Is it ok to believe in God......

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Thought I had mentioned it to you before..but apparently I did not or you may not remember...

I experienced the most severe pain documented in science labeled as Trigeminal Neuralgia..an atypical chronic kind that is one of the most rare conditions that humans face..for 60 straight months from waking hours to sleeping hours for the nights and days I could sleep...

If that is just a comment on how the eyes of my baby picture look..well I do have very poor vision with one eye with a substantial astigmatism with one eye much weaker than the other..so it would stand to reason one eye might focus out to let the other eye see at least half of the 'visual story' if you will...

If that was some type of attempt to press emotional buttons with me through a verbal slight..sorry you can forget about that having any impact on me at all..I am fearless...the most severe pain known to mankind experienced for 60 straight months brings a great deal of respect for all others and also a great deal of personal strength when this pain is finally overcome...

I've experienced more happy things in my life in just the last 8 weeks...than I ever could have imagined could be possible..even before I fell ill if you will...

An anonymous 'barb' on an internet site..has the same impact as a feather tickling my shoulder if you will..or in other words it's only amusing..to me at least...

'Harm one of my loved ones'..and It will not be pretty..not you necessarily but anyone...as far as THAT goes...

despite the lack of the word "I" at the beginning of your sentence, i can understand it.


i was only joking in the sense that the philosophical flow of the thread would have to sidestep my nothing post and i enjoy being ignored sometimes.

i did not even know your avatar was a picture of you. i thought it was some character from a horror movie. i am sorry i was wrong and i will leave it at that.

Yeah its ok to believe, I was just joking with my prior posts.

No actually you did forget..we've already recently had this discussion as quoted here...your quote by the way:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5555309.html



So no 'we' will not leave IT at that...

You see I just corrected the record...

You see there is absolutely nothing 'wrong' with my mind...

I have a very good memory..

How 'bout you..my friend...?

Yeah...Whatever..huh...
?HEh!

i am sorry aghogday. i did not know your avatar picture was of you. it is going to sound insincere of me no matter what i say i have just realized.

let me think: ok. if a saw the baby in your avatar lost in public, i would certainly take it to a police station
so it could be returned to where it rightfully belongs.

whatever... just know that i will not make jokes outside of my field of competence about you or anyone else again.

So you can't prove logic--that logic exists without using logic? That's circular reasoning. Technically, that's absurd.


Depends on what you mean by "proof." Proof in this sense is not a universal thing. It is in the mind of the individual witness whether the Bible is "proved" to be true. But the Bible is what it is: Documented testimony of a body of witnesses who experienced God in various ways over a long period of time. If I were to say "the Bible is true because it says it is true," I'd be committing a logical fallacy. However, I don't take the Bible as a single work. I take it as a collection of works. One has to read the testimony itself and make up his mind whether to believe it or not. And there's nothing illogical about that. I've read it. I find it entirely plausible. There is no logical reason why I SHOULD disbelieve it.

That doesn't mean that you can't come up with a logical reason to disbelieve it, but that is a choice you make. Your position is roughly that faith is entirely illogical. I'd say based on the evidence that faith is, indeed, logical.


Wait...so you're telling me you don't need evidence?


You HOPE that a towing company will do the trick. You HOPE that you can trust a shop's reputation. You don't KNOW that you can trust either of them, at least you don't KNOW that from an initial state. You can't ASSUME that just because they came through for you once that they'll necessarily help you again. Your logic is faulty. Any time you call someone for help in those situations, you're stepping out on a limb. You're only taking it on faith that those people will fulfill their apparent purpose.


Are YOU sure you know what faith is? Because I don't believe God desires blind faith from believers. That would require gullibility. And if we're gullible, how do we know we even have faith in the right God/god, or that the deity(ies) we honor are even real? Or that what someone says concerning God/etc. is even true?

Faith is built upon evidence. It is not a suspension of reason. Christians, for instance, believe man is made in God's image; hence our capacity for reason is evidence of a similar reasoning mind possessed by our Creator. It is God's desire that we look for evidence to substantiate our beliefs, else there's no point believing anything. If God or any set of teachings supposedly inspired by God is to be taken as truth, we need some kind of evidence to verify the teachings are true and that they do come from God. If those things are verified, there is no further need for anyone else to nitpick them. They can be assumed to be true beyond that point, just like we can safely assume that there is something called gravity (regardless of how well we understand the mechanism behind it). You don't have to be particularly bright or sophisticated to understand "what goes up must come down." There's no need to check out gravity before you leave your house every day--you have FAITH that it works. The facts of the Bible would have been well-established at the times of its writing. There's not much point, if you find the Bible believable, to question it any more than there's much of a point questioning gravity for the average Joe. If you can come to that conclusion, it's reasonable to put faith in the Bible.

Sure, it's a "belief." Sure, it's something we have to take on faith without any MORE evidence than we have. But it isn't unreasonable. It's a justified, reasonable belief. And if you think about it, you'll notice more of your own actions are likely based on justified, reasonable beliefs than you're willing to admit.


Yes, and the same is true in drawing my own conclusions about God and things I've been taught about him.


Yes, and Christians have good reason to believe in God.


Not necessarily. Peer-reviewed journals are not free from being forced to print retractions. A valid argument could be made that peer-reviewed journals are merely mutual admiration societies. That doesn't reflect MY belief, granted, but PRJ's aren't always right and they don't always screen out the crazies. Every now and then they accidentally let some prankster or some guy with a hidden agenda get through. It's not unknown, and while faith in PRJ's is reasonable and justified, it is not without a sense of caution that we maintain that faith. The same should be said for religious folks as well.

In retrospect, whether your faith is in God, science, or some blend of the two, we all have some amount of gullibility.


Plenty of reason to trust God. If God is omnipotent, then he has the power to save or destroy our lives. If someone witnesses something that clearly cannot be explained within the realm of ordinary physical reality, then logic dictates that it is possible that something of an extraordinary, supernatural is at work.

And, don't forget, there's the cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments and their modern variations that serve as logical proofs of God. There's also the presuppositional argument, which is not a logical "proof" per se (transcendent argument) but does thoroughly call into question the reason why theists should even feel it necessary to be put on the defensive by anti-theists.

Based on the EVIDENCE, it seems that theism in one form or another is perfectly logical.


Logic is not based on observation of reality.

SCIENCE, however, IS based on observation of reality. Logic is, roughly, a mental process for drawing conclusions about, well, whatever the mind runs across...be it the physical universe or something else.

So, no, you're right that logic isn't based on faith. It's not "based" on anything, other than perhaps it's a sort of code that informs us how to run the machine ("machine" here metaphorically referring to the mind). Outside the mind, however, there is no such thing as logic.

And that's my point. We cannot prove that logic exists in a non-circular way. You can't make any argument to prove such a thing as logic without assuming what you're trying to prove.


The classical logical proofs for the existence of God. Read above. And that's just for starters.


I'd say that the dismissal of God is based on the dismissal of reality. I mean, if you dismiss science/logic, you're dismissing reality as well, but you're dismissing reality any time you dismiss any one of its components. I'd rather express an uncertainty than positively claim something I am unable to prove to someone.

Prove to me in a non-circular fashion that logic exists.

If you want me to believe there is no God, then you must prove to me God doesn't exist.

And, btw, my goal is not to "prove" that there is or isn't God/logic/etc. You mentioned that belief in God is illogical. I'm merely challenging an assertion that I do not believe you can support. You can only make the claims you've made by using (fallacious) circular reasoning

@Octobertiger
What I am saying to you is that he can't be governed by a book. He himself can't be governed by anything. It is his book that governs you, through its teachings, not snide mentioning of absurd fairy magic.

The Bible is a history book, and a book to live by. Everywhere it talks about God's nature, it never describes God having a solid rule to what he is. Most of the time it mentions him being all-powerful, indescribable, things that suggest he has both a free will, and the power to do anything a human can and can't imagine with the thought of his mind.
That is what the Judeo-Christian God is, and in this belief, we believe any other person telling us there are more than one God, Shintoism is the true religion, or that someone is an elf vampire and we should drink his koolaid, is wrong and doesn't believe in our (the) God.

Religions like Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, they promote collective thinking, all accepting for the most part. Yet to them, when a someone comes and starts telling the people they preside over for spiritual advice, that they are all wrong, and are going to hell unless they believe in God, they believe that person is not good for the health of their people. It is quite obvious as to why.

You can't believe in our (the) God, without believing what he told the world to do. That is monotheism. But as you said yourself, he can't be governed by a book. That doesn't mean he can be governed by any thing else we could comprehend either, as in rules, even the word God itself.

If anyone doesn't understand, anyone from any religion can believe anything science has to say, it is just part of the universe. It is usually mentioned in the front page of every religious textual anthology there ever was in the history of the earth, aka the creation story. To believe in the literal sense of the stories is up to us for the most part, but the concept of creation and everything in it is universal to just about every sentient being we know of. Religion is the handcuffs for science at all.

I have no idea with regard to your level of intelligence nor its relationship to my own, nor for that matter the intelligence of those who have done the research which I look to for understanding. However when you start talking of my subservience to the known evidence and what i perceive as your elevation of your own contemplation's above them, I seriously have to wonder about the way in which you are applying your intelligence.

Are you really suggesting that thousands of physicists, astronomers, chemists etc have missed the obvious evidence that you have hypothesised . That all the peer reviewed literature and experiments have missed this marvel of cognitive acrobatics. The scientific method allows for speculation and contemplation followed by the search for evidence. If evidence is found then it is rigorously tested again and again in an attempt to verify or falsify.

To quote Brian Cox "the really difficult thing is to learn not to trust what we like to think of as common sense. By teaching us to accept nature for what it is, and not for what our prejudice may suggest that it should be, the scientific method has delivered the modern technological world. In short, it works".

So if accepting the discoveries that science has made and also accepting that these discoveries are, by the very nature of the method that discovered them open to falsification, If dismissing as nonsense thought bubbles which have no correlation to the accepted bank of accumulated knowledge and for which no evidence has been garnered is being subservient to the scientific method. Then I am happily guilty.


Really



If I believe something that has no evidence and worse still the evidence points to the contrary, then that belief should not be presented as fact in a rational discussion. So far you have only spoken about your musings and have presented no evidence that you have investigated anything.



Stop the presses, burn the books, shut the laboratories, close the peer reviewed journals lets run the world on pure speculation, what a brilliant idea.



I would say you have to much capacity for philosophy and not enough for accepting the reality of nature

Agreed you cannot disprove something that cannot be proven this is the point of Russel's Tea Pot and why many say that it is absurd to be an atheist, which is why Dawkins states that he is agnostic about god in the same way he is agnostic about the tooth fairy.

You talk about the accumulated personal accounts contained within the bible as evidence of Gods existence, I find it interesting that in an age where we are beginning to understand the workings of the brain, where natural events that were once believed to be supernatural are now fully understood and where the population is highly educated, these experiences are becoming few and far between.

Just please be respectful and read more: William James, Zygon: The Journal of Religion & Science, "The Tao of Physics", "The Holographic Universe", C.G. Jung, Micrea Eliade - anything, even Socrates on virtue, but this! Relief for the universe is needed from the poorly typed, misspelled, ill-thought-out, inconsiderate drivel put out on this thread. Your "arguments" are going nowhere. Everyone might just as well go to their own corners, either for eternity or just the worm - as one chooses, or best deserves!

This is the very nature of forum discussions. I answered the OP's original question, with what I regard as reasonable qualifying statements, as with nearly all forum discussion threads the content and debate has gone past the original question. For me the question "is it OK to believe in God is not a simple one. It has many variables and these should be discussed.

Admittedly the thread has turned into "does god exist" so rather than insinuate that you are so more highly read than the rest of us, why don't you try and turn it back to its original quest, surely someone with your advanced learning, concise grammar, neatly typed and well considered opinions should be capable of that.

Religion has no say in science.

Thanks..apology accepted and appreciated..I like you B9 and always will...as i do know you are sincere..and do not hurt people on purpose...

IT IS impossible to discuss GOD without a clear and concise definition of God before the discussion starts..

IT IS impossible to define GOD as there is no clear and concise definition of God...

There for it is impossible to derive any 'objective' results per a discussion about God unless a clear and consie definition of GOD is set forth first...

So as you can see now..or at least anyone practiced at debate should see..

It is ridiculous to discuss GOD in an open forum when no definition is set first...

That IS why this IS only Amusing to me....

So WTF..Who is God..Bet you can not answer that one...

If not there is no FTW..possible in this circular rhetorical argument that has as much substance as the can that houses the worms...

Yeah! that's the definition of God Worms...

Get IT..

NAH...I did not think you would...

Simplicity at the smallest units is How god Works...

GOD that IS not a manmade construct of an empty vessel/vehicle of a three letter word with no clear or concise definition anywhere...

So I'll go for worms for the practice of this discussion as @least it is a starting point...

of something of whatever..if you will...

Of ONE that IS GOD as I seyes IT....

To deep !huh?heh!

Should be that way as Man to GOD is only a tiniest speck of dust..or lint on the wagging tale of a dog...

Yeah..that's just a metaphor my friend....

All of IT IS..just like the Bible..as iT was designed as such...and not to be taken literal..along the lines of black and white 'fundamentalist' thinking as the ESSENCE as IS is only changed when humans observe IT.. they never create the ALL that is ONE all encompassing energy of ONE..that part I may not prove..but I feel ALLl that IS that energy ALL and can manipulate iT2 simply by observing IT and Being as ONE WITH...

IT as IS IT IS ALL THERe IS!
NOWON as far as i SEyES!
SEYES......................Y
i
I
!

Of course I get it. I just do not wish to enter a debate on the nature of God from this point of view, I do not wish to discuss whether we are all god, whether the universe is god, whether the Interconnectedness of things is god etc, these things do not bother me, they are purely speculative and do not interfere with mine nor anyone else's life. If I or anyone else chooses to ignore them there is no consequence.

I do have an issue with the Abrahamic style of god, or any god who's believers feel they must interfere with the lives of others. Which is where I started out in this thread by saying, believe what you will but unless you have evidence to back up your belief do not force others to behave in the way your belief dictates.