And why it's not the other way around? I mean, you believe, because you want to (in your subconscious) and thereby disregarding any concrete proof.
God proved to me that he exists.
- Thread starter EmptyForceOfChi
- Start date
He can't convince me easily if he only talks in my head. I would always wonder if it was just me that thought of it. There would have to be some serious Battlestar Galactica shit going down for me to believe him. I mean like predicting a supernova or something. I know we have two halves of our brain and we could live almost normal lives without either of them. Perhaps there are parts of your brain that are capable of analysis and action that your conscious brain cannot achieve, and it is this that we sometimes access.
I personally wish our spiritual experiences were more widely taken to be something deep and personal...and not a good reason to force someone else to change.
I like Kurt Vonnegut's concept of "Foma:" harmless untruths that make you happy, and even though they're all lies, can lead you to be a good person and lead a good life.
I'm prepared to believe in lots of gods, but what have they done for me lately? So I'm not 100% sure about my own muddled faith in What's Out There. But I'm ok with that.
OTOH, I did a ritual to Hecate this fall, and a black dog was subsequently abandoned in my neighborhood-and I was the ONLY person he would let touch him.
Um, thanks. Considering he's dog #4, I'm going to rehome him and tell Hecate no more boarders the next time I do any ritual to evoke her. I will not be evoking Bast anytime soon, we already have 8 cats from rescuing.
If God was out there and felt it really important for me to believe in him/her/it/them, would not God do something about it?
That's what's always bugged me about Jehovah-he expects us to believe in him with faith alone...and is willing to barbeque us if we don't.
So why doesn't he just give us some impossible stuff to make us believe? I mean...if he made us to be questioning beings, right?
So Jehovah will barbecue us for being...as he made us. But he loves us. Erm....
I like Kurt Vonnegut's concept of "Foma:" harmless untruths that make you happy, and even though they're all lies, can lead you to be a good person and lead a good life.
I'm prepared to believe in lots of gods, but what have they done for me lately? So I'm not 100% sure about my own muddled faith in What's Out There. But I'm ok with that.
OTOH, I did a ritual to Hecate this fall, and a black dog was subsequently abandoned in my neighborhood-and I was the ONLY person he would let touch him.
Um, thanks. Considering he's dog #4, I'm going to rehome him and tell Hecate no more boarders the next time I do any ritual to evoke her. I will not be evoking Bast anytime soon, we already have 8 cats from rescuing.
If God was out there and felt it really important for me to believe in him/her/it/them, would not God do something about it?
That's what's always bugged me about Jehovah-he expects us to believe in him with faith alone...and is willing to barbeque us if we don't.
So why doesn't he just give us some impossible stuff to make us believe? I mean...if he made us to be questioning beings, right?
So Jehovah will barbecue us for being...as he made us. But he loves us. Erm....
Lol I know right, It's always some dude whos already pointing his camera in the sky for some wierd reason that spots something.
I always thought that in America you had a little town with a bunch of rednecks just sitting on their porches, pointing cameras wildly into the night sky drinking moonshine.
I don't have any pictures of it, but after doing some web searches I have found tons and tons of people with pictures and video footage of simular things, Lots of them are on Youtube and still I read some comments of non believers like with the Forest in germany that spelled whole Quranic verses out In Tree branches, The german government Bull-Dozed the area after many converted to islam after seeing it int he region. when i look at those pictures I just thought "yep thats the kind of thing I saw" only it felt more personal like it was just for me quickly in the sky where I was.
The people who look at these photographs dont seem to take any notice If i had pictures of it the reaction of non believers would be just as skeptical, like all the youtubers who replied to that tree thing I just Explained in germany.
Peace.
We have to prove Our-selves God could have made us all be born perfect with Un-swaying Faith but he didn't and for good reason. He already created the angels that are perfect and have no free will. He created lots of Angels but he wanted to create something that had free will, Something different to angels who only follow his commands, only praise him, only do work without rest or sleep.
He created us and wanted to see what we would do with our free will, Remember he is God creator of all things, somebody without anything stronger than him to challenge his power. Do you understand what it's like to be so great and powerful that the only things that exist are the things you Will into existence?. The only things able to entertain you are creating complex organisms and creating Love and emotions and systems and things that work without him having to know what they are about to do.
Its like only being allowed to watch a movie that you personally Directed and Edited, Who wants to go and watch a movie or see a Play production that they just Directed and spend 2 years writing, casting and Editing the special effects.
Free Will was key to his enjoyment I believe, He has great taste for beauty and art and also justice. Will we be as stoic and dedicated to him as his angels?, or will we totaly ignore him and think we are better than he?. Will we mock him or lead selfish cruel lives Enslaving weaker creatures where he lets us roam free and does not bully us even though he could play with us like ants under a magnifying glass.
Peace.
I know. Pattern recognition is one of the first symptoms of LSD. It's like the most basic thing the mind does in an altered state. What didn't he imbibe that he doesn't know this?
I dunno about that...there's an awful lot of awfulness in this world.
For me the explanation is government by committee...sort of...
But I basically couldn't accept benign neglect as an explanation for singular deity...because if he's all powerful, all-knowing, and he lets us suffer torment...he's not all loving, is he?
Maybe he's not all-knowing and all-powerful? That's one I leaned towards for awhile... the whole "leaving us alone," thing...but I was told in my biblical indoctrination that god is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving... and the fact that he would let innocents suffer if he truly cared.
I eventually came to a rather nasty conclusion-one the gnostics did: Jehovah lies.
And I'm afraid as illogical as it will sound to the rest of you (and is), for me that's a comfortable point to leave Christianity.
(Why do churches get knocked down by tornadoes? their god isn't the weather deity on this continent.)
I guess I have somewhat less animosity toward Islam, but if enough Muslims annoy me daily the way the Christians do, that may change.
Mr Chi...I suppose I shouldn't pick on you so, as you're a nice fellow, most obviously.
What you saw was very meaningful to you, and your faith makes you happy, so that is very well.
But I strongly suspect it was a message seen by your eyes alone.
can't force someone to believe in God.
gave you perspective?
(its not about you)
God put you in a position to help those critters and you are..
he did..he put you in their path..
i beleive the BBQ part is mans flavor..
because we still have to choose..if he gave us some proof that he exists, it would take away our choice to believe in him,
If he didnt slap you in the face you wouldn't be able to smell the roses.
After a child falls over and scrapes his or her knee a loving parent will show comfort and treat you.
The Parent Is not evil for letting the child run off into a world full of dangers, because to appreciate a world full of wonder, variety and Love you have to see the other side of the world too dont you see.
PEace.
i didn't want to believe, i just wanted to know one way or the other. if i hadn't wanted to know, i could have ignored the proof. but my best guess is that if i hadn't wanted to know, the proof would never have been offered. but i did, and it was, and i didn't ignore it. doesn't that seem reasonable?
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Ufos are an absolutely fascinating phenomenon.
The acronym 'ufo' stands for 'unidentified flying object'. It dates back to the early cold war, in the late 1940's and early 1950's, when there was fear of enemy bombers showing up suddenly over American cities with those new atom bombs in them. Radar wasn't entirely reliable in those days so that we also had human aircraft spotters that were assigned to watch the skies for suspicious aircraft that were termed 'ufos'. The term caught on.
Obviously ufos do exist. Nobody disputes that. Not every flying object is identified. The question is determining what those ufos actually are. Are they unidentified aircraft? Are they astronomical or meteorological phenomena that are being misidentified? Are they false reports with psychological origins, whether hallucination, imagination or abberations of perception? Are they popular stories, repeated and credulously believed?
I've seen ufos myself. I have a home overlooking San Francisco bay and there are usually many aircraft flying by. One day I saw this weird bright light in the sky. My binoculars revealed it to be a shiny silver aircraft making a turn and catching the setting sun's rays at just the right angle. Another time there was this huge white blob moving very slowly in the sky. My binoculars revealed it to be the large lighter-than-air rigid airship that's often around here, partly obscured by clouds and illuminated from an unusual angle. ("The blimp Frank! The blimp!!" for Captain Beefheart fans... actually it's a Zepplin.)
But ufo mythology has moved a long ways beyond its earlier origins in unidentified sightings in the sky. We have alien spaceships. We have all kinds of contactee tales. (For some reason women like to imagine that they've been kidnapped and raped by aliens.) We have mysterious implants that nobody seems able to physically produce and grand conspiracies about how the aliens have infiltrated earthly governments. (The Queen of England is supposed to really be an extraterrestrial reptile according to one popular version of the myth.)
It's really happening.
The thing is, I think that it's a social-psychological phenomenon, a popular-mythology phenomenon and a new-religious-movements phenomenon. What I'm much less convinced about is whether any of this froth hides a real extraterrestrial-visitations phenomenon. I'm inclined to think that it doesn't.
In other words, what I find fascinating isn't so much that aliens are visiting the earth, but rather that millions of people believe that aliens are visiting the earth. It demonstrates that myth-making, similar to what we saw in the ancient world, is still happening today. Ufos are a quasi-religious phenomenon in my estimation.
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this is a horribly insensitive thing to say.
i see your point about the religiosity though, and that's scary to me. i mean, the last thing we need is another religion right?
there are some who point out references to ufo's and god-like beings from the sky from many religions, dating way back.
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Originally Posted by Yazata
(For some reason women like to imagine that they've been kidnapped and raped by aliens.)
this is a horribly insensitive thing to say.
i would feel raped too if they stuck their probes in the right place..
I will add my similar experience.
My whole family witnessed this together. And I thank my mother for this, as she is the most religious of us all.
This happened during fajr prayer. My mother used to pray in our lawn outside. That day right above our house the sky was full of the names of Allah and Muhammad, the background was full of colorful flowers (yes colorful).
She wanted all of us to see it too so she called us all out. All of us saw it. We saw Bismillah (complete) in arabic written as clear as anyone can write it with a fine pen. Then it transformed into the Kalimah, in Arabic. This was happening on the left side of the sky. While Allah and Muhammad was written on the right side of the sky.
The kalimah then turned into a sword that spanned the length of our house (pretty big in Pakistan). And the sword swung from the left to the right (while the place you hold it remained there) as if someone swung it. My mother said this was the sword of Ali- who knows.
During this time there was also light rain on our house, while taking even a step outside our house there was no rain.
There were no huge clouds there. And on top of our house the only 'clouds' were just the stuff that was written the thickness of which was as if it was written with a pen. With all the Arabic properly dotted.
I was at the time 10 I think.
Now you atheists start laughing. I'm not going to argue though. :wave:
Peace be unto you
My whole family witnessed this together. And I thank my mother for this, as she is the most religious of us all.
This happened during fajr prayer. My mother used to pray in our lawn outside. That day right above our house the sky was full of the names of Allah and Muhammad, the background was full of colorful flowers (yes colorful).
She wanted all of us to see it too so she called us all out. All of us saw it. We saw Bismillah (complete) in arabic written as clear as anyone can write it with a fine pen. Then it transformed into the Kalimah, in Arabic. This was happening on the left side of the sky. While Allah and Muhammad was written on the right side of the sky.
The kalimah then turned into a sword that spanned the length of our house (pretty big in Pakistan). And the sword swung from the left to the right (while the place you hold it remained there) as if someone swung it. My mother said this was the sword of Ali- who knows.
During this time there was also light rain on our house, while taking even a step outside our house there was no rain.
There were no huge clouds there. And on top of our house the only 'clouds' were just the stuff that was written the thickness of which was as if it was written with a pen. With all the Arabic properly dotted.
I was at the time 10 I think.
Now you atheists start laughing.
I'm not going to argue though. :wave:Peace be unto you