward. Religion always has a way of reflecting the local cultural norm, and standardising it at the same time. Likewise the gods os each religion subscribes to these very same local standards. I would think that if there were one true god, it would quit all the hiding out, mysterious elusiveness and just be out with itself. And somehow the concept of hell always appealed to me as a sick joke. Like one day some guy made it up as a joke to tell his friends, they believed it- and when he told them it was just a joke, they killed him for blasphemy razz ... just a random thought there... but somehow seems probable, but who knows. I would love to see other people experiences and opinions however. smile Never hurts to broaden the mind a little.
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Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:20 pm
Perhaps you don't know what to look for to find God?
One of the reasons why I believe in God is because while we might have evolved (evidence says we probably did), there is TOO many complicated forms of life on our planet to be JUST from evolution. Our world is too young for all the life here.
My mother works for NASA, so she finds the strangest things. One of the moons of Saturn has a completely white side and a completely black side. As if that moon (Enceladus) wasn't cool enough, there seems to be a mountain range that looks like someone put two halves of something together and didn't tidy up the edge.
Then there is the beginning of the universe, or the Big Bang theory.
According to Wikipedia "the term Big Bang generally refers to the idea that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past, and continues to expand to this day."
I would think that the most logical question in response to this is "What made it expand?"
While the God I believe in might not be the Supreme Being out there, I do think that something is in control.
I wonder if you consider this post as debating yours... I hope not... I'm just telling you what makes me believe.
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Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:49 pm
((Put together by Poisyn's mother))
All possibilities (from R. C. Sproul):
1. Nothing exists. Everything is an illusion.
2. Reality is self-created.
3. Reality is eternal and self-existent, but no.
4. Reality was created by an eternal, self-existent transcendent (transcends the universe Being (God).
All other possibilities reduce to one of these categories.
Possibility 1 was disproved by Descartes. (I think, therefore I am). He logically was determining what he knew exists, and discovered that all he was certain of was his doubt. But to doubt he had to think, and to think, he had to exist. Therefore, Descarte was not an illusion.
Possibility 2 is illogical. To create itself, it has to exist and not exist simultaneously--a logical impossibility. (note coming through from another dimension merely backs up the discussion to the set of all dimensions). (includes "spontaneous generation" in physics)
Now we are down to something self-existent. That is, something that has the power of "being" in itself.
Possibility 3 is contradicted by science. A self existent reality would be unchanging, because it has everything in itself from before eternity. Big Bang theory says everything was in a plasma (singularity) at the center of the universe from the beginning of eternity until the moment of the big bang (15-18 Billion years ago?), when it suddenly exploded--but something had to change for it to do that. Newton's laws say an object at rest remains at rest unless acted on by an outside force. (Note that "chance" is mathematical construct for saying we don't know all the factors. Chance HAS NO "being", and can't DO anything--it is only a measurement of what we don't know. (See Ontology-the study of Being)). {This paragraph is tricky-I condensed more than hour of mp3s to this-I can try sending them if you want, but I doubt you have time}
For the plasma to change, SOMETHING had to change it. (Let there be light?). Aristotle called it "the unmoved Mover" that starts everything moving. Stephen Hawking chickens out and says "That's not science", but if science is the explanation for everything, it MUST explain the very beginning of time, not just a microsecond afterward.
The SOMETHING must be the only possibility left, which I call God.
Note that the old testament God, when asked for his name gave one that translates as "I am" --indicating self-existence.
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Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 4:25 am
4laugh Oh no, it's all good. I like hearing what others think about this stuff. It helps me speculate. True, science doesn't fill in all the holes. I don't think there is a way to fill them all in anyway. Someone told me once that I would need a personal experience with God in order to believe (given my skeptical nature) and they are probably right. As long as it's just people saying this and that- I don't really buy anything. I do marvel at how wonderful the world is and how amazingly diverse life is all over the place. At the very least it suggests design. I think science and religion actually try to do the same thing... take into account the obvious and try to figure the rest out. Of course I don't depend on science completely. Science can lie if the person doing the science is lying or hiding something. Since I don't know all the answers, I try to keep an open mind smile
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Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 10:06 pm
I'm still mixed on all of this stuff...I really only believe in fate. That everything that happens was going to happen, no matter what. That doesn't mean you can be lazy and do nothing, but...bad stuff and windfalls and such? They're going to happen, no matter what preventative measure you might take. I don't think that counts as a religion, though... sweatdrop
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Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 10:12 pm
Odinod I'm still mixed on all of this stuff...I really only believe in fate. That everything that happens was going to happen, no matter what. That doesn't mean you can be lazy and do nothing, but...bad stuff and windfalls and such? They're going to happen, no matter what preventative measure you might take. I don't think that counts as a religion, though... sweatdrop
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Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 5:56 pm
Oh yeah, fate... haven't talked about that one in awhile.
I've read many views on it both religiously and scientifically. Most religious views in support of fate lay the claim that we are spiritually founded to do certain things. Science more or less tries to view how we might be physically prone (or fated) to do certain things as well. I think it' s harder for me to buy specific instances or scenarios, but hey, who knows biggrin
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Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 5:34 pm
Ok, so I'm 19, and I've been raised in a church background all my life, but I have found means on my own that I truely believe my Christian beliefs, not just cause mommy and daddy are one.
There is soooo much to say about beliefs... but umm I'll take a crack at it for now, based on what I read from your previous posts.
Let me state first of all, I do not wish to offend any of you... What I say is beliefs... which are supported by a number of sources... I understand there are many that will say some other way, and feel free to express your opinion.
Also, please take into consideration the fact that you can not prove or disprove a religion. Because religion is a belief in something. The truth is you can't fully prove or disprove even like scientific experiments... you can only support or dissupport your hypothesis with a conclusion. However, when a large majority of people agree about a theory like... gravity existing... Then that theory becomes a law, which means just about everyone except the craziest nuts out there believe it to be true. In reality, everything we are taught, we can only believe to be true... Even feeling pain from like excercising, would require believing that what you see is really there... I hope that didn't completely confuse you.
Ok now that, you hopefully can see that basically everything is based on beliefs... let me continue on.
---
(again this is erm... logical theories, that I believe to be pretty accurate)
Sefira, God isn't necessarily hiding from us. Sometimes we just have to look at things through a different perspective. Things such as a human body, are extremely complex. Most scientist would admit that, for the concept of macroevolution, where we actually change into different species to take place, is a very unusual thing, so it is justified by adding millions and billions of years for it to happen in.
Some scientists believe in God, and have found many pieces of evidence supporting God existing and being evident in todays world. Then there are other scientists... who don't believe, and erm try to 'prove' that God doesn't exist. But with evolution for instance, they can't deny logically... That this stuff could not happen, at least not in a short period of time. They try to replace God with lots and lots of time for some very bizarre things to occur in.
As to rather or not there is such a thing as the supernatural, I would say that is really just about undeniable, logically. I always tend to go back to how the earth and well universe was created... It couldn't just always exist without some kind of force right? How did molecules come to be? From atoms doing stuff? How did atoms come to be? How do they have such order to them at such a small size? A small bit of disruption in that order and well... we can have serious consequences. Could a big bang really put earth into its strategic place, just close enough and far enough from the sun, for life to exist?... Do you see much life on the other planets around us?... I certainly don't. I also read that stars are said to have growth cycles... If the earth really was billions of years old, wouldn't the sun be burnt out or at least way huger? Wouldn't we all be dead if that happened? Can life really come from no life?
Even Darwin, the supposed man behind evolution... says that his theories are pretty illogical.
---
Feel free to question anything I say.
And by the way I went through this course thing... called Focus on the Family's The Truth Project... which went into great detail about all these things. It gave me wonderful new perspectives, and yes it did strengthen my faith more.
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Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 6:59 pm
 "'What is this', you ask?"
Thanks Fuzzoom.
Would getting 100% on a super hard quiz on a chapter that I barely read be a miracle? I think so. I think someone can go through life thinking several different ways and one of them is believing everything is a miracle. That's what I try to do...
I just feel a whole lot better knowing that there is someone more powerful than I am helping me along the journey of life and when that journey's over, I'll have someone at the end waiting for me.
"Why, it is an endless supply of Starbursts.
twisted Be afraid. Be Very Afraid."
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Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:35 pm
Yeah, you will never find any support for something you refuse to accept as a possibility. So if you refuse to accept the possibility of the supernatural... you'll never find anything suggesting it, cause if it did, you'd automatically dismiss it.
Life is full of perspectives. I love getting to look at life through different perspectives. But how we see things in one perspective, may be completely different from another perspective. Neither is necessarily fully true, nor is neither necessarily fully wrong. They are just different ways of looking at 'the facts'.
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Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:08 pm
"Happiness is like peeing in your pants..."
Facts are subjective.
I think I'm learning this in Psychology.
That is what I had a quiz in that I passed...
xd "...Everyone else can see it, but only you can feel the warmth."
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Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:19 pm
 ♥ About a week ago, my choir teacher and i were chatting and we suddenly got into the topic of religions. I told her i was Roman Catholic and she told me that she was atheist. And then i remembered the time when i was taking Social Studies (or History class for you guys in the states xd ) and the teacher was telling me to question everything i was exposed to. So then i asked her: "What if i questioned my own religion? Wouldn't that mean that i'm kind of doubting it? Wouldn't that mean that i'm not a true believer?" And then i got to thinking and i realized that everything you stumble by shouldn't always be questioned. There's some things in this world that you need to just accept. Questioning everything would not only be a hassle, but it would also be stressful.
And then my choir teacher asked me why i try to be such a good person, and i said "because doing bad things would be considered sinning" and she said that, that is what she doesn't like about religions. They set expectations for people and instead of doing good things for themselves, they're doing it to avoid later punishment from an "unseen supernatural." Then she asked me, "wouldn't that mean that i'm a better person because i do good things for myself rather than to avoid sinning? Doesn't that mean that i'm a better person because i do good things on my own rather than something pushing me to do good?"
That really got me thinking.
And then she asked me why religions even exist.
I told her it's because i guess it gives people something to look up to. Like, it gives people a guideline and when i think about it, it kind of makes life easier for us because we have something to hope for. Like, she was telling me that she thinks that when she dies, she'll just rot in the ground. Us Catholics, we believe in Heaven and some religions teach Reincarnation. I told her that it gives people something to look forward to when they're breathing their last words before they die. I also told her that having a religion taught me how to set limits for myself. I noticed that i'm more disciplined than a lot of people at my school because i grew up knowing that was the more ethical way of doing things and i'm thankful for that because atleast i know when i'm abusing my privileges and i actually feel guilty about it.
I know "the ethical way" doesn't really tie into religions entirely, but i think it does in a way because like the ten commandments, it gives us a set of rules. We all know lying is wrong, but for us Catholics, we know of a deeper consequence than people who arent or don't have a religion altogether.
In the end, i was really glad i talked with my choir teacher because it opened my perspective in a whole different light because i started to realize the things i grew up with and the differences between other people's perspectives and mine. ♥
♥ Pink99Chick (Lady Pinksalot Taco Ranger)
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Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:43 pm
"Happiness is like peeing in your pants..."
Actually, because the Christian God is "A God of truth" I'm pretty sure he'd be ok with us asking questions.
There was a debate when people were first flying and some people were saying that if God wanted man to fly, he would have built him with wings.
My response to that would be, "If God didn't want us to advance into the future, he wouldn't have given us a brain."
As for what your teacher said about "...i'm a better person because i do good things for myself rather than to avoid sinning? Doesn't that mean that i'm a better person because i do good things on my own rather than something pushing me to do good?"
The ten commandments are just like any other rule governing a society. It was put in place after the Israelites were taken out of the land of Egypt. They needed rules to govern then and to remind them that God is always watching.
Besides, the ten commandments are basically in every form of government there is. If you break one of them, you break the law. Your teacher might not be afraid of God, but she does seem afraid of the law.
Disclaimer: I'm not a priest/pastor. I don't pretend to know exactly what I'm doing. I can just tell you what I know and/or think and my view may or may not be the same as the rest of the Christian community (It probably isn't)
xd "...Everyone else can see it, but only you can feel the warmth."
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Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:45 pm
♥ I just thought it was an interesting conversation to bring up xd ♥
♥ Pink99Chick (Lady Pinksalot Taco Ranger)
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