Thread: Is there a God?

Religion causes war I'd believe there is but there are many variables Never seem to find time to worry about it to much

I've often said that myself, that religion is the biggest cause of war throughout time.....but is it? Or is it man causes wars and uses religion as an excuse? Putting it another way, neighbours can go to "war" over trivial matters as a dog barking, loud music etc............religion doesn't play a part. Man might go to war and be a part of a religion....but ultimately it is man going to war...is it not?

Regards

Stevo

Religion causes war I'd believe there is but there are many variables Never seem to find time to worry about it to much

I've often said that myself, that religion is the biggest cause of war throughout time.....but is it? Or is it man causes wars and uses religion as an excuse? Putting it another way, neighbours can go to "war" over trivial matters as a dog barking, loud music etc............religion doesn't play a part. Man might go to war and be a part of a religion....but ultimately it is man going to war...is it not?

Regards

Stevo

Funny thing, no-one has ever being able to prove to me that God doesn't exist.

"Looking for the black cat, in the dark room... that isn't there."

(I left out the bit about the blind man so as not to cause offence!)



Thanks Rowan Atkinson.

No, I believe the postion is still vacant

One of the underlying traits of this thread is the assumption by so many that God exists simply to give us a comfortable life. He is to keep quiet and leave us to our own devices, but he is to be held responsible for anything that goes wrong! It is not surprising that so many reject such an idea of God - indeed it ought to be rejected because it is untrue and so doesn't make sense.

If we want to try to understand God and therefore come to understand this world and the purpose of our lives, it is a big mistake to see our own egos as the yardstick by which all else is to be measured - of course things inevitably go wrong from there.

When I was 19 I realised that I needed to come to grips with who Jesus claimed to be. I knew I had to answer the question - Did Jesus rise bodily from the dead? My response to him would be determined by my conclusions. In the course of a clinical, objective, 'judicial' inquiry I found the evidence to be overwhelming and totally compelling. I felt that he only honest response to my convictions was to become a Christian, which I did 33 years ago. I have never regretted that decision. The Apostle Paul said, "if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1Corinthians 15:14-19)

The New Testament was written because of Jesus' bodily resurrection - an event witnessed by hundreds of different people in different places and times within a six-week period after his death and before his ascension. None of them expected it to happen but its reality and power transformed their lives (and ours) forever.

It has been said, 'Religion is man's answer to God - Jesus is God's answer to religion'. If you want to encounter God's answer to religion, have a long, close look at the real Jesus in the pages of the New Testament. He's so very different from the 'soft-roader' that people always seem to want him to be.

I thought this was going to fade but I am still getting all the emails telling me its still alive. So now I am going to give my opinion too!

BTW I have not read all the thread so I may be repeating.

upfront
1. I was religious for much of my life.
2. I am now a scientist

I used to try and reconcile the Christian faith with science and for a long time was quite happy, but in the end there was just to much logic showing that all religions (and I think the Christian take has the most logic) were just to far from reality to work for me.

We have Jesus who through very well established methods did exist as a person, likely had a wife and kids but as for the extra curriculum activities they are not very well established. There lived a long time before Jesus, buddah, he also performed miracles, and guess what some of them were? Walking on water, feeding heaps of people with a few scraps of food, and some more, Jesus did all these stock standard miracles too. IMO Jesus was likely teaching some budhist principles with a Jewish twist.

Jesus was documented as being raised from the dead & although we are told hundreds of people saw him, we don't have records from those people, we are just told about it. This means the bible is not worth the testimony of hundreds of people.

To believe in Jesus being any more than a man you must also include the world wide flood, which did not happen and is so easy to prove in science its a joke. However science has also shown there was a localised flood in the middle easy at approx that time and this makes it easy to conclude that the story got passed on and tweaked into what we have today.

We also have Mt DNA which shows the spread of the human population across the globe with out of africa model. This model now has substantial evidence and goes against the adam and eve solution. Black skin also goes against the bible version of how it came about. We also have several other humanoid species prior to ours evolving.

In the end its impossible to mention all the religious problems but god is now becoming increasingly a god of the 'gaps' in science as when knowledge becomes available to explain a problem, god gets moved out.

This means to be Christian or other, you need simply to ignore human understanding and learning and then just believe what ever you want.

There is only one problem with all this and that is religious experience. EG if john comes to my place and tells me he had a beer with god last night and god said he's angry with the world and gonna drown all those without a houseboat, there is not a lot I can say to tell him he's wrong cause he saw it and its as real as real can be for him. Can he prove it? no. should I believe him? depends. but its true for him and thats all that matters. Any real scientist should accept any new information for study regardless of the source, but if the information cannot stack up to proper methods of proof then it can be disregarded. And this is why we have scientists vs religious. The scientists cant see how the religious ideas make any sense, where as the religious people dont give a damn, they know what they know and thats enough.

end.

Originally Posted by F4Phantom

I thought this was going to fade but I am still getting all the emails telling me its still alive.

As I said earlier, it just keeps on getting resurrected.

Given that we are all still playing nicely together: my take on it all:

The widely held view of a single all-knowing omnipresent God does not make sense and is a fabrication that has been used by parents and dictators for self-serving purposes eg parents telling children that cleanliness is next to godliness.

The big bang on its own does not make a lot of sense either.

Intelligent design has plenty of flaws and contradicts my understanding of God. Why the heck didn't he build us perfect in the first place.

Conclusion: if we were made in God's image then the spiritual world is probably run by a committee but I will never know, I do not need to know and I don't care. Jesus' basic message seems like a good one to base civilised life on.
As my catholic religion teacher once said "If your only motivation for behaving well is to go to heaven then you are probably not getting there."

So treat people nice because it is a rational thing to do if you want to live in a civilised world. If that also happens to get me through the pearly gates then that is a bonus.

Too much time is wasted on the church when it could be spent doing what Jesus wanted you to do: helping people.


BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY: I refuse to believe the departed are watching down on us. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY do not want my Nanna to see what I do to my wife!!!!!

Ha this is pretty good 8 pages of not posting it took me ages to read through all this, and it looks like you are all repeating the same thing some where in the thread.so to simplify believeing makes some people happy. not believeing makes some people happy too. and it's man's fault for killing eachother. so its all good in the world