Do you believe in God? (2022 edition)

Do you believe a higher power?

  • Yes

    Votes: 107 58.5%
  • No

    Votes: 52 28.4%
  • Maybe but not completely sure

    Votes: 24 13.1%

  • Total voters
    183

Th3Birdman

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But that's the point though. The concept of the divine, in its entirely, is outside our current understanding of the universe. Virtually every god man has made up violates several laws of physics, at the very least.

Reason dictates, we do not have the ability rationalize the concept of "God"

Even more of a reason to discard the notion, entirely.

We know the god of the Hebrews is made up. The god of the Christians is also a fiction, a pastiche of other proto-greek gods, most specifically Dionysus.

Do we know if there is an actual higher power, outside of those made up deities of the Jews, Greeks, Hindus, Muslims and Christians? No, we don't know that for a fact. But it doesn't matter, scientifically speaking. Science doesn't talk about gods. Hell, some prominent scientists are adherents.

But since we know the god of the Hebrews and Christians are fiction, what utility is there in even entertaining the concept, outside of controlling people?

The natural world is far more interesting than the mythical one, in my view. We just had a Blood Moon Total Eclipse a few days ago.

That's monumentally more interesting than stoning someone because they had sex before they got married:francis:
 

Mowgli

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Of course. Without the lord's prayer oh boy oh boy. When you say the Lord's prayer out loud you can literally see your life flash before your eyes as the words put everything in perspective.
Helps you understand why forgiveness is key. Letting go because you have a new day to try again while giving you the understanding of how what youve done before can be what destroys you later. Stay prayed up y'all and forgive these sad idiots
 

MikelArteta

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With this year alone...yes

  • Expose who truly cares of my family and I
  • Gave us shelter when we were down bad (hotels, our shytty in-laws, homeless shelter)
  • Provided a way of escape from my wife's shytty job that treated her like she was a face:mjpls:
  • Help me get my book published (yes it sold like butt but that's a milestone for most folks that just sit in front of work not being processed)
  • Helped us be sane during our time of sleeping in the car (able to wash, eat, and survive before the miracle happened)
  • Helped put it on the hearts of Coli brehs to save us from our biggest downfall
  • Provided a apartment to call our own and folks willing to help us with furniture
  • Finally got us out of Georgia into Koalabama
  • Found a church that is not on some other shyt (even the pastor is not perfect)
  • Finally helped me get baptized (long overdue)
  • Gave me back my wants and needs
  • Saved our marriage and my relationship with my son
  • Help my wife through the car accident that she was in (the car was wrecked but we hoping to get a new car with favor from a dealership)
Yes, there are moments where I question God, but this year alone made me realize that God is Able. He did the impossible and made folks mind blown of how we overcame such tragedies. You can't tell me a single thing of God's worth because it weighs more than the strength of man.

I am truly blessed to be able to say that I am a proud believer.


Now if the almighty can speed up this international/space thing so I can head to Eucalyptus Nova...that would be sweet:ehh:

My brother in the Lord and my steam deck breh :salute:

May God continue to bless you and your family :salute:
 

Professor Emeritus

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This was the only portion of your post that requires a response.

That's... just an assumption on your part at best, and factually inaccurate at worst lol

The catholic church, the largest denomination of Christianity, with 1.3 billion adherents, SPECIFICALLY base their beliefs on a literal interpretation of the bible.

They quite literally believe in god because they take the bible literally.


No they don't lol.

The Catholic Church existed for 300 years before they even decided to put the books of the Bible together. They existed for over 100 years before anyone had agreed as to which books went in the Bible. In fact, they existed for decades before some of the books of the Bible were even written.

The position of the Catholic Church has ALWAYS been that the community of the Church is the origin and center of the faith, not the Bible. They state that the Bible was put together by the community over time to record their faith, not to found it.

And the vast majority of Catholics believe in God because they go to church and are part of a community, or because they had a personal experience of God. I don't know a single Catholic who started believing in God because he read it in the Bible - Bible reading for Catholics virtually always comes after faith, not before. Claiming that Catholics believe in God because of the Bible is sort of like claiming that physicists believe in the laws of physics because of physics textbooks. You're confusing the origin of the thought with its documentation.



Also, Catholics don't believe in a fundamentalist "literal" interpretation of the Bible. They believe the Bible should be understood via the intention of the author, not through fundamentalist literalism. Thus it should be taken literally when the author is writing literally, and taken metaphorically when the author is writing metaphorically.





Rhakim, sit this one out dog. I get you're a believer, but you're letting your emotion cloud your otherwise rational arguments.


I thought we were trying to avoid logical fallacies? Don't throw in an unjustified Appeal to Motive and accuse me of being emotional when I have been debating from an informed, fact-based perspective through the entire discussion. That's the 2nd time now that you've attempted to dismiss my entire argument solely because I'm a believer.
 

Uachet

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I’ve always been a believe of God (hence my username) because this universe is far too complex and well designed for it to just magically come out of nowhere and I had instances in my life where I felt God’s presences which helped stir me away from certain troubles and dangerous situations.

I know that most of TLR tend to lean more on the agnostic side but I figured I asked anyway.

:yeshrug:
The universe is chaotic and very violent. Supernovas, Magnetars, Pulsars, Black Holes, planetary collisions, and so much more. The universe is far from being an orderly well-designed place.
 

Th3Birdman

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The vast majority of physics courses do nothing to delve into the nature of spacetime. Unless you take courses specifically in relativity, or sometimes upper division courses in quantum or astrophysics, it's not even going to come up.

Lol.

Spacetime is one of the basics of physics, my dude. Literally nothing in physics works without it, because gravity affects essentially everything. Everything that exists and has mass warps spacetime.

I'm well versed in spacetime, to answer your question.
Because I'm literally relaying what I was taught in university, and a position that I already proved to you exists via numerous papers on the subject

No, what you showed was there is discussion on the matter, as is par for the course in science. I can pull hundreds of practicing doctors in their fields of science that dispute evolution, even though we know evolution is a fact, and is scientific consensus.

Those links were not peer reviewed papers, they were people voicing potential hypotheses. You should know the difference.
Invoking the supernatural to explain something that philosophically can only occur outside of the natural realm is perfectly reasonable and isn't a "God of the Gaps" at all

Lol!

You cannot explain something by invoking the supernatural. That's what you're not getting; the supernatural isn't an explanation at all. Explanations make sense in the natural world; the supernatural exists outside of it. This is not a logical position to hold. Are you arguing just to argue?

It's a textbook god of the gaps argument: we don't know what happened before the Big Bang, therefore, god did it (in this case, god= a supernatural force, being, higher power, whatever).

That's the DEFINITION of god of the gaps:



You just tried to claim that any mention of the supernatural is a logical fallacy, and thus think you can forbid the other side of the argument from even existing. That's pure circular reasoning - you're a priori discounting any role for a supernatural God solely by declaration, not by evidence or logic.

This is word salad.

By definition, evidence is something that exists in reality. If you are attempting to invoke the supernatural as a cause for the universe's existence, you have to provide tangible evidence for that. Something we can measure, something tangible.

Currently, you have words. That's great. But it's not evidence. Hitchens had a great quote about this:

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence :banderas:
 

Th3Birdman

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Asia was a very religious continent before tyrants inspired by atheistic Frenchmen came though and literally genocided away anyone who refused to give up belief.

Yeah, but they didn't believe in the one that you do :sas1:

That was forced upon them by Europeans too :sas2:
 
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