Do you believe in God and supernatural beings?

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I have read several estimates of how many gods have been worshipped since the start of mankind. 2 million seems to be a average number. An athesist rejects all 2 million. Christians reject 1,999,999 of them. That's only a 0.0005% difference.

However to withhold belief or assent when evidence for the thing being advocated is -totally lacking- is just good sense and careful thinking.

It would be foolish to believe in the tooth fairy and unicorns because there is no evidence indicating these things exist.

ruveyn

Yes. The whole Earth,in a position JUST right for heat from the sun, with many things to help support life, just formed completely by randomness, and the creatures... by randomness.

Some can get around that, I just cannot.

Wherever the conditions are right for life... there you will find it.

If it were a random process, then it would indeed be very unlikely that advanced lifeforms would evolve. But it isn´t random. The formation of solar systems must be governed by the laws of physics, like everything else in the universe. Undoubtely there are so many factors that the ´outcome´ of a cloud of hydrogen and other molecules collapsing under the force of gravity won´t always be exactly the same, but space observations have already detected small rocky planets in the ´Goldilocks´ zone, so our solar system probably isn´t all that unusual. Our star certainly isn´t. There are countless yellow dwarfs in our Milky Way alone. Multiply that with [Carl Sagan mode on] BILLIONS and BILLIONS of galaxies.[/Carl Sagan mode off.]

Evolution isn't an entirely random process either. If it was, using our knowledge of population genetics to save an endangered species wouldn't work. I'll grant you that the factors involved that led to our existence are mindboggling and beyond our comprehension, but that just means that we are still too ignorant to understand the proces fully, not that there is no proces.

I can't get around the delusion that the Earth is in the right spot. It's not. Right is subjective.

And life is not magical. Science has shown that it's entirely natural for life to occur under certain conditions. You need to stop looking at life as a mgical distinction between objects and beings as the difference is completely arbitrary ... and quite fuzzy when you go down to the micro-level. What we humans call "life" is really just an outcome of various sequences of natural processes running over a very long time and making use of the ingredients necessary to formulate what we happen to consider "life".

I agree. But "not believing in unicorns etc." isn't quite the same as "not believing in God" (except perhaps logically the same, I'm not sure). Likewise "believing in paper clips" isn't quite the same as "believing in God" (except perhaps logically the same, I'm not sure).

Unicorns and paper clips (whether existing or not) don't raise any feelings of holiness, in either of us. God raises such feelings in me, but allegedly not in you. And this is what I cannot stop wondering. How can it be that some people voluntarily deny all that some other people hold dear?

I understand your point and superficially your reasoning is correct. But where are those other gods now, where have they ever been? Do people still study the books written about them? Do they have a role in anybody's life? And this is interesting: why doesn't anybody after a near death experience mention Ahura Mazda or Zeus?

Would it come to you as a surprise that this principle (not the exact figures) is already brought up in the Bible?

I've heard that there are 33 million gods in the Hindu religion, but I'm not sure if that's accurate.

Some people do still study the ancient religious texts about other gods. And there are countless references to them in our culture. So, in a way, they still are present.

In a very evanescent way.

There is more than one religion in the world. many of them believe in different gods.

One of the things thats rarely discussed is that the key difference between paganism and Christianity is Christ. The mystery religions - Sumerian, Pythagorean/Neoplatonist, the beliefs of the beliefs that Albert Pike was able to re-collate and Manley P Hall elucidate (ie. Scottish Rite Masonry) was essentially that all comes from the one, all are aspects of the one, and for as many gods as a system might have in their pantheon they and their behavior are still a drama and dance of aspects of the one.

Essentially when you have new agers talking about a system very much like Buddhism but with the exception of a God at the middle of it as 'source' and this seems like a pretty good summary of the Gnostic monotheism that paganism is at its core. Of course there's a lot more to it with Hermetic Qabalah, Knights Templar, Rosicrucianism, Masonry, etc. and all the bizarre things that people with enough time on Google maps that people can find like the same pyramid on the dollar bill laid out on Washington with the Masonic Temple as the eye of Horus, I'll post a video below just because I don't have nearly enough time to get into just how much these societies have loved to play with symbolism in architecture and city planning:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L777RhL_Fz4[/youtube]

Finding out what pagan beliefs were at their core as a Gnostic monotheism you get to see just how similar so much of it is and how many parallels get drawn.

One of the most interesting things though in the Book of Revelation of the Christian bible however is the notation of differences between the Beast of chapter 13 and the Beast of chapter 17 with the harlot on its back. The first beast seems to be part in parcel with the beast of Daniel 7, ie. the iron legs of Nebuchadnezzar's dream which was Rome - the 3 1/2 or 42 months fitting the seige of Jerusalem, 10 horns with three horns subdued by one or the head with a wound healed being 3 emperors dying within a year prior to Vespatian becoming emperor (who seems quite well to fit Abbadon/Apollyon 'the destroyer' and letting loose the 'locusts' for 5 months on Jerusalem before Titus was able to enter and destroy the city in 70 AD). This also makes Domitian the antichrist of that period.

The feet of iron and clay would be the Beast of Revelations chapter 17 (sorry Aleister Crowley - it not you) - ie. same seven heads, ten horns, and a woman in scarlet with the words written on her forehead "Mystery Babylon". The second beast is to have a beast as one of its members who will be of the first beast but will be the 'eighth'. The ten kings or ten toes of iron and clay would reign for 'one hour' (which sounds more like ten administrators of an event), much different than 3 1/2 years. You also have the kings of the earth drunk on her cup, which will extend to their people but it still seems to imply that she's a secret of the ruling elite.

All of this - for me at least - seems to polarize the mystery school teachings (New Age being the most public sanitized version) as one specific stakeholder in events that we may well see play out in the next year as they believe themselves to be attempting to bring about a new golden age but as such a pagan golden age. At the opposite end you have the Christian book of revelation speaking about the overthrow of an iron and clay empire which seems more like a shambling pseudo-empire (really seems to say that its not an upfront or geographic empire) and that its war against the Lamb will be defeated, which will be followed by Christ coming in glory and the millenial reign.

All of this rather clearly delineates Christianity and the stakes claimed from other religions. A lot of other mystery religions also have a triune godhead however its father, mother, and son, of which a rather disturbing sort or pseudo-remergence of Isis looks like it was attempted in the middle-age Catholic church.


Sorry to go off on a rant but I've been researching this stuff like crazy for several months. There's still all kinds of stuff that I'm learning as I go, most recently listening to some of Tom Horn's older interviews from the mid 2000's and hearing about how genetic chimera-making has really been about making bodies suitable for things not of our physical world which have been wanting to incarnate.

It might not 'all' be true but at a minimum the sheer amount theurgy in city planning that seems to show up everywhere and then even some of the just bizarre size/mass ratios seen in respect to the earth and moon, the sun, sacred geometry and numbers - there's a lot to this and while people with emerging schizophrenia or too much dopamine can see all kinds of crazy connections that most people would claim aren't there; this stuff I think just skips under the radar as a Type II normalcy bias. The evidence is a bit too assaulting to say that its all the product of minds on drugs or too much Red Bull.

What about the Hindus? Their religion is one of the oldest, and still has more than a billion followers. If a hindu had a near-death experience they would probably mention seeing something from their religion. Perhaps the ancient Greeks did have near-death experiences about Zeus or the other deities. You seem to assume NDes are actual religious experiences. I think they are just the brain going apeshit because of lack of oxygen. People will describe their experiences (hallucinations) in terms from their own culture or religion.

And what about all the people that lived before the current religions were invented? The Abrahamic God only appeared to humans somewhere in the last 6000 years or so. The people have been believing in other things for 194,000 years before that. Even more if you count the other species of genus Homo. It is possible Homo erectus had religion too.

Is there a "god" ??

I think, Absolutely not! and, Absolutely yes! I think this, both, simultaneously, for absolutely true effect.

I clearly identify as "Atheist" or "Agnostic", in order to function in a society that prefers these socially invented discrete categories.

But when i feel like it, i also believe in and do perform invocations to entities and deities. I know they do not exist, but in order to absolutely affirm their non-existence, it is necessary to affirm their existence in the first place, and vice versa.

It is a biological evolutionary result to become superstitious and intuit an imagined supernatural, to search for and see patterns, to fill in the gaps of limited comprehension. Do not hate god. Love god. Even if you know god(s) does not exist. You can still feel god(s) exists.

This is how god and gods came to be. Its nothing to be ashamed of, nor hate. Just work with it and through it. Not around it. Use god, don't let god use you!

Sublimation is the key. Its my key anyway.

Last edited by MannyBoo on 04 Mar 2013, 11:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.