God: A logical impossibility?

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Buddha, Mar 19, 2004.

  1. Hevene Registered Senior Member

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    369
    Hi Buddha,
    you are talking about a fearful god, which is the opposite to what I believe in. I believe God is love, therefore, punishments cannot exist. We are all apart of God, why would god punish apart of himself for something he did? The bible is not 100% accurate. It is written long ago and many things had changed over these period of time. It is time we expand on our belief systems to include new understandings.

    Also, I believe my path is not the only path, but merely another one. All paths lead to God. Therefore, no matter what path we choose, we will re-member with God.
    By the way, not believing in god does not make any difference, as long as you believe in life, it is the same thing. Life is God demonstrated. God is life. We are life. We are God.
     
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  3. rainbow__princess_4 The Ashtray Girl Registered Senior Member

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    I don't quite no why you've put "god" with a capital because that suggests a proper noun... but if god is everything then that means I'm god right? All hail me.
     
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  5. Hevene Registered Senior Member

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    Yes Rainbow princess 4, that's what I meant. I think we are all in the process of becoming one again with God, that is, realising that we are all one. (I have no idea why I used the capital, guess I'm just used to do that)
     
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  7. rainbow__princess_4 The Ashtray Girl Registered Senior Member

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    Yeah, and no matter what you actually believe, you can't deny that that sounds like a desperate attempt to get ppl to convert to their (at the time) small, pathetic and non-influentual religion... the same for werewolves and vampires.
     
  8. Nebuchadnezzaar Registered Senior Member

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    Isn't this the first argument you ever learn when studying philosophy at University?

    I think God defies logic, as soon as you try to understand or argue it away, you get into trouble with logic. It's a matter of blind faith, obviously.
     
  9. Hevene Registered Senior Member

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    369
    The reason why it defies logic is because we are more than just our body. Our body remembers and react from past events, but our spirit knows, it is beyond our brain, or logic. You have a get out of your mind before you can really connect (notice) with god's energy. And it's not simply blind faith, we all have feelings and experiences, those are the tools of god in which it communicates with us. The question is who listens?
     
  10. Nebuchadnezzaar Registered Senior Member

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    faith is always blind. That is what faith is. Give me an example of when we have faith in something we know is true? Wouldn't that be pointless.
     
  11. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    Faith that you will be found innocent in court for a crime you did not commit. If you didn't commit it, surely that faith's not "blind".
     
  12. Nebuchadnezzaar Registered Senior Member

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    That is hope your referring to, not faith.
     
  13. Nebuchadnezzaar Registered Senior Member

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    you could have faith in the system, and hope it will work out for you. But the faith is not in anything seen. You can have faith in a person's attributes but you can't see that either. you can have faith that your best friend will protect you, and i guess you can see his size, but you can't see his ability to protect. you can have faith in him to prtoect you and hope that he will.
     
  14. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't say you're able to see it; you can't see justice - it's a system that you have faith in. You have reason to believe it will justify you because you know your innocence is true, and you know the system is based on the principle of truth (which you can't see either). But it's not "blind" as you said. Hope might be blind faith, if that's what you mean.

    Faith is to believe in something others only hope for. A criminal can still hope to get free, but he can't have much faith in it (unless it's blind). Israel didn't just hope God would save them - from everything He did and promised, they were able to have faith in Him. But it is a faith aided by knowledge. That's why they also had the laws. You can't have faith and also sin - they're mutually exclusive. But you can have faith that God will forgive your sin if you ask Him, because that's what He promised. And so on...
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2004
  15. Nebuchadnezzaar Registered Senior Member

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    okie dokie.
     
  16. rainbow__princess_4 The Ashtray Girl Registered Senior Member

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    Cool... and the rest suggests that you're one of those Buddhist weirdoes (n.o.) who believe that we live just to suffer until we tie ourselves to a tree and starve the death while being eaten by giant ants so that we may fall alike a water-droplet from the sky into the great ocean that is enlightenment? And this is supposed to be a GOOD thing? Frankly nothingness sounds kinda boring.
     
  17. Hevene Registered Senior Member

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    369
    I did not say we live to suffer. Suffering is a perspective. Once you realise all things are perfect, ie. happened for a reason to allow you once again declare who you are, "bad" things will nolonger be a suffering for you. The statement I made "We are all one", is a fact, we are all made up of the same stuff, human, other animals or "inanimate" objects, everything. Oneness does not mean sameness, just like we human beings for example. We have different races etc, we are one, but not the same. I don't see how this could be boring.
    (I am not religious, do definately not a Buddist weirdoes....)
     
  18. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    Sounds like you understand the concept of a Trinity after all...
     
  19. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    Sometimes I like to view God as us in the collective sense.
    Kind of like what Hevene said:
    However, rather than "everything", "everyone".

    God's omniscience would amount to knowing everything that everyone knows.
    Those that say "God created Man" and those that say "Man created God" would both be correct.
    God would also be omnipotent in a sense as well. If we view omnipotence with a self-centric viewpoint (which, let's face it, what religion is not self-centric?) in that no power is beyond the grasp of the collective body of human beings.
    He knows all and sees all.
    He is everywhere at all times.
    He knows when you are sleeping and knows when you're awake (oh, wait, that's a different song).
    God would embody all the collective aspects of the human race and change with time.

    If God were everyone and everyone was God and humans (as they usually are) are ego-centric and self-important, then it all seems to fit together.

    Then I look at it, and think that even if "God" does not exist in any real sense, then all the above can apply as well, since he exists as sort of an oversized meme in all our minds.

    Could God exist simply because we invented him and conjured him into being?
     
  20. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    Then His "existence" would cancel itself out, and we'd be back to square one.
     
  21. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    Why would it cancel itself out?
    Maybe I am missing something, but...
    It would only cancel itself out if there were at least as many Atheists as there are Theists.
    And even then it would be dependent upon the activity, vocalness and other factors of the holders of different views.

    A cultural meme such as the size and depth of this one would really have a life and existence of its own, almost independent of the believers/non-believers themselves by this point.

    If you create a monster (not that I am saying God is a monster, just at least as powerful as one) then you can't just un-create it, you have to kill it.
    Just as Zeus was not simply blinked out of existence as easily as he was blinked into existence.
    The fact that the majority of the Earth's population (and greater than 90% of the population in the US and UK) believe in God make hims a pretty formidable "monster".
     
  22. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    How can it begin to exist independently? If it's a bubble that believers kept afloat it would depend on the believers alone, and unbelievers would have no effect on it.

    Your argument can only be valid if it never exists independently. For instance, even if it were created by 1000 believers during year X, it would reduce in "size" correspondingly if only 2 people believed in it during year Y.

    As an independent entity he would cancel himself out because his existence is just as objectively "real" as his non-existence. Because as long as he was even slightly a subjective reality, he would be dependent on the minds and whims of people.

    Zeus was not simply blinked into existence - he was the result of a collective understanding of the world. And the degree to which he and other "gods" simply reflected the human psychology is evident in their representation in the field of psychology (Psychology itself borrow its name from Psyche). In that respect this "monster" is active whenever Freud is studied or applied... Zeus only represents the role of religion in the human psyche, but he never existed indepently of it, even while he was thought to.

    On the other hand, the "I Am" is at the same time so familiar and foreign to us that He is often confused with life itself. As complex and cruel as nature, yet as compassionate and humble as a carpenter. He simultaneously represents us and condemns us. He is the epitome of an independent deity and yet is supposed to be closer to us than we are to ourselves. Defining Him is like trying to divide by zero, yet He is also an objective reality, a personal God capable of being known and having knowledge - so independent and sovereign that even his believers take offense, so loving and unselfish that He is willing to make a mockery of himself in order to reach and save sinners and unbelievers. What wouldn't a man give to be known by such a God, and to know Him - yet how far removed we are from even beginning to understand why we should.
     

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