A few thoughts on diety -there is no true answers, only opinions-I have mine but I want to know yours- try to follow.

Assuming that there is a "christian god" he is all powerfull and all that shit.

1. Doesnt that suggest that he can do anything he wants? What about sin or willing himself out of exsistence?

2. Linear time, how come god only exsists in linear time?If god is omnipresent, doesnt that suggest that he exsists in every possible situation, in every single moment etc.

3. The soul, when is it created? birth, conception, creation?

CHRISTIAN GOD? i hate even thinking about the concept.

1 - yes it does. theology holds that god has the same free will we do. but he chooses to not sin.

2 - time has not been defined at all. time may not even exist.

3 - theologians usually agree that the soul is created prior to two people even going at it.

Reminds me of a thread i posted here before, asking...

"If there truely is an omnipotent god and had the power to do absolutely anthing... Could he infact make something lets say a rock, so large and heavy, that even he couldn't pick up?"

1 - no, theology says that it is not gods nature to sin....and his nature is his very exsistence. Doesnt that limit god? It sets parameters around what he can and cant do.

2 - ok, the concept of time then

3 - your right.

yeah, its the same concept, x the fallen x

what do you think?

the question about a rock is an atheist argument. it is rather weak though. you are assuming again that the rules that you are familiar with as a human would govern a GOD. why can't something be two things at once? because it's illogical? since when does human logic apply to a diety? im being stupid but im on drugs. what im saying is that the concept of a being existing that cant pick up a rock but being a being that can pick it up at the same time is not possible by human logic. but human logic means nothing. maybe the concept is possible but why would we understand it? we are just humans.


i haven't read the bible in a while. but i was under the impression that god is governed by free will. and he could sin if he wanted too.

and about time. what i was saying is that time is not defined. it has no concept. it's theoretical physics. maybe blueboy could explain it. but you can't answer a question when you don't understand what makes up the question.

alright, now we are in my territory....
first off...if you are arguing for the "christian" god then you will find many contradictions
*omnipotent---but he is not powerful enough to get rid of evil (well i don't think it wants to because to retain balance and the law of paradoxes that i have been trying to work out in the ol' head...there needs to be evil) and then the classic 'picking up the rock' anecdote...
*omniscient---(did i spell that right?)but apparently he had to ask adam and eve why they were clothed and and what they did...then of course the golden bull later...
*all-good--then the problem of evil that scholars have been debating for the past years and of course the eye for an eye law of the written torah...

but, if you want to talk demiurges then that explains the shortcomings or the contradictions of the god in the abrahamic traditions....
gnostic systems believe that the "god" that people blindly follow guided by the church is the demiurge and is really a created being created through the emanation of the uncreated creator...the real eternal being...aka the Absolute...and the demiurge is who believes that he himself is the Absolute and therefore ignorantly acts of his own accord and rules the material world unjustly...gnostics (mandeans for judaism, christian gnostics--such as marcionites--for christianity, and isma'ilis for islam) believe that for the salvation of the divine spark, aka the soul, which has fallen down to the material world and have become evilly captured by the demiurge, aka the christian god or whatever, one must realize the knowledge, the gnosis, of the true One to attain salvation and redemption through knowledge of the world around them

by the way, the word of the One that emanated all beings, even the demiurge, in greek is called Logos--look familiar, username?, because i am seeking for it......

Okay, about the rock thing...
Let's say god did in fact create a rock so large and heavy that he couldn't pick it up. It would be the end of creation as we know it (that is, if he exists at all). God is supposed to be omnipotent? If he couldn't lift his own rock, that would mean he's not omnipotent, therefore the theology would collapse. Sort of like in that movie Dogma.

Originally posted by seek4logos
alright, now we are in my territory....
first off...if you are arguing for the "christian" god then you will find many contradictions
*omnipotent---but he is not powerful enough to get rid of evil (well i don't think it wants to because to retain balance and the law of paradoxes that i have been trying to work out in the ol' head...there needs to be evil) and then the classic 'picking up the rock' anecdote...

i'm assuming you are a philosophy graduate or undergradutate. i keep having to say this. EVIL and GOOD are relative terms. you can't destroy evil just like you can't swim in air or breathe through your ass. the concepts do not exist. again as DD pointed out you can't ask questions like the rock' anecdote because for all you know a place can exist were something can be two things at once. they already exist in our world.

Originally posted by seek4logos
*omniscient---(did i spell that right?)but apparently he had to ask adam and eve why they were clothed and and what they did...then of course the golden bull later...
*all-good--then the problem of evil that scholars have been debating for the past years and of course the eye for an eye law of the written torah...

preachers have done sermons on this. it's assumed that god knew exactly what had happened. God asked the questions to bring adam to an understanding of what he had done. sort of like when you are in front of your parents and your six years old and you go "oh fuck" and then they say "what did you just say"
and again the thing with good is that it is a relative term.

Originally posted by seek4logos
but, if you want to talk demiurges then that explains the shortcomings or the contradictions of the god in the abrahamic traditions....
gnostic systems believe that the "god" that people blindly follow guided by the church is the demiurge and is really a created being created through the emanation of the uncreated creator...the real eternal being...aka the Absolute...and the demiurge is who believes that he himself is the Absolute and therefore ignorantly acts of his own accord and rules the material world unjustly...gnostics (mandeans for judaism, christian gnostics--such as marcionites--for christianity, and isma'ilis for islam) believe that for the salvation of the divine spark, aka the soul, which has fallen down to the material world and have become evilly captured by the demiurge, aka the christian god or whatever, one must realize the knowledge, the gnosis, of the true One to attain salvation and redemption through knowledge of the world around them

that's the same mythology as christianity. i am also seeking for logos, i guess. it's a hobby of mine. i am not a philosophy major but my good friend who graduates this semester is. and we talk alot about it. one thing that people never take into account is that there is no reason for a creator to exist. i still haven't heard any decent arguments on why this has to be. my friend says it's logical but i disagree.

[Edited by blueboy on 01-16-2001 at 06:11 PM]

ooh, linear time....
no, god does not exist on linear time but man has superimposed him to it...linear time is measurable by the heavenly bodies and well, since that is what is observable in the material world then that is how we counted him...but that is hardly true for eastern traditions who work on cyclical time...hmmmmm...i will have to think on that some more because i think that i just debated myself into my own corner and realized the invalidity of that argument...alright...
well, cyclical time is not really continuous in a sense because most cyclical time systems believe that time never ceases with no beginning or end but events do occur that leads one through the circle of time back to a beginning event--creation--and therefore time does not end but is recreated through a system of events that returns to its original time...weird right...

so i can't explain it well at all....hmmm....but do you read alot manifesto if so
Henry Corbin Cyclical Time and Isma'ilis Gnosis--now there is someone that could do justice to this topic....

time has no definition as of yet. you can't ask that question. we don't know what time is, let alone if it even exist. cyclical time is complete theory, just like linear time and just like everything else brought up so far. if you like this subject seek, you should look up past threads. god and philosophy by joseph, does god exist by dextris. there are alot more. but they have alot of shitty post on them.

awesome points blueboy..however the rock thing does work by a christian system because he is suppose to exist in the world as we know it (ha ha like we know it at all) and anyway the question was on christianity....but yeah, on a parallel plane where things probably due exist at once this rock argument is destroyed...
yeah, it was more of a "go ahead, be honest, tell me your guilt" thing, but i don't thing yahweh ever asked the cities of sodom and gemorrah what they did...so maybe he was just tired of fucking around with his creations....but more importantly to this point is, did he not know that people would make the golden calf when he took too long to give moses the law on mt. sinai...seems to me, and this is just to me, that the punishments came after he learned of the heretical ways the jewish people were acting towards him...

continue to seek my friend...it is there...i have a poem (if the webmaster comes back alive or whatever, i haven't checked today) that kind of gives a simple prose style explanation of why we need to search...you think if it was god then we'd see....ha....
oh, i think it is logical but more scientific in a way...hard to explain...like the energy needed for the big bang...the energy...that is the unmoved mover but we can't explain that theory either so bullocks!!

yea i understand. i don't think there is any reason to believe in yahweh. i actually completely disagree with the idea of the hebrew god. the unmoved mover (lol the same exact words my friend uses) it's nice to find someone who is versed on the subject.

Silly theists, gods are for kids.

wow, well you blew my ass out of the water with some of your responses and I am glad that my simple mind could come up with a question that would spawn such a heated debate.


Ill respond later

1. according to the holy bible, 'god can do anything we wishes, so yes of course. So in fact this all powerful, no faulted, none sinning lord, is imperfect.

2. Well I'd have to agree with dark darkness on this one.

3. The soul is said to be created before conception, it is told that there is some mystical and holy place which is called 'the guff'. 'the guff' holds all souls after and before they are sent into a body, Souls are mearily our 'battery'. When the guff is empty, the apocolypse begins, the end of the world, that is why so many are dieing as the world population grows. It is all up to this 'god' who lives or who dies, therefore, he is killing us of so we can live, which brings me back to the imperfection of this christian lord. Hmmmmm why be so humble and worship such a faulted god? supposedly he made us didn't he? And what a mistake that was!

Originally posted by manifesto of osiris
yeah, its the same concept, x the fallen x

what do you think?

You really want to know what I think ?

I don't believe in any of it
I find the belief in god or the satan, good or evil, to be rather lame.
The concept to me just seems much like a fairy tale.

I believe its a durived from fear of death and lack of knowledge.

Just like greek mythology.
Take your greek gods, for instance

They had gods for just about every act of nature
and then some.
We read about it in school, but do we take it seriously?
No... we write it off as uneducated and illinformed, silly greeks lol.

But when you think about it, people today are just the same
instead of having many gods
We just got lazy and came up with one single god, to cover all the unexplainable or unknown.

Also, how many people want to believe, that when they die, its all over ? Nothing....
No existance...
Not many..
Who actually KNOWS what happens when they die...
Nobody....
And if everyone thought that we'd all meet the same end.
That there were no consequence's for "sins" or actions in life...
How many people do you really think would be "good" people?

So I feel things like "good" and "evil" and stuff like "christianity" are also used as moral guidelines for the world to follow.

Its kinda like... If you could steal a car and not go to prison... what would stop you?

So anyways.... I am rather happy that people believe so deeply in this.. even though i don't
It makes the world alot safer for me.


Well thats what i think.
I don't doubt I will be trashed for this.
But I was asked my opinion
so i gave it


ThanX

Of course it's useless to say that there just "has" to be a God or creator because it's logical, but the atheists who say that the idea of a God is stupid and then don't specify why, instead preffering to act distant and totally removed, rolling their eyes at the antics of people who actually explain their logic, are equally idiotic...

so let's review the known facts.

-We have people as far back as 5000 years ago proclaiming belief in this one God, and in his teachings. Unfortunately at this point they're divided into many, many, many diffrent groups, making it almost impossible to get one solid consensus on anything among those groups.

-Most atheists when confronted will break down to two basic arguments, 1) they hate their parents, 2) the Universe is big. You do not know how many atheists webpages I have been to where their entire argument is simply a rehashing of an essay they took from NASA and then try to leave you with the impression that it would be "silly" to think we have any signifigance in the Universe, because after all, it's really big.

-People who exercise the left side of their brain more (Scientists, inventors) are more likely to be atheists.

-People who exercise the right side of their brain more (Authors, artists) are more likely to believe in the supernatural or religion.

-There is not and never will be any way to actually prove the existence of a God, whether it exists or not.

-The argument that God can't create the Universe because then it would of had to of been created by something else doesn't work since you'd run into that problem anyway, unless reality has in fact existed for eternity which would work equally well with or without a God.



And the point of this all is that you have no way at all to determine whether or not God exists, hence the term "faith", whether you call it blind or not.

School bores me so... get ready to rip me to shreds peeps:

Time-
A measurement that man created due to the fact that they had to figure out a type of schedule to follow, such as when to plant things, when to get up, etc. It does not exist though, it is just something that we created, and we follow so closely that it's hilarious. I have already stated in another post that I believe time repeats itself, in a never ending loop, therefore the time itself would be a massive one, and also I stated that every time we go through a loop something different happens, thus giving us multiple realities we can exist in.

As for god doing anything he wants, he could if he really tried (using he because it's easier then saying God constantly). Evil though will remain, as will good, because it is something in our minds. If something truly is evil, such as smoking pot, then why is it on the planet? God, who is supposed to be all "good" would try his hardest to remove all things that would cause sining, while also giving us slight freedom, and letting us know when something is evil... and don't get me started on the commandments, since the whole bible was fucked around with during the dark ages.

Spirits are just a continuation of ones spirit, it is most probably a piece of God that was used up to give us life, and everything has a spirit, i'm including plants besides animals because plants are sentient, just not "as knowledged" as we are, nor able to communicate with us, although they communicate with each other. After we die, a spirit moves on to another life, and this keeps happening over and over and over, and sometimes we get to rest our spirits in a place, let us call it Heaven for now, which is the waiting place before we are allowed back into the world of the living...

Those are my ideas, and please, shoot them down politly...

Just wanted to remind everyone, and I know DM read this, that Hawkings says it is completely possible for everything to exist without a creator. Not that he knows everything, but if I had to go with him or anyone else on this board ( maybe even including me) I'd go with him.