Elite47 Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 Why should i believe in God?Because i was raised to believe in God? Because ive went to church all my life? Because the bible says so? What if i CAN'T believe in God? it's not like i said one day "I dont believe in the existance of Jesus Christ". The existance of god seems false to me, and i can't think otherwise unless i was given sufficient proof. If i can't find proof, obviously i can't prove he exists. All the other reasons i would believe in god don't seem right to me. I automatically question it because it is not proved to be factual. Why would i believe in something thats not for sure, and dedicate my life to it? That's just the way i think. Like i said, I didnt decide one day that i jus't didn't believe. So now by God's definition, i am going to go to Hell. Wow, isn't that real nice. I get to burn forever because my brain seems to think that the existance of God is illogical. i just dont see how its possible. For me to believe in God is to believe in something that NATURALLY seems wrong to me. I don't want to go to Hell. If I could save myself by believing in Jesus, I would. how would i go about convincing myself that God exists, when i truthfully think he doesn't. I *CAN'T* believe he exists. So now im going to Hell... forever will i burn in agony and suffer in the hands of Lucifer. Kinda sounds like Sadamm in a way. God: "Believe in me or burn in Hell"Sadamm: "vote for me or feel my wrath"How can any of you Christians believe in God, knowing that me and millions of other people in the world will be tormented forever when we die- just because we didn't believe. I bet many Christians just say they are Christians because all of you true Christians have scared them to believe they're gong to hell when they die.
lowzeewee Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 that was a question i asked earlier:if a budddhist/muslim/hindi/tamil/other non christians who do good like donating to charity,help out at homes for the unfortunate and practically just do good,will he go to heaven where the christians go to?ANd if hitler was a staunch christian,will he go to heaven?
GhostHunter Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 I totally agree with you here GZA. It is totally IMMORAL to say "You do not believe in me even if you do not commit bad crimes you are going directly to hell." So I ask you all this, would that not make god better then a evil driven dictator?
lowzeewee Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 but pple want u to believe in him because they claim that he create you,send jesus down to *die* for you to *take away your sin*.I m an atheist who is leaning towards the side of the egyptian sun god
Aeris Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 Personally, I don't believe the whole "you're gonna go to Hell if you don't believe in God" thing. I think it depends on what kind of a person you are, and, why should I believe in a God that says "if you don't believe in me, you'll have eternal pain!" Oh, yeah, he sounds nice. A reason to believe in God would be that sometimes, when you just feel hopeless, it's niec to have something that you're sure of. I can't say that I am, but I think it's a good reason. If God is what most people make him out ot be, I don't know if I would want to praise him. (I hope I donnot offend any devouts)
Acriku Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 I've had this thought, and came up with this: If there is a hell, maybe I'll get a tan. God knows I need it!Basically, since I do not believe in any god, I have no worries about hell or heaven or any other "promise" or "condemnation" and because I choose not to live in fear of any god. If god is real, then I say he has failed in all diplomatic attempts at getting me to believe in him, and I will then wage war on him alongside with Satan and his followers to overthrow god's regime. :)*Anticipates a preaching about to be posted...*
Elite47 Posted March 20, 2003 Author Posted March 20, 2003 Basically, since I do not believe in any god, I have no worries about hell or heaven or any other "promise" or "condemnation" and because I choose not to live in fear of any god. If god is real, then I say he has failed in all diplomatic attempts at getting me to believe in him, and I will then wage war on him alongside with Satan and his followers to overthrow god's regime. :)*Anticipates a preaching about to be posted...*LOL true, I never thought of it that way.
sneezer3 Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 You aren't going to get much of an answer here. 50%+ are athiests. You'd be better off asking a Christan you know. They probbly could give you a better answer then i could. Why should i believe in God?Because i was raised to believe in God? Because ive went to church all my life? Because the bible says so?What if i CAN'T believe in God? it's not like i said one day "I dont believe in the existance of Jesus Christ". The existance of god seems false to me, and i can't think otherwise unless i was given sufficient proof. That is understandable. You know God said "An evil and adulterous(sinful) generation seeketh after a sign"God has given us much evidence. In Science In Creation and in Prophecy. But if you can't belive as is, you won't belive at all. evidence or no evidence.Science:He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing -Job 26:7Creation(no other explanation aside from God) In the begining God created the heavens and the earth -Genesis 1:1I don't want to go to Hell. If I could save myself by believing in Jesus, I would. how would i go about convincing myself that God exists, when i truthfully think he doesn't. I *CAN'T* believe he exists. So now im going to Hell... forever will i burn in agony and suffer in the hands of Lucifer. Kinda sounds like Sadamm in a way. God: "Believe in me or burn in Hell"Sadamm: "vote for me or feel my wrath"God gives you a choice.God: Heaven or hell your choice.How can any of you Christians believe in God, knowing that me and millions of other people in the world will be tormented forever when we die- just because we didn't believe.That is what i am out there to prevent.God loves you.
Acriku Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 :D I was right in my anticipation...In that whole post, you did not answer the main question - why should he believe in god? All you did was preach that a bible written by human beings points very vaguely to anything that pertains to science, and that god has given us a choice: heaven or hell. This isn't giving someone two choices and let them freely pick from them, this is giving the dog food or giving the dog a gunshot wound. Do this or burn for eternity! Mwahahah! On the other hand, who said Hell was so bad? Shoot, if I went to Hell I'd be expecting Pleasure Paradise - all the things God says not to do. Oh dear lord, no body motion lotion? NOoooooooooooooooooooooooooo! This is hell!!
IxianMace Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 LOL Acriku, hell is usually portrayed as a place where there are lots of fires, people get tortured for eternity in all sorts of ways, are forced to do hard labour, etc etc. :PI never thought that it could be considered in the light that you've just put it in. :O 8) :) :D ;D
sneezer3 Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 Hell is a serious thing. the Bible in Matthew 8:12 says there will be weeping and whaling and gnashing of teeth(pronounced g-ash-ing)
Egeides Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 Why believe in Bible? You seem like someone who uses rationality, which is also my case. There is no contradiction between rationality and God, otherwise it wouldn't be truth and God having anything to do with false = not God.Now when I say using rationality to see God, I don't mean proving God by rational arguments really. I mean to look if we can't find a touch of perfection in rationality itself. If you do find perfection into rationality, then this is why you should believe in God. Otherwise, why would the laws be perfect when they could have been of an infinite other ways? To be more precise and push the reasoning: because you would have found in rationality perfection, then in rationality would be the presence of beauty, truth and good (Plato). These three cannot be dissociated, otherwise something is wrong; thus you may search any of these three to find two others. Moral, truth and love are themselves these three things.... they do exist. In science, always the most perfect path is taken while it could have been any other. Why do you think?I wont start explainng it entirely, but I personally believe that there is truth. There is only one truth since it canot be two things at once. Things are perfect. I mean that the realm of ideas (morality, rationality, art) is perfect (there is only one correct answer, on truth. Only one moral way, one good. Same for beauty), which is what really exists.Plotinus says that evil does not exist: it is the absence of good.Up to you to see if you see perfection in rationality (or in beauty, or in moral if you wish).There is no such thing as "Believe in me or you go to hell", which is close to Saddam's "vote for me or suffer". There is only beauty. Follow beauty/truth/good and you will find God. Even if you give to your feelings towards beauty another name, who cares? It's God (well this is my personal belief). The only thing is that for someone who passes to faith, he has certitude. From this moment he's sorta invincible. When I say certitude, I do not mean rational certitude, I mean that you know you are doing th right thing, you know that anyway it is what you saw as the best and that even if you would be proven false, you went the right way cuz you went the moral way (I mean beauty here, so I mean peaceful. I mean the way of a heart that does not hate and so on). Even if you would be proven wrong, it was moral for you to doso since you followed what to you was the good path (St Augustine here). Personally, I know someone who's like this and a guy came to him with a gun on his head once. Reaction? He was rolling on the floor, laughing. Let's say the other guy never understood a thing. So the guy I know just thought at the end of the day that it was pretty positive since what it had brang him was a good laugh face to how much the other looked silly to think he would even touch his person or make him afraid.Did ya understoof anything I said?... I know I didn't put rational order into this... I didn't put it into words entirely in a perfect structure, it's very messy. (would ask quite a bit of work to make rder i guess)
Egeides Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 Hell is a serious thing. the Bible in Matthew 8:12 says there will be weeping and whaling and gnashing of teeth(pronounced g-ash-ing)Curiously, people are incredibl afraid about hell. Jesus seldom was talking about it. Something built on beeng afraid is not beauty, thus it is not the good ange to look at. Jesus was constantly talking about how marvelous things were... he said why another path was just going to something you dont want. Start steeling: will you be more HAPPY? No. It doesn't give happiness. It's like consumption... people 100 years ago could be as happy as now with less. Thus hapiness is not based on this. Consumption is only useful to make things easier, but it is not happiness. Same for everything that's against moral (Jesus' words if u prefer): it's empty stuff when it comes to fill your happiness baloon. Empty stuff when it is time to fill yourself (I mean to BE, evolve).Why do the ones we see often always are trying to show bad stuff while Jesus didn't? It is like when I want to show my little sister that playing outside is fun. How could she find the fun in it when all she sees is how boing it is inside?So how can someone find happiness when all he sees is fear/unhappiness? He'll be a wanderer running after "beeing abslutely sure because I'm afraid I may not be".A life's goal is to find how beautiful are things, not to find how ugly they could have been.I have no specific fear about "sin". A will to not do so, yes. Fear I may do so, no.
Acriku Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 Egeides- perhaps beauty, truth, and morality, are figments of our boundless imagination? Do these figments necessarily lead to a god? That is a personal ponderment. For me, these lead back to themselves, in a cycle of themselves. Although, I do not find perfection anywhere, but I can see the beauty in life and propel that inspiration to my own personal beauty - poetry. We each use what we see and feel towards different conclusions and ends.Sneezer, aka Kirk- Gnashing is pronounced na.shing. Also, the bible mentions no "wailing." Jesus says that the children of the Jews shall be cast out into the outer darkness, with the associated weeping and gnashing of teeth. I assume outer darkness means hell, and it says nothing of ourselves. Only the children. Also, it says there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for the children of the Jews, but again says nothing of what will be, in hell, for us.
Nyarlathotep Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 You don't have to believe in God. And not believing in God doesn't mean you go to "hell". I've been reading a lot and had an interesting confersation (which lasted over 4 hours) with a co-worker who believes in God. What ever I threw at him stating that God doesn't exist, he countered with logical explanations in favor of God's existence. One of his (to me) surprising statements was that "hell" doesn't exist. Remember that different people have different interpertations of what the bible states. As far as I understood from my confersation, my co-worker stated that everyone goes to a better place. He also said that Heaven in't anything we imagine it to be. It's a better place, but no where near "up there" as we look at it. I'll see if I can have him join here and let him talk to you guys about it. It's quite interesting :)
Edric O Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 Funny how you capitalize "Satan", yet not "god", Acriku... ::)First, let's discuss the issue of hell. For the millionth billionth time, people, God does NOT "condemn" anyone to hell. Jesus NEVER said "believe in Me or go to hell". He said "follow Me and I will give you eternal life". There is a big difference.You see, when a soul goes to hell, that doesn't require any action whatsoever from God. Imagine a stone falling down. It falls on its own, and would fall anyway, without being influenced by you in any way. You can take action and catch it, thus preventing its fall. In that case it is thanks to you that the stone didn't fall. But if you simply do nothing, the fact that the stone fell had nothing to do with you. You were passive. In a similar way, a soul goes to hell naturally, like the stone falls. God does NOT "condemn" anyone to anything - He is simply passive. If you don't want Him in your life, He'll respect your decision and stay away. He will be passive and let the stone fall, because you told Him to leave you alone. But if you ask for His help, only then He will intervene and catch the stone.Secondly, you asked us for a reason to believe in God, GZA... But none of us here can give you an answer. No matter what we say and argue, the reason can only come from within. My own reasons for believing are entirely personal - no one else other than myself would understand them. You see, GZA, this is only between you and God. If you want a reason for belief or disbelief, do not look to me, or to Acriku, or to Church preachers, or to zealots of atheism, or to mathematical formulae and scientific theories... look within YOURSELF, GZA. Pull yourself away from the restless emptiness of the modern world and take a moment to contemplate your own true feelings, and the miracle of life all around you.That is the only advice I can give you...
Warlord Ripskar Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 Generally the "Thou shalt burn in hell" bits are found in the old testament which is rather conservative.The new testament goes all liberal and is obsessed with forgiveness.It's rather like there are 2 completely different gods who are the total opposite of each other.Then of course if you don't believe in god do you believe in Hell?Sit back and relax because there's less evidence for the existance of hell than there is for god.Oblivion welcomes the recently deceased!
Edric O Posted March 20, 2003 Posted March 20, 2003 It's rather like there are 2 completely different gods who are the total opposite of each other.If you pay more attention, you'll notice that it's actually quite obviously the same God. The only difference is that He's talking to 2 completely different sets of people.
Acriku Posted March 21, 2003 Posted March 21, 2003 Funny how you capitalize "Satan", yet not "god", Acriku...Heh, somebody caught that one ;)First, let's discuss the issue of hell. For the millionth billionth time, people, God does NOT "condemn" anyone to hell. Jesus NEVER said "believe in Me or go to hell". He said "follow Me and I will give you eternal life". There is a big difference.God passively condemns us to hell. You describe it in the next paragraph....You see, when a soul goes to hell, that doesn't require any action whatsoever from God. Imagine a stone falling down. It falls on its own, and would fall anyway, without being influenced by you in any way. You can take action and catch it, thus preventing its fall. In that case it is thanks to you that the stone didn't fall. But if you simply do nothing, the fact that the stone fell had nothing to do with you. You were passive. In a similar way, a soul goes to hell naturally, like the stone falls. God does NOT "condemn" anyone to anything - He is simply passive. If you don't want Him in your life, He'll respect your decision and stay away. He will be passive and let the stone fall, because you told Him to leave you alone. But if you ask for His help, only then He will intervene and catch the stone.You call it passive action, I call it negligence. A baby is sitting on the rail facing outwards. You watch her back from 2 feet away. Oh no! She is slipping off! You stand there. And wait. She doesn't cry out for help, she doesn't know anybody is there. Analogous to not knowing god. You stand there. And wait. You just recently told your friend inside that you want every baby to live a full life and prosper. You hear the splat. You go back inside. This is what I see god doing. I have my back turned to him, I fall when I die, and I go splat into hell. god could have saved me, could have pulled me off the rail and set me down. Nope, indeed he stands 2 feet away watching. He knows I do not know he is there, but does nothing. Secondly, you asked us for a reason to believe in God, GZA... But none of us here can give you an answerCompletely agree.
Egeides Posted March 21, 2003 Posted March 21, 2003 Funny how you capitalize "Satan", yet not "god", Acriku... ::)First, let's discuss the issue of hell. For the millionth billionth time, people, God does NOT "condemn" anyone to hell. Jesus NEVER said "believe in Me or go to hell". He said "follow Me and I will give you eternal life". There is a big difference.You see, when a soul goes to hell, that doesn't require any action whatsoever from God. Imagine a stone falling down. It falls on its own, and would fall anyway, without being influenced by you in any way. You can take action and catch it, thus preventing its fall. In that case it is thanks to you that the stone didn't fall. But if you simply do nothing, the fact that the stone fell had nothing to do with you. You were passive. In a similar way, a soul goes to hell naturally, like the stone falls. God does NOT "condemn" anyone to anything - He is simply passive. If you don't want Him in your life, He'll respect your decision and stay away. He will be passive and let the stone fall, because you told Him to leave you alone. But if you ask for His help, only then He will intervene and catch the stone.Secondly, you asked us for a reason to believe in God, GZA... But none of us here can give you an answer. No matter what we say and argue, the reason can only come from within. My own reasons for believing are entirely personal - no one else other than myself would understand them. You see, GZA, this is only between you and God. If you want a reason for belief or disbelief, do not look to me, or to Acriku, or to Church preachers, or to zealots of atheism, or to mathematical formulae and scientific theories... look within YOURSELF, GZA. Pull yourself away from the restless emptiness of the modern world and take a moment to contemplate your own true feelings, and the miracle of life all around you.That is the only advice I can give you...About science and all that isn't what should be looked for:Maybe that ultimately it is withing yourself that you find God, but some things may serve as tool to get there. I used rationality to go further on this. I may be a rare case, but it is one of the tools. I beliebe the other tools are beauty and moral. But I agree with you that whatever the tool you use, the result is within, what counts is within. And no surprise to this since our person isn't an exterior being, it's US.
Egeides Posted March 21, 2003 Posted March 21, 2003 "You call it passive action, I call it negligence."Without human making a choice, is the human what he is? I wish to become what I am, not to be what I've become. Then only will I really be myself and free.
Acriku Posted March 21, 2003 Posted March 21, 2003 Become what you are, or what god knows you are? Hmmm...
TMA_1 Posted March 21, 2003 Posted March 21, 2003 you dont have to believe GZA. It is that simple. You have a free will and totally dont have to accept it. There are always consequences though. You are risking your own self and not me or others so you dont have to do anything.
Egeides Posted March 21, 2003 Posted March 21, 2003 Do you believe in Rael's Elohim just because Rael says that you should, otherwise you're in trouble?He only has to know if he has to believe or not. Believing "just in case God exists" is dishonnest to ourselves and believing by fear. It's an ideology that Catholic Church was perpetrating during Middle Ages with an even stronger tone: "be afraid of sin, you are nothing, you are the cause of everything that is bad, fear God!". It's way different than what comes out of Jesus' words.Of course you personally believe that people not believing in God are lost, but he should act towards he believes, not towards another human's beliefs.
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