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One day great career in business, a year later working girl in Langtrees! Why we work in brothel?

Bluegrass9

Diamond Member
Points
0
Yes religion is often a way mankind tries to explain the spiritual world we live in.
I am a spiritual person.
A lover of life and nature.
I believe in Karma.
I do not know if I will come back as another life form or just a spiritual presence.
Only time will tell.
Watch this space.... :)
 

Dez

...the floor is lava
Legend Member
Points
0
I don't think I'll be able to articulate it very well, but I'll try-

I'm not really into religion. I don't believe God in the same way as a Catholic or Christian might. I believe in a more cohesive spirituality that encompassed the self and nature. Almost pagan. But not really that either. I don't buy into the corporate image of God. And the idea of Faith? Have Faith in what? For what purpose? The christian idea of faith is completely lost on me. Have faith that you've been an awesome purpose so you can have all the goodies when you die? Faith of forgiveness for a ticket to heaven? ...that ideology is not for me, but if it works for others then I'll still clink my mead with theirs.
 

svengali

Foundation Member
Points
3
Actually, Tania, you have put it very well.

There is a spiritual aspect to almost everything we do but it has nothing to do with religion and it does not exist solely in churches or other man-made institutions. Not that I am knocking the churches either. I have met some remarkable men of the cloth who want nothing more than to serve their followers and their work brings considerable comfort to those who believe in their mythology - I am just not one of them.

I believe life is to be lived to the full and enjoyed for as long as it lasts. After that no-one really knows because no-one has ever died and come back to tell the tale. However, logic suggests that if an afterlife exists it will be nothing like the "heaven" or "hell" depicted in polular belief. There is no body so physical sensations, pleasant or otherwise will play no part in it.

For once, I am quite happy not knowing the answer to this question as, like everyone else, I will find out soon enough.
 
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Endymion

Silver Member
Points
0
So far on my journey through life, the Chinese have come the closest to describing what my idea of "God" is. Consider the following from The Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tze.

There was something formless yet complete
That existed before heaven and earth:
Without sound, without substance,
Dependent on nothing, unchanging.
All pervading, unfailing,One may think of it as the mother
Of all things under heaven.
Its true name I do not know;
"Tao" is he nickname I give it.


Lao Tze further explained that

The way (Tao) that can be spoken is not the real Way
The name that can be named is not the real Name


This concept fits in nicely with your ideas MissPaige but Richard Dawkins would call this the biggest cop-out of all time!!!

Lastly to set a cat amongst the pigeons, take a look around the world and the history of mankind in particular and consider that if God does exist
1. he is an underachiever
2. he is a complete psychopath
3. he has a warped sense of humour
4. he is imperfect..

" God is dead" Friedrich Nietzsche
 
L

Lord Spikey

So far on my journey through life, the Chinese have come the closest to describing what my idea of "God" is. Consider the following from The Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tze.

There was something formless yet complete
That existed before heaven and earth:
Without sound, without substance,
Dependent on nothing, unchanging.
All pervading, unfailing,One may think of it as the mother
Of all things under heaven.
Its true name I do not know;
"Tao" is he nickname I give it.


Lao Tze further explained that

The way (Tao) that can be spoken is not the real Way
The name that can be named is not the real Name


This concept fits in nicely with your ideas MissPaige but Richard Dawkins would call this the biggest cop-out of all time!!!

Lastly to set a cat amongst the pigeons, take a look around the world and the history of mankind in particular and consider that if God does exist
1. he is an underachiever
2. he is a complete psychopath
3. he has a warped sense of humour
4. he is imperfect..

" God is dead" Friedrich Nietzsche

Well done, Endymion and thank you.
The description of what was before, by Lao Tze is perfect.

However in respond to your "if God exists":
1. No, He is not an underachiever. It was perfect until Adam and Eve cocked it up
2. No, He is just focused
3. Who is to say that it is not our sense of humour that is warped?
4. No, He is perfect. We are not. That is why we have to wait
 

Master Yoda

“Your path you must decide.”
Legend Member
Points
56
So far on my journey through life, the Chinese have come the closest to describing what my idea of "God" is. Consider the following from The Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tze.

There was something formless yet complete
That existed before heaven and earth:
Without sound, without substance,
Dependent on nothing, unchanging.
All pervading, unfailing,One may think of it as the mother
Of all things under heaven.
Its true name I do not know;
"Tao" is he nickname I give it.


Lao Tze further explained that

The way (Tao) that can be spoken is not the real Way
The name that can be named is not the real Name


This concept fits in nicely with your ideas MissPaige but Richard Dawkins would call this the biggest cop-out of all time!!!

Lastly to set a cat amongst the pigeons, take a look around the world and the history of mankind in particular and consider that if God does exist
1. he is an underachiever
2. he is a complete psychopath
3. he has a warped sense of humour
4. he is imperfect..

" God is dead" Friedrich Nietzsche
Dao De Ching is one of those timeless great books.
Such short versus that hold such vast meanings.

Before the last forum crash I was working through writing an essay on each chapter to entertain myself.

Maybe I'll do that again. ....from today's perspective.
 

Master Yoda

“Your path you must decide.”
Legend Member
Points
56
Well done, Endymion and thank you.
The description of what was before, by Lao Tze is perfect.

However in respond to your "if God exists":
1. No, He is not an underachiever. It was perfect until Adam and Eve cocked it up
2. No, He is just focused
3. Who is to say that it is not our sense of humour that is warped?
4. No, He is perfect. We are not. That is why we have to wait


Lord Spikey

If God is a huge cention being he would have a lot of hard decisions to make all the time.

And maybe he is just looking up and asking the same questions we ask but from his level.
 
B

Blue trip

Jesus Christ this is like Jehovah's Witness knocking on the forum door.
 
L

Lord Spikey

Jesus Christ this is like Jehovah's Witness knocking on the forum door.
That's as may be, but this is a forum for discussion.
Everybody's views are relevant.
We may not like or agree, but don't disparage. Some of us live by this moral code.
Just go and read another thread and leave those engaged in this topic to continue un-harassed.
 

sqizza

Gold Member
Points
0
Isn't Nietzsche referring to the Western Worlds reliance on religion when he wrote this in The Gay Science, Section 125? Nietzsche was ever critical of religion in particular Christianity. According to Nietzsche, "religion was a shield with which mankind protects itself from fear and anxiety over his mortality, insignificance and confusion

" God is dead" Friedrich Nietzsche[/quote]
 
L

Lord Spikey

I get the feeling that Nietzsche's criticism of religion was partly in reference to "organized religion" and maybe Catholicism in particular. It seems, in some "religions" sin is accepted, as long as penance is performed after the event. I really do not think that is what God had/has in mind.
 

svengali

Foundation Member
Points
3
I have thought a lot about "God", having been brought up in a more or less religious family, but, finally, after a lot of thought I stopped praying and worshiping as I simply could not justify the effort in terms of the benefits.

Everything which has happened to me through life, right from my being born, was the result of my own actions or those of other humans. No prayer was ever answered, no entreaty granted and no divine intervention was ever sent my way or towards anyone I cared about.

I have seen evil b#####ds prosper and good people trampled and seen all manner of natural and man-made disasters happening to people who have done nothing to deserve such misfortune.

This leads to the conclusion that God either:

Doesn't speak my language.
Doesn't care what befalls me (or anyone else for that matter)
Is too busy elswehere to clean up all the troubles here on Earth.

I thought Spike Milligan said it best when he said: "I am God - I used to pray every night then one night I realised that I was talking to myself..............."

That is more profound than it seems at face value because what Spike was saying exactly matches my personal philosophy -


"If it is to be it is up to me"
 
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downsouth

Silver Member
Points
0
I really hope there is a god & I would love to have faith but I could never believe the bible.

I hate how we accept our intellegence in forms of a weather forcast or an ultrasound that tells us almost exactly when a child will be born but we refute our intellegence that tells us that the earth is older than 7000 years.
A work mate recently said to me that carbon dating was invented by people to disprove god and christianity.

So frustrating but I do think that having faith is a beautiful thing.

Also you can be spiritual without being religious.
 

Master Yoda

“Your path you must decide.”
Legend Member
Points
56
I really hope there is a god & I would love to have faith but I could never believe the bible.

I hate how we accept our intellegence in forms of a weather forcast or an ultrasound that tells us almost exactly when a child will be born but we refute our intellegence that tells us that the earth is older than 7000 years.
A work mate recently said to me that carbon dating was invented by people to disprove god and christianity.

So frustrating but I do think that having faith is a beautiful thing.

Also you can be spiritual without being religious.


Have the faith...........but know that you and the great creator are not separate.
 

Endymion

Silver Member
Points
0
Spikey, logic argues that God (the Biblical one) did not create Man with free will, thus..
Q: Is God omnipotent and omniscient?
A: Yes, the bible says so
Q: Did God create "Man" with free will?
A: Yes...
So if God knows everything that ever did and is going to happen, how can he have given 'Man" free will?




I found this passage from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is succinct..And amusing
The Babel Fish Argument for the Non-Existence of God
by Douglas Adams
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with the nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.
Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
 

Happy2

Legend Member
Points
23
If faith gives comfort its a good thing,surely?
My old Aunt was a very religious lady I guess like many of her generation She was a good Catholic but not a Roman Catholic
But over the last few days of her life in hospital She passed gently and with no fear Because she believed she was going somewhere better

It may well have been all false this belief of hers but it gave her great comfort in what must be a very scary time in our lives
 

SAO26.2

Wiink. I'll Do the Rest
Gold Member
Points
0
I really hope there is a god & I would love to have faith but I could never believe the bible.

I hate how we accept our intellegence in forms of a weather forcast or an ultrasound that tells us almost exactly when a child will be born but we refute our intellegence that tells us that the earth is older than 7000 years.
A work mate recently said to me that carbon dating was invented by people to disprove god and christianity.

So frustrating but I do think that having faith is a beautiful thing.

Also you can be spiritual without being religious.
Anyone who believes there is any real conflict between science and religion is either very young in science or very ignorant in religion.

Science and Christianity go together very well. Anyone that builds a case to say otherwise has a competing agenda.
 

homer

Doh!
Legend Member
Points
0
If you've watched Ancient Aliens, you know Gods are really Aliens with high tech toys.
 

DDxoxo

Live, Love & Believe
Legend Member
Points
0
the oxford dictionary defines Faith as: "the belief in something for which there is no evidence"
I think the major religions came to be invented by men in a time when there was little knowledge to explain the world and its wonders, and also perhaps because man considers himself too great a being to simply be born, live and die like every other life in this world.
Many of my religious friends tell me this idea makes mans life less valuable, i disagree exactly because our life is only that happens between life and death that every day is more precious and a challenge to be the best we can be………….."live each day like it was your last"

I actually have that saying on my wall "live each day like it is your last" - its what I see just before I go to bed & again when I wake up!
 
N

nightrider

So far on my journey through life, the Chinese have come the closest to describing what my idea of "God" is. Consider the following from The Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tze.

There was something formless yet complete
That existed before heaven and earth:
Without sound, without substance,
Dependent on nothing, unchanging.
All pervading, unfailing,One may think of it as the mother
Of all things under heaven.
Its true name I do not know;
"Tao" is he nickname I give it.


Lao Tze further explained that

The way (Tao) that can be spoken is not the real Way
The name that can be named is not the real Name


This concept fits in nicely with your ideas MissPaige but Richard Dawkins would call this the biggest cop-out of all time!!!

Lastly to set a cat amongst the pigeons, take a look around the world and the history of mankind in particular and consider that if God does exist
1. he is an underachiever
2. he is a complete psychopath
3. he has a warped sense of humour
4. he is imperfect..

" God is dead" Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche was wrong, how can God be dead when he/she/it never existed in the first place?
Life is an organic thing and we are organisms, we are different from the other organisms in that we have the largest brains and most intelligence and self awareness, it's in our nature to believe the grass is greener and that we are more than we are.....

What's amazing is that humans prefer to place belief in external forces instead of their own self......

I mean look at our popular stories always about "the one" who will save us, from Jesus to Luke skywalker, from Neo cracking the matrix to Annakin bringing balance to the force.....

May the force be with you?...I prefer FORCE YOURSELF....
 

Rochelle

Forum & Langtrees.com Administrator
Staff member
Legend Member
Points
392
No. no god for me.

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