WHY PEOPLE DON`T NEED GOD AS BEFORE???

Has anybody seen the film Dogma? Wonderfully funny, irreverent, possibly blasphemous but it makes the point that it shouldn't be about religion or belief, it should be about the IDEA.
Do as you would be done by, no?
Religion doesn't cause wars, human interpretation causes wars.
At the risk of offending somebody, La Illah al Allah (sorry if I spelt wrong), I have seen translated as "there is no God but God, and his name is Allah". What??? If there is a God would He have just one name?? I know I don't. I have about five different names in real life (not talking forename, middle name, surname or false identities), I mean different people in different places know me by different (nick) names. If I go to Hull and somebody talks about Mr Creak I know they mean ME, and so does everybody else, likewise with Oli, Parsley etc etc. But it's still ME.
Oli

 

Dear Jeffrey. You´re wrong. I do not believe or otherwise worship G_d. And I don´t need the hypothesis.

I just think it´s not fair to talk about part of our common Heritage, one of the main fundaments of our civilization an culture in this way. It´s neither bullshit nor is it being taken literally by intelligent, religious people (there are such people: if they are stupid, then I am too).

 

Never have I said otherwise. I see no way to prove that gods don't exist. On the other hand I see no way to prove gods do exist. After all, the whole "proof" that most religious people have for this is nothing but the blind faith that everything written in their Holy Book is true, word for word. There is no proof beyond that except for the obvious way of answering what science can't answer with "god", which means denying all the other possibilities in favour of what they want to see.

If the only real "proof" for the existence of gods is the scriptures and works that its priests and believers use to codify their faith, then I'm very much inclined to deny the existence of gods altogether. Why? Because holy scriptures are never written by independent, objective spectators if we know who wrote them at all; they are always written with an obvious agenda and therefore certainly did distort the truth; and they have been subject to the interpretations and translations of its users for all the years of its existence. I'm not even going to go into the texts in holy books that were based on what certain people allegedly "saw" in their dreams or revelations without anyone else present to witness it (John, and pretty much the entire Koran).

Oli: "Allah" means God, and what a person needs to say to an Imam to become a Muslim therefore means "There is only one god and his name is God". Therein lies the danger of monotheism: intolerance. They can't accept other beliefs. This is why I am more strongly opposed to montheistic faith than polytheistic faith; the latter doesn't need to hurt anyone, the former must.

 

I knew Allah means God, but I think the interpration MEANT when I saw the translation written that way was "and not Jehovah, Yahweh or anything else YOU think it is"
No proof of existence, no proof of non-existence. Hmmmm, how about this?

Abscence of evidence is not the same as evidence of abscence.

Works on hundreds of different levels.
Oli

 

I AM



(That's what God said his name was to Moses) or was it Abram? I'm sure Izaac will know.

Jehovah & Yahweh (sp) are other names.

I prefer to think of him as "Father".

 

Quote:

I Am that I Am

Definition:
I am that I am was the most holiest of names for God. It denotes that nothing else is needed to make oneself complete. Since man needs God in order to have life man cannot say that of himself. Apart from God, man is nothing. However, God is everything, He is life, He is judge, He is creator, He is king, He is that He is.

Meaning:
The phrase I am that I am is the same phrase God spoke to Moses at the burning bush. Jesus' use of the phase in describing himself shows that he is equating himself with God. Something the Jews considered blasphemous. They felt no one was equal to God and that anyone who claimed they were was to be stoned. Jesus, however, understood that God had sent him into the world to save the world and that it was God who caused Mary to conceive not any man. This fact gave Jesus all the divinity of God and all the humanity of man. Jesus had all of God he needed and was able to say I am that I am, because he realized that everything he did was because of God and not because of himself.
www.parentcompany.com/awareness_of_god/doc1.htm
Unquote:
But, IMHO that holds true (on probably the only thing that holds true throughout our lives) for each and everyone of us.
Shakespeare :“Above all, to thine own self be true”
Same thing, no? But so many people don't.
Anyway FWIW, that's my moral code, don't have religion, I have a philosophy of life.
If you leave out "God" (oops, you know what I mean) from the concept isn't it still worthwhile? I am what I am, and I will remain/ become, or strive to become, the best ME (not from an egotistical point of view) I can be. I have all of "God" that I need - choose how much you need and live up to it?
Be yourself, all that you can be, don't put yourself down, and other people (well mmost of them, well some of them, okay or two of them) are human as well and deserve the treatment you would like for yourself.
To my way of thinking there is only one "sin", or evil. And that starts, "what I want is more important than what you want" everything bad follows from that...
Oli
(sermon endeth here :lol: )
Oh yeah - "most holiest"??? terrible command of the English language, "most holy" or "holiest". Good grief, the language of the bible IS english (old brit joke :roll: )

 

Yeesh, I just realised - I join this forum to learn more about tanks and I end up debating religion with a bunch of foreign geeks. How did that happen? :roll:
Oli

 

''Religion doesn't cause wars, human interpretation causes wars''

Yes, and maybe some wars where prevented if people didn't believe in ''god''

 

Did you say geeks? I think we'd all prefer "not otherwise socially engaged types with internet connection and a keen interest in various topics ranging from tanks of WW2 to religion in the modern world".

I like your personal moral code, it wouldn't collide with mine on any point. Except perhaps that when it's about being yourself, what you want is more important than what others want - if others want you to be someone else than you are...

 

Read what I wrote. It's NOT the belief or disbelief in God that causes wars, it's the interpretation of that belief. BY HUMAN BEINGS.
To the best of my knowledge there isn't a holy book in the world that specifically states that the objective is to invade/enslave/slaughter people that believe otherwise.
It's a human trait that "if you don't think the way I do you're wrong". Ok I can accept that from anybody, but the step after that, athat some people/ nations take is "if you're wrong, you're not human/ don't deserve to live".
It's not religion, it's not belief, it's people.
(One day I'll find THE BUTTON, switch the universe off, let it start all over again, and this time the mice can be in charge )
Oli

 

Quote:
Roel
I like your personal moral code, it wouldn't collide with mine on any point. Except perhaps that when it's about being yourself, what you want is more important than what others want - if others want you to be someone else than you are...
Unquote:
Yeah but if others want you to be something other than you are then they are taking the line "what I want is more important than waht you want, and therefore you should do as I want" - the first small step to Nazism.
One reason why (after a short career in politics) I gave up "being in charge - its a very steep slope from "If you do this it will be better " to "you should do this, beacuse I think it will be better"
Yeah sorry, not geeks -"differently socialised"
Oli

 

Very inspiring to see Goyim debate religion and/or moral issues. I decidedly like it more than the question of beauty of Koenigstiger´s ass. (Not to be understood that I don´t like looking at weapons - I actually do and can´t find out why).

Btw: a large part of Torah tells about G_d encouraging manslaughter and ethnic cleansing. And there ARE people in (my?) beautiful land who´d like to emulate it.
So, it´s not entirely wrong to say that religions are always harmless. I don´t know, how the Jewish tribe would have been developing without Trah and Talmud. Sorry, the question is not even academic.

My personal position is that there can be life after life, there can be G_d (superstitiousness makes me skip the "o") and all of that I´ll find out later.

And the last place I expect to find some metaphysical answers is naural science or science in general.

Greetings to everybody here. I will not pray for you, though. Or weep at the Wall. Forget about it.

 

Quote:
Isaac
I will not pray for you, though. Or weep at the Wall.
Unquote:

"Oh! Weep for those that wept by Babel's stream,
Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream,
Weep for the harp of Judah's broken shell--
Mourn -- where their God that dwelt--the Godless dwell!"
Byron
or
"It's such a little thing to weep --
So short a thing to sigh --
And yet -- by Trades -- the size of these
We men and women die!"
One of my two favourite poets - Emily Dickinson (If you were wondering, the other is e e cummings, (he's the reason I never use a full full stop in my full name), funny, sarcastic, observant (oh, just like me )
Oli

 

wooow

 

Can't take full credit. I knew what I wanted to say and Googled for it - if I could say it as good as that my poetry would be in print instead of lurking in the dark on a floppy disk :smok:
Oli

 

Poor misguided fool, don't you realise yet, they are already in charge. Now where has Slartibartfast got to?

 

Um, so don't you think that the fact that he could do these things meant that he was, maybe, a bit special? Remember, many of his miracles were in front of crowds, and the NT was written while those people were alive. It even mentions somewhere in one of the letters that you should not take the author of the letter's word for it - there are thousands of people out in Palestine who had witnessed it first hand.

Hey, it is scientific fact that a broken rib needs months to heal. My mate was prayed for and it healed in a week.

 

If true, (not that I doubt you but the last time I talked to a priest he agreed doubt was a good thing ), then it is not a scientific FACT. See my earlier posts about what science is, what it says.
If something contradicts the current paradigm (woah, never thought I'd get to use that word for real!), then that means that the current paradigm requires further investigation to account for the anomaly.
Therefore, just of the top of my head:
A) the current theories are incorrect and require reformulating to cover this occurrence
B) the current theories are correct and the example given was not as stated because of certain factors (may be anything from lies, incorrect diagnosis, etc etc)
C) the case cannot be explained at all, and is so rare that it can be dismissed as a statistical outlier, but held in mind if similar cases occur.
Case C), of course, would count to many people as a miracle, evidence of God, the power of prayer etc etc. There is no solid body of data to confirm or deny this, because the conditions under which this and similar things happened have few or no common identifiers.
Like I said earlier, science says things, but science popularisers (TV, Sunday colour supplements, corner-shop magazines etc) say something different.
Etymological note. The origin of the word fact: it has the same roots as manufacture/ factory. Something MADE. Think about that one :smok:
Oli

 

Oli´s right. The only thing science can is to measure probability of occurrence or cause/effect link (if the design was properly designed, which is very rare). Scientifict facts do not exist as such, if we are talking science methods of today´s world.

The rib just stopped aching after 1 week (people can influence their pain perception by autohypnosis). I seriously doubt that he´s been photographed again: it would be a mistake - unnecessary radiation for a fracture that heals 100%. Bad example, I´m afraid......

 

Not at all - we know it healed because his doctor told him so - and was very amazed at this.