Originally posted by Super Marie 64
[b]One of the good kind, I imagine. That's my impression of you over the years, at least. Keep up the good work, sister.Can't say I'm a big fan of those who live the Christian life just to stay out of Hell, either. So obsessed with living free from sin out of fear of Hell, that they forget what Christianity really ask of you. It's not "stay out of Hell"
[/B]
TO be honest, I believe It asks you do be the best you can be, kinda like a good parent would. ^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNf-P_5u_Hw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc-mrJf45Hg&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjAegPhQOUg&feature=related
pretty much sums up things from how i see it... its a massive misinterpretation that changes every age, and that people use for their own beliefs, either to help them live better lives, to stay out of hell, or for their own personal gain. things made in the past have a translation error. you cant take words as the meaning they have today. translated or not. you cant follow something blindly either.
it helps people with hard lives believe in something better. the most religious people had the hardest upbringings. and the most superstitous(?) (i have butchered that word, i just woke up) people are often the poorest, or grew up poor. that, and you can never really trust organised religion. massive world spanning religious influences have caused more dead and madness (MADNESS?! THIS IS SPARTA!!!) and wars than any other single thing in history.
people take it too literally. its just a guidline on how to live better and be a better influence on the world. it should never be taken as a strict order or literal path to live your life. theres no way you can take every word said in the bible and apply it to life now. times were different when it was written. and it is not written by god. it was written by men who believe they were following god. so its their personal views that have been changed over time to nothing of what it originally meant.
plus, theres many, many religions that were around LONG before christianity. (and if you watch those clips, and actually look into them, you'll see alot of religions are fundamentally the same) so i cant in any reasonable thought say that i can follow any religion. when i was around high school age, i researched religions and myths (same thing, really) as a hobby. looked into a lot of works because, well i was bored and i wanted to see why people were so religious. because i never was.
i use god or jesus as figures of speech, because i grew up hearing it. but all my family is religious, but i never saw the point in it. my common sense even as a child saw too many contradicitons. so.. i looked into it. and this is (pretty much) how i see things.
the difference in what i believe from those clips is that i know people take confort in their beliefs, and i can respect that. even though i see it as unneeded and false. but i still think its important to let people believe in SOMETHING. just as long as they're not pulling out pocket bibles and trying to preach to me that im a sinner, im fine with whatever someone else believes. as long as its not scientology. that shits ****in recockulous.
I am, since long, an atheist. For reasons intellectual and emotional, I can not believe in a God that gave the world humanity. I feel this necessary to mention, before I go into the topic, because I do not want what I'm about to say confused as the words of a religious devotee. I include this, because I want to be viewed as a voice of reason, of intellect or outright criticism rather than one of faith in God.
I sat down when time could be spared, and watched the video that you linked. I will be completely honest and say that I was doubtful of its content by reading the title alone. I can't imagine I'm the only one that reacted to it, but that's for a different discussion.
I cross my fingers that your belief is not a product of this video, and I will explain why. It is designed in such a manner that it angle the similarities between religions and use it against religion. It is biased and it is a theory, albeit strongly supported one. It does however fail at being fair towards the case it's making, for no other reason than the fear of having a different interpretation. Any respectable theorist has to include the things that go against the case as well, otherwise it's propaganda and not documentary. He's leaving out a great deal that is worth mentioning, which I'll illuminate.
For example, when he spoke of astronomical readings, about analyzing the stars and symbols of the sky, the sun and the moon. Light and darkness, why did he not include the Maya and the Sumer, which were the ones to initiate the art of astronomy? Why did he exclude their place in his story? He immediately jumped to the Egyptians, who practised it, but weren't the origin of it. Why? Because it's an easier exit-point to get his point forth: Organized religion is fallible. It also doesn't so easily arouse anti-atheistic perspectives, which the whole story quite frankly would, if he only presented it fairly.
He may have recognized various similarities in the religions, but what he didn't recognize was the fact that religions that have had these similarities have not been in immediate contact with eachother. Not all of them, and he included at least a handful. Granted, that's a far-fetched theory of mine, because there were travelers and they did know their religion. Still, he's lifting forward just how many similarities there are, and also how easily lost in translation religious writings can become.
Still, with his premise he assume that the people of those times, where linguistic teaching and contact across cultures and societies were limited, that their communication with eachother and their comprehension of other religions was spectacular. He insinuate the copying by religions, and while this isn't impossible: It's as fallible as the case he's making. He listed far more similarities than the stars write, but he wouldn't go into that. No, he didn't want to work with anything that risked his point.
Why are so many details in holy writings similar? Details not read in the stars. Fluke? "Religious" snitches? Something divine? My point is, he's not fair in his conclusions. He's only talking about things that'll lead you to question religion.
The Maya and the Sumer both evolved at an amazing rate, which insinuate that evolution, ascent in technology, culture, society and understanding of the beyond is in the human blood and spirit. He's also making references to the requirement of a source of comfort for humanity to endure dark ages, but has utterly forgotten to mention that humanity also has a craving for answers. With a silent God, they must seek answers elsewhere, making the most plausible answer that God doesn't exist. He insinuate that the creation of God is expected of human nature ... but so is the questioning of God, which he didn't mention.
Now, I can imagine this is a weary read for you, as it is for me to write. It's 03:07 in the night here, and I need to get some sleep. Should you acknowledge my interest in discussing this matter. Both the video, and religion, then I'd be more than happy to continue making my case. Otherwise, I hope I didn't bore you enough with that.
Because it's so late, I apologize if I've at any time in the text been incomprehensive. I'll gladly elaborate anything you might not have understood, or something you simply want elaborated.
I've seen that video a few years ago.
Was interesting until the last third of it, started talking about about putting devices in peoples ears, keeping track of everyone, world coming together as 1 country, etc
Just wished I never showed that video to a close friend of mine. Cause after that she got obsessed with conspiracy videos to the point that it changed her alil bit, and now she doesn't listen to music without enjoying it and all sorts of weird talk.
i had the same views i have now before seeing the video. and i sort of forgot how anti-religous it gets towards the end. the main point i was actually trying to make by linking it was the fact that you can link (nearly) all religions to the stars. its all based on humanity looking up into the sky in wonder, and creating something from that to believe in. i sort of take from it the first half of all that the strongest, because i can watch it, and i can look at the beliefs of my friends and family and everything makes sense as to where the origins could be.
and when the jehova's witness came by the other day, they started reading passes from their perticular bible, and they way they were trying to explain the passes and what it meant was completely different to me. what they saw as the bible telling man the world was round in the universe, i saw it talking about the sun in the sky. and the point you bring up about alot of those different religions not havign interactions with each-other still makes sense to me. its just people looking up into the sky, after-all. and yes, you are right. he is very biased against organised religion, but i would like to say that was not the part i wanted to express. its mainly that i see religion having a basis of stargazing that i wanted to throw out there.
i do apologise if anyone is offended by it, or takes the entire video as biased hate. it just helped me solidify my own thoughts on religion being made by man to help man get through the hardships of life. it doesnt take a stretch of imagination to believe that people would look up into the stars and see something that gave them hope. but it is something of a stretch to think one all powerful being who existed in nothing was to suddenly and magically create all of existence. every galaxy, star, and chunk of mineral, water, rock, and ice and piece of debris and scientific anomaly out there. and that same being decided that in the smallest little area, he was going to create life and focus everything on humanity.
and that same being would talk through people to create a book of rules and stories to guide their lives? with all the things in the universe we know of.. (which is actually next to nothing) its still a staggeringly large amount of information and things that are that just seems... a bit much to believe was deliberately and specifically created by one being.
something with the intellegence to piece together something as complicated as our circulatory system alone is impressive. so the idea of a god is slightly insane to me. but the thought that people believe in a god makes perfect sense.
Lets have a look at the details, similarities, that the religions have in common that doesn't originate in the stars. The commandments doesn't originate in the stars, for one. True, a preserver of the Egyptian mythology could've held that to heart, and there's common sense in the words, so it's easy to let that one slip. But that's one. The most visible one, but if you look at 7:40 in the second part of your linked video, you'll see an insane amount of similarities. Pause every once-in-a-while, something I did, and you tell me that all those are read from the stars. Remember that these texts of the Egyptian faith were written roughly 1500 years prior to Jesus, and also that archeology and linguistic professors were few and limited in that time.
The thing I don't like about the author of that video you linked, is that he refuse to embrace the fact that the similarities are more than the stars can explain. And that's just those two similarities. The similarities spread world-wide over the "age of religion". You give this deep consideration and you tell me in sincerity that religion is just a cheap copy.
It's so easy to say "Well, everyone looked up into the sky and got the symbols", but it's just as easy to say that "You don't think there's a reason everyone saw these symbols and were able to design extremely similar religions?". I don't know about you, but I, even as an atheist, can accept too many coincidences as more than that. It could be a psychological 'gene' we have that allow us to interpret the sky as we do, but it can easily be explained otherwise.
On the same matter as the previous paragraph, but to not make each too long and too tough to read: Have you ever heard of the Rorschach Test? It's a psychological test where the subject is shown a stain of ink, and is to speak the first thing that come to mind. The common thread of the test, is that ten different people can look at the same stain and all ten will percieve ten different things.
Now imagine a time where we don't have cars, planes, artificial light that brighten the sky even at night. Imagine being far away from civilization and stare up at the cloudless, star-clad sky in the middle of a winter night. The amount of stars are beyond counting. You will of course recognize the zodiacs, but you're doing this because you know what to look for. Now imagine yourself in a time when zodiacs aren't invented. You won't see Orion's belt. You'll see a blob of stars. Then you'll discover a perfect square of eight, and you'll name this zodiac "square". You'll see it many nights of the year.
"Square", beautiful a zodiac as it may be, doesn't make religion. Especially not numerous religions where the creators have had no immediate contact with eachother. See my point?
Now about your idea of God. Look at Star Wars for example. George Lucas created a world so vast, that planets plethora, beyond dozens of dozens were part of it. He created a religion, he created hundreds of races, and he created mythology for the stars that he created. This is done by a man who wanted to make a buck.
Now imagine a being so vast and powerful that he can spawn out of nothing and spawn matter out of nothing. Now imagine an era without time, which isn't really an era, but stay with me. Give George Lucas a teenage life, and he's given you a world of such magnitude that it's a galaxy with everything our has and more.
Give an omnipotent being time beyond time to imagine. You really find it beyond reason that anyone could muster our universe? Now, he hasn't even necessarily created the whole universe as we imagine it. He's created the universe, but what makes it seem so vast, are mirrors and smoke. While we desperately try to unravel the secret of these mirrors, he expand and move about these mirrors in perfect symmetry.
Now I'm playing with thought, so I'll regress to my point. Take a handful of stones and sand. Throw them over your table, and you have imperfect symmetry. You'll be able to find constilations, systems of stones and sand that create galaxies, and you'll even find patterns. Fix a fraction of your power to alter probability, and BAM! Life's created.
As for God's chosen ones, what's so hard to believe about that. We're a race in the process of understanding the creation of life, and we're already dreaming of galactic traveling. Wouldn't you want your creations able to expand your creation beyond your creation? What's a few thousand years to you, to dedicate to this minor race of beings? You've billions upon billions upon billions more on your neck and billions to come.
Even Gods need to play a little, and what harm's there in inspiring an evolving race?
Making a case is really easy if you poop out of your mouth, you see?
A common and bothersome case that religious people make, but one potent still and worth mentioning is the following: Just because you don't understand, doesn't mean it's not true. Just because you can't imagine this being, doesn't mean he can't be.
It's not an intellectual, logical conclusion to say that it can't be divine, because no such being can be. I can create a world, in my head, in minutes. A solar system in an hour. A galaxy in a day, and it'll be symmetric enough to be divined by me. The inhabitants will have a hint of reason to believe, but nothing abundantly obvious. I made the sun their center, and it'll only be a matter of time before they acknowledge the symmetry of it all.
You don't think an infinite being can do so and more in years beyond time? If my limited mind can create a galaxy in a day.
Originally posted by RE: Blaxican
I was born and raised a Jehovah's Witness for the majority of my life, so I always lol when they're mentioned on the intranets.Keep up the amusing conversations.
You're renown for your persistency.
wow, thats alot to go over... lets see.. where to begin..
the commandments, i think. of course not EVERYTHING is going to based off of the stars. you have to throw in human minds and interpretations, as well as the thoughts and beliefs of the individual people presenting them. just like with the ink blot test, two people of the same religion, arent always going to describe it the same, or believe in the same meanings within the same scriptures. i saw people looking into the sky thousands of years ago, and over time, through the generations, stories evolved. political figures rose and added or changed things. issues of morality, and influence affected changes, too.
so its not outside any reasonable understanding to see how over the course of human growth and written time, that seeing something in the sky and having an imagination, or hoping for something more can change over the eons. things like the commandments and the seven deadly sins are of human origin. not a devine.
moses went up to the mountain, and claimed to have spoken with god who gave him rules to live by. rules to live better in harmony with your fellow man. the seven deadly sins was made up by a monk who wrote a poem about 7 vices that one should avoid to lead a better life in harmony with your fellow man. so.. no, that doesnt have anything to do with the stars. but it does have to do with what i believe is the reason that man created religion. for something to believe in to make their lives better. and something to use to preach to others so they also treat you better. everyone wants to be treated well. and what better way to be treated well in life than to have other people believe that its the right thing to do? that if they do these things and live well, they'll be rewarded in some afterlife? makes you wanna live better, if you believe that when you die, you live forever in happiness for it, doesnt it?
and as for the concept of creation by god.. sure, you can imagine things like that. but down to every atom and how molecules interact? bacteria and viruses? air currents and weather and the effect the sun has on storms? the moon affecting tides? bacterial life surviving on the bottom of the ocean under volcanic vents that have never seen any light from the sun and are completely unique to all known forms of life on the planet?
or the cycles of stars creating, burning out, exploding, spreading out as debris and gas and condensing intul enough mass has come together to create a flippin black hole? the concept of time itself. (seriously.. try thinking about time.. christopher hawking tried it, and he ended up in a wheelchair!) the freakin make up of our ort cloud. the fact that life pretty much depends on water and sunlight. evolution itself.
so much.. and so many things to create. yeah, you can imagine it. but to make it all work and turn and function over untold eons in time? and for what? because a being was bored? being created on a whim of some other creatures playtime? i dunno. its just my opinion, but i cant see any one creature or being, no matter how impressive its presence would go through such lengths and work at making this entire universe, with creatures that evolve into free thinking humans. and again..
for what? like theres a creature out there whos presence is EVERYWHERE, watching everything? why? to punish us for how we live our lives when we have free will? to rewards us for having free will? it honestly just doesnt add up to me. why would a god create such a universe, fill it with life. and have this reward/punishment ONLY for humans? simply because we were lucky enough to evolve intelligence? meh.
I can go into your case bit by bit, but I'll refrain from that, because it's redundant writing. What I'll say is this:
Everyone came to the same conclusion by looking at the stars? Everyone? And I reference to your link again. Look at the comparisons he make. A portion of those similarities can be compared to the stars.
As for two from the same religion, of course they will interpret things differently, but that's beside the point. That video, and you, are comparing the similarities in the scriptures, not in the interpretations.
Scriptures where the similarities are striking, in details beyond what can be read in the stars. As his scrolling comparison shows. Every major religion just happened to read the stars the same way.
As for creation by God: I can take a bucket of water, pour numerous watercolors into it, mix it with oil and paint a dot with it. I can in an instant say what it's made of, but it'll take you a long time before you know what colors it's composed of, for example.
My point is, it's easier to think something up than to figure it out. What we view as sophisticated, nigh impossible mathematics and physics, he could be thinking "Oh, I want that element. Let's compose it of those small things I thought up a dozen thoughts ago". "I want it to work this way. Those will circle eachother, create this charge, and that'll contribute to the sustaining for of this. It'll be vital for these reasons"
It's not as impossible as you make it sound. It's very hard for us to figure out, but it's nowhere near as hard to make it. Why? Because you are the one making the rules. Once you've made all the rules, you can create a self-evolving program and it'll run its own course. That's not impossible either. Humans do it today, with computers.
I don't know who Christopher Hawking is. I tried google him, but the information on him was extremely limited. That's irrelevant though, because as far as I know, Christopher Hawking is first of all, not God. Second of all, he didn't create time. He just tried understanding it. I can promise you that you'll be driven insane trying to figure out what colors composed that oil and water paint dot I made. And that's just a dot.
And again, just because it's impossible for us to imagine, doesn't mean it can't be. We can't possibly imagine the magnitude of the universe, or what it contains, but that doesn't mean it can't be there.
And to repeat myself from previously, what's the harm in dedicating a few thousand years on an evolving race, when you live for billions upon billions? Even Gods could use entertainment and purpose. That humanity is supposedly the most important thing in the universe, that's arrogant to think by many religious, but to think that God attention us at least a little, that's not. He could be doing it out of boredom, but that doesn't mean he doesn't do it.
Originally posted by Matthias Fenris
on a side note, id actually like to know how you see the universe... outside of simply making a counter arguement to me. what is it that YOU think?it would be interesting to see what everyone else thinks, too...
Fair enough. Here's what I believe:
I believe everything is a big accident. Shit met fan and threw a party. We're an accident of creation, because among infinite solar systems in infinite time, Earth was under just the right circumstances. It was bound to happen, and it's happened elsewhere. We're not the only life in the universe. To think so is to be naive.
You can look for purpose, and you'll find it. You can look for importance, and you'll find that too. I believe we're neither. Quite frankly, our existence is a plague. We're a curse brought to a promising world, a disease. We've evolved into a selfish, crazed, evil race and excuse our behavior with petty purposes and delusional intellectual authority.
The universe is ever-expanding, it's out of control. We can't ever understand it, because new matters and phenomenons are frequently created. It's infinite and impossible to understand, because it'll never stop. It's an explosion that doesn't meet resistence and keep expanding.
i leave for one weekend to fix a bike and plant a garden, and no-one but marie said anything... well thats just balls.
and marie.. you have no idea how close our thoughts on creation are. my thoughts on religion and how it began are similar to the clips, my thoughts on life starting in general are pretty much.. almost exactly how you stated. what would really be fun is me trying to explain the system i believe a "soul" is..
but.. with the idea of god... good point. i dont believe in a god because theres too much humanity in the way. everything thats supposed to be gods work or gods words has been handled too much by human thought and morality. twisting it and altering it and shaping it into politics and personal belief. theres really no telling how it started, who first wrote it, or why. but all of it says human to me. human ideals, and human functions.
theres alot of evidence and reasonable interpretation towards human involvement, and the only thing saying god was anywhere at all, or even existed was because it says so. its all relying on blind faith. no facts. no evidence. no proof of anything close to any sort of devine being. you just have to believe because you believe. or because your family believed and they taught it to you... because someone taught it to them. it goes as fact for people because they were told it was fact all their lives, with no way to prove it wrong or right.
i like reason.. i like knowing why. or at least knowing that theres an explanation somewhere that someone has made sense of.. everything can be made sense of.. everything except the concept of a devine being creating existence. what created that being? how did it come to be? its just.. eh.. theres nothing in all of it that makes me want to believe in it. nothing that moves me down to what could be my soul.. so i dont believe in it.. the only thing ive ever believed in was myself... and its worked very well over the years.
ive also noticed that people who tend to put their faith in a higher power to get them through arent the strongest people, thenselves. at least in my experiance. they trust a higher power to get them through because they dont believe they can do it. then theyre the ones doing the work and getting by, and if they accomplish what they tried, it couldnt have been their own strength, could it? no, it had to be god guiding them.. its just something i see people following because their lives are hard and they think it helps them, when its their own strength that gets them by... so i dont like it much..
There's a great deal of things that we do not understand. Some of the scientific fundamentals that we take for granted, like gravity, life and emotions/memories, we can't explain. If we are unable to explain the normal parts of life, how are we supposed to explain the paranormal? 😛
We don't know anything. To assume something false because we can't prove it or because it doesn't make sense according to our limited minds, doesn't mean it's magic. Just unexplored ✅ The day we can tap into the paranormal is the day we can start researching God and spirits. Even then we are a long way away from disproving or proving God 😄
Because I thought your initial line in your last post looked so disappointed, I'll also share my perspective of the universe.
My current idea of the universe is that God isn't making it. It is making itself. If it is a natural action or supernatural there's no way to tell. I don't imagine God is actually working on it though. If he exist, he is probably molding some civilization somewhere and ready to return during the next spiritual age 🙂
its just a matter (for me, anyways) that you cant prove nor disprove god exists. it all goes on faith. EVERYTHING about it. theres literally nothing out there about it. nothing to really say he does or doesnt exist, besides people saying its true. which bothers me more than anything. theres no real side to take on anything, because its just spoken myth. nothing to go on, nothing to see but what people take on ignorant faith. (ignorance meaning its literal definition, and not an insult)
but thank you for answering that. its getting kinda boring up in here. and while entertaining, looking up the past pages of this place is time consuming. though it is interesting how people posted and acted a few years ago compared to now.. so much flirting...