What About God?

I dont believe in God. Never have, never will. I believe in science and the universe. I think religion is the cause of so much evil on this planet.

I believe that when you are dead, is it just blank nothingness, a forever dreamless sleep and I take great comfort in that. The notion of "life after death" actually scares me.

 

Especially if we have to carry this tinnitus in our eternal after-life.

 

Some people believe the body is left on this earth and our spirit, which is the energy counterpart leaves and goes into the spirit world. Whether this is true or not I have no idea. Try to relax because if there is another realm in which we dwell, it won't be a physical or material one like here on earth.

 

You cant blame everything on God, even if I sometimes do it myself. Is it Gods fault that most of us use really loud music into our earphones for a long period of time, causing us to damage our hearing? No.
You cant also expect a "Oh God please cure me" and get cured in a minute. The whole purpose of believing in God is to believe even during very tough circumstances. This is also why the reward is so great (if you believe in God/religion and all of this stuff).

If we all got sick and prayed to God and got cured within minutes/hours/days then we would all know of Gods existence and believing would be easy, which is indended NOT to be. If faith was easy everyone would believe. God made us free with a free will. So if I went and shot someone, you cant then say "If there is really a God why did this person get shot?".

I would have tinnitus my entire life for a reward in heaven thats for sure.

 

How would that even be? When we die our system stops working. The brain stops working and rots away, stops sending signals....everything stops working. And it's the working part that creates tinnitus. It's like saying you will take all your gold with you in the after life.

 

Exactly

But also for other reasons.....I just want to sleep for eternity, lol.

Seriously though, of course tinnitus ends with death, brain dead = NO tinnitus.

 

A wonderful thought Sandra and something I'm sure everyone would like. Somehow I don't think we will get that wish as I don't think our lives end at the grave and we just go to sleep for eternity. Things have happened in my life (which I won't go into) that leaves me in little doubt, that we are on a journey. The physical world in which we occupy at the moment, is only the first rung of the ladder. We have further to go in awareness and spiritual development.

Michael

 

I believe each one of us leaves behind an energy when we die, whether a good or bad one, and for some their energy is SO strong that it manifests into what we call a ghost or spirit. But my personal belief is that their is no consciousness in the after life.

It is an interest discussion and one I have had many times with friend and family. Actually I just had one yesterday with my mom.

 

My late mother was adamant there was no life after death and no one could convince her otherwise. She would say: Once you're dead you're dead and that's it. One week before she died, I and some other relatives were in the room while she lay in bed unwell. She suddenly started smiling and raised her hand and pointed saying: "There's my mum and my dad. We saw nothing but she clearly did.

Michael

 

If it's any consolation...

No afterlife: You won't have T because there won't be any you.
With afterlife: You won't have T because you leave your body (including the brain that caused T) behind.

Either way, it's something to look forward to. Unless there's a hell. Hell won't be hell without T in it.

 

Don't take it literally. It's just an irony.

 

>god wants to stay hidden and expects people to believe him without any proof, to judge faith, an obscure and useless virtue.

T.theist education.

 

How convenient your god is XD Citing verse of a book that is fairy tales and contradict itself don't makes it more real dude...
How about God?

How about common sens? How about reason? How about science? How about rationality? How about critical thinking?
How about stop being brainwashed?
How about using the rest of vitality people have here to actually take care of themself and move forward without false hope and snake oil workship?
How about experiencing spirituality without the dogma and stupidity of the bible?

 

That's the main argument. There's one more, though. Scientists can in great detail explain the mechanics of neurons firing off. But there's no convincing reason to why a binary process (something that is switched either on or off) should give rise to self-awareness. No matter the complexity of the signal patterns, it's still just a bunch of chemical reactions.

The escape artist Harry Houdini debunked a lot of so-called spiritualistic mediums who claimed to receive messages from the dead. As a genius stage magician, he could easily see through their cons. Before he died, he promised his wife to send her a message from the other side, assuming his soul was still in operational mood.

Then Houdini died and his wife never heard from him again. Ever. When it came down to it, neither love nor strength of will could overcome death.

Houdini's field experiment suggests that we're just flickering lights soon to be blown out, and that no spiritual sphere exists. Then again, common sense says that the depth of the sensations we experience cannot be generated by mere ions charging back and forth along cell membranes. It's simply unthinkable.

Here's the weirdest part of it all: We're stumbling through a terrain we can't even begin to understand. Yet, it's like someone told me the direction so loudly that I cannot possible forget about it. What's up with that?

Honestly, I'm not about to make sense of this anytime soon.

 

I don't think the existence of a god makes any logical sense, but I'd careful with confusing religion with God. The two are very different subjects. I think of religion as Man's attempt to put "God" in a box like a hamster.

 

Michael, excellent post

 

Interesting. Can you give me the best example of what happened to make you think that?

 

I respect suffering members' need to rant due to our suffering. But I hope we don't use this forum and this thread to bash God nor His believers who find support and comfort in their trials with their faith in God. I hope there is consideration for others of faith that we won't abuse our rights of self expression without consideration for others' feeling by bashing the deity with vulgarity nor profanity even if it is so tempting to do so in our anger and frustration.

Saying that, I respect people's choice to believe in the existence of God and a superior intelligence or not. I mean, if the Democrats and the Republicans in the State, or the Liberals and Conservatives in Canada can't agree on a single issue as intelligent and grown men/women, what chance is there to agree on religion and God. LOL.

Faith is a personal thing. You have to live it to know and to experience the love of God. I am someone who had lost my only son who bled to death in my arm in a tragic accident. I suffered untold grief for it. But I don't blame the loving God a bit and He had given me comfort in incredible miracles to reassure me my son's continued existence in a glorified state in the realm beyond. I can't deny these sacred experiences as much as I can't deny the sun rises from the east. God has never promised a smooth, painless, struggle-less, illness-free life for us. He didn't even promise this for Jesus, His only begotten son, nor his followers in the ages of old. They got persecuted, stoned, beheaded, even crucified. They suffered illnesses like the case of Job. So why should I a mere mortal expect any special treatment. But to each its own.

I believe a superior intelligence of the Universe exists. There is evidence of that intelligence and there are so many laws governing this universe, nature, and even in our human body. Take the ear and hearing. Sound travels in waves, which vibrate the ear drum, and then transmit that vibration through the inner ear through conduction of bones using some principle of Hydraulics, then the inner hair cells vibrate based on the frequency of the sound waves using the principle of Resonance in physics. Then through a series of electro-chemical processes the signals are transmitted in the brain for interpretation. That process is too deep to even cover here involving too many laws of physics and chemistry or whatever. Well, do you expect the DNA & basic cell materials to have the intelligence to understand that sound travels in waves and the law of physics as above mentioned? Isn't that even more unbelievable too?

Take the eyes, to have clear vision the DNA in cells again need to know light travels in waves. To see clearly, light waves and photons needed to be converged to a single focus for sharpness. This process is using a law of physics in light called Refraction. When light passes through a curve convex surface, it can be bent and converged to a focus for sharp images. So some basic cells have to understand that to build a soft gel structure, our natural eye lens to do this job. Again the process where those receptor cells convert the light to electro-chemical signals to go through the nerve fibers and neurons are just too complicated to talk about here. To expect the DNA in cells to understand all these to achieve clear vision is probably more improbable than winning a lottery.

These are just some of the most basic of bodily functions which require very complex understanding of physical laws and chemistry. We are not even talking about the much more complex laws involved in the embryo and birth process, not to say the thinking or intellectual processes in our brain. I simply don't think millions of years of evolution from the some protein molecules or basic cells can come up with all the wonders of nature and the universe. I mean do these basic cells made up of quartz, protons, electrons & neurons really have more intelligence than our brain to come up with this grand scheme of intelligence? I mean with all the seeming intelligence of men and their accumulated knowledge and powerful or precision machines such as this computer, we are far from achieving anything these basic cells can do. Think even deeper, if you were one of those basic cells, how on earth you and your tiny bit of existence made up of protons, neutrons, and wildly spinning/vibrating electrons or their sub-atomic particles such as quarks can have the intelligence to understand that light and sound are made up of different kinds of waves, and that they have to understand all the physical and electro-chemical laws to make them work in unison so we have hearing and vision?

I have to concede that there is simply something beyond human ability and beyond human comprehension. Even Einstein himself didn't rule out God, nor Newton. If super bright minds like them and modern scientists can't crack the code of the Grand Unified Theory, a theory of everything, then with my little brain of limited understanding I likewise can't rule out a superior intelligence out there. But to each their own. After all, faith is to be lived to feel its reality. That is one thing people can't understand by mere logics and by the limited knowledge we humans have amassed.

Is there life beyond the grave? I hope so. I have a son who I want to see again in the next life. No one knows for sure of course. But there are hundreds of videos on youtube of those who have gone beyond and back due to near-death experiences and tell us their vivid stories of the life beyond and many bear striking similarities. Can they all be wrong? I have 3 persons I know who have told me their near-death experiences just like those youtube videos and they don't sound like they are lying. But I respect those who don't want anything to do with continued existence. My humble 2 cents.

 

The world is not a wonderful place, thanks to human beings, and humans will likely destroy the entire planet and all life on it, one way or another. If there was a god, it would not have created a creature like us.

 

You are showing a profound lack of understanding of the process of evolution. The DNA does not "understand" anything.

After you learn how evolution functions, you might want to look into an artificial intelligence technique called Genetic Programming. This technique can be employed to Evolve complicated computer programs, to Evolve solutions to mathematical problems, and to Evolve engineering solutions (e.g., circuit board design) that are better than solutions to the same problem that had been patented by humans.

 

Scientific explanations for all of those experiences have been available for a long time now.

 

Just go to YouTube and you will see and hear from many people why they believe we are on a spiritual journey and life doesn't end at the grave.

 

There is no proof or evidence, right?

 

Exactly Bill, there is no proof and that's the first thing people start saying. Much of "so called scientific evidence" and I'm talking about how human beings evolved etc and mean no disrespect, I believe is a lie that we have been told. For this reason, to avoid getting into a slanging match I have advised people that are curious go to YouTube.

Michael

 

Michael, for thousands of years people believed storytellers and did not require proof. They thought of faith in something that has no evidence to support it as a virtue. During that time, people lived in misery. Then people started using the scientific method and their living conditions began to improve. This is the reason why I prefer to rely on the scientific method.

 

I respect what you're saying Bill. It for this reason there are three subjects that I don't delve too deep into: Politics, religion and money, because most of the time they cause arguments.

I wish you well.
Michael

 

What was the incentive to lie? And didn't the Church have an incentive (and the funding/means) to disprove the lies?

 

Faith is indeed a very personal thing. However faith is a very poor method to utilise when searching for the truth of reality. I tend to to associate the word Faith with believing in something for no good demonstrable reason.

The scientific method is the best we have for building consistent models of the reality we find ourselves in. No God claim has ever been demonstrated to meet its burden of proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The comment from Michael above about the "lie" of evolution is an interesting one. I'm not exactly sure what such a conspiracy would achieve?? Even if evolution was proven false tomorrow it does absolutely nothing for any theistic claims. You can't explain this therefore god is one massive logical fallacy and an argument from ignorance.

Near Death Experiences are an interesting phenomena for sure. The human brain is highly susceptible to hallucination. Especially when in high stress situations, which i'm sure we can agree the shutting down of the human body is. It's a nice thought that our deceased loved ones come to take us when we leave this rock but there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case.

 

There is certainly an incentive to lie Bill. As you are a believer in "science" I will assume that you do not believe there is a God, a creator or higher spiritual being. So it's pointless me going further as I'll be shot down in flames by you and others here that can't wait to jump on the bandwagon. You have always been respectful towards me and others so I know you will refrain from using insults.

All the best
Michael

 

What is it? I am genuinely curios. I would never insult you.