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god
Mar 6, 2023 20:42:13 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by soufflé on Mar 6, 2023 20:42:13 GMT -5
do u believe in a higher power? i do, it’s the only thing that gives me hope sometimes, i had phases of doubt and nietzsche but especially after psychedelics i can’t unsee it we can talk about experiences with religion too but im mostly curious about this basic question
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god
Mar 6, 2023 22:21:34 GMT -5
Post by bryan on Mar 6, 2023 22:21:34 GMT -5
third thing, agnostic, undecided. I think I find it hard to talk about though.
do parallel universes count
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god
Mar 7, 2023 8:11:35 GMT -5
Post by the panopticountolaf on Mar 7, 2023 8:11:35 GMT -5
i'm agnostic because i just don't know and i kind of don't care. i've grown up gay in the bible belt (if you didn't know — very christian and conservative area of the U.S. southeast) so organized religion as a whole is kind of an ick for me.
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god
Mar 7, 2023 9:59:12 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Mar 7, 2023 9:59:12 GMT -5
I really believe in God a lot. I can cite a few reasons that first made me believe: I think life is too complex to have arisen by chance. Also, I think the universal laws and constants are too precise to have come out of nowhere. I too, can mention that I witnessed the existence of the supernatural. Something really horrible to see. This happened to close people when I was 14. So I'm pretty sure there are invisible beings, spirits to be precise, living on this planet. And I know that they are vicious and that they need hosts to interact with humans. And I know they didn't come into existence through organic substances that evolved.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Mar 7, 2023 10:46:19 GMT -5
My answer is long and complicated, I think, but it can summed up as no.
I think sometimes that it would be nice, that as a concept a religion and the god that comes with it would make sense. However, so much of religious practices and the way that worshipped is carried out does not really come in to that for me. Organised Religion very rarely, if ever, actually ascribes to the intentions of the religion and its essence. I think a lot of it is nonsense, and you need to strip a religion back to its bear bones in order to find what its all about.
So yeah, looking at it from that perspective, I could see it making some sense.
But then whenever i think about the absolute ridiculous size of the universe, the impossible humungous scope of everything, and the insignificance of humanity and earth in that part of it, it makes it even more unbelievable that a god could have created all this, and that a religion could exist that follows the word of that god, and yet worlds outside of our own are not acknowledged in an equal may. It seems incompatible.
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god
Mar 7, 2023 12:00:35 GMT -5
Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Mar 7, 2023 12:00:35 GMT -5
I think a gigantic universe shows that the designer has a long term plan for it. I think we are just at the beginning of the history of the physical universe. Someone who is in no rush to populate the universe... I think that makes more sense than "these structures are so big and magnificent compared to where we live that it seems as if where we live has no purpose."
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god
Mar 7, 2023 12:46:14 GMT -5
Post by Reba on Mar 7, 2023 12:46:14 GMT -5
i don't believe in anything supernatural. i am greatly envious of people who are genuinely comforted by religion, if indeed they do exist. my relationship with the universe is one of abject fear and despair. edit: i plagiarized myself, lol 😩😩 i greatly envy those who can genuinely find comfort in a faith
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Mar 7, 2023 15:01:07 GMT -5
I don't believe that the physics of our universe can be altered by the supernatural, but do believe that everything is informed by the supernatural power of God. I guess this makes me a panentheist.
The strongest logical argument for God I know of is that of primum movens - the unmoved mover. Atheists believe that things are in motion without there ever being a first moving thing. For me God is that thing - a force outside of time and space, and the tissue that connects everything (within and beyond our physical universe). Besides this argument, there's just belief, which can't be argued, though explained to some extent. I think the arts try to do that (in many, though not all cases - like atheist literature, lol).
The arts are my religious praxis, and I have an aversion to any sort of dogmatic thinking, whether religious or otherwise. Most (if not all) atheist thinking presents a reductive view of religion, and it's a slog to wade through so many arguments made in bad faith when reading through it. I respect a simple lack of belief in God, though.
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god
Mar 8, 2023 14:29:19 GMT -5
Post by penne on Mar 8, 2023 14:29:19 GMT -5
i have a similar view as bear
i have identified as agnostic sometimes but i think for me it's been sort of a cop out - i dont actually believe in a higher power at all
im horrified by the mystery of existence and human consciousness and i try not to think about it too much !
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god
Mar 8, 2023 15:45:18 GMT -5
B. likes this
Post by Isadora Is a Door on Mar 8, 2023 15:45:18 GMT -5
the rapid expansion of the universe is terrifying to comprehend
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god
Mar 8, 2023 22:30:26 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by soufflé on Mar 8, 2023 22:30:26 GMT -5
im pretty much with terry, i believe in evolution and im not here for dogma or taking any religious text super literally. i think all religions are trying to get at the same thing, like the center of consciousness, animating spirit that moves through everything
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Mar 9, 2023 5:48:21 GMT -5
I think an interesting hint that God left of his existence is the fact that the apparent size of the sun and moon are practically the same from the point of view of an observer on earth. Some call this the great cosmic coincidence... I mean, there is no coincidence of the apparent size of a star and a satellite of a planet on any other known planet. Because if the moon were closer it would appear bigger than the sun, and if it were further away it would appear smaller. And it is still necessary to take into account the position of the planet earth itself. It is really very accurate. And that only happens at that time when there is intelligent life on earth that can understand this, because before that the moon was closer to the earth and it looked bigger than the sun. So, exactly on the only known planet where there is intelligent life, where there is only one natural satellite, there is a purely aesthetic positioning. Some think this is a condition for life to exist on Earth, but the evidence suggests that life on Earth began to exist shortly after the conditions for life to exist were present. So... this "coincidence" of apparent sizes... is too big a coincidence, especially if you already accept that several other coincidences must have happened for life to be possible. I don't think this is a coincidence, I think this is a message that we are special. As big as the universe is. And I think accepting that doesn't necessarily mean joining a religion.
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god
Mar 9, 2023 9:29:59 GMT -5
Post by Esmé's meme is meh on Mar 9, 2023 9:29:59 GMT -5
I think an interesting hint that God left of his existence is the fact that the apparent size of the sun and moon are practically the same from the point of view of an observer on earth. Some call this the great cosmic coincidence... I mean, there is no coincidence of the apparent size of a star and a satellite of a planet on any other known planet. Because if the moon were closer it would appear bigger than the sun, and if it were further away it would appear smaller. And it is still necessary to take into account the position of the planet earth itself. It is really very accurate. And that only happens at that time when there is intelligent life on earth that can understand this, because before that the moon was closer to the earth and it looked bigger than the sun. So, exactly on the only known planet where there is intelligent life, where there is only one natural satellite, there is a purely aesthetic positioning. Some think this is a condition for life to exist on Earth, but the evidence suggests that life on Earth began to exist shortly after the conditions for life to exist were present. So... this "coincidence" of apparent sizes... is too big a coincidence, especially if you already accept that several other coincidences must have happened for life to be possible. I don't think this is a coincidence, I think this is a message that we are special. As big as the universe is. And I think accepting that doesn't necessarily mean joining a religion. I love the humanizing of God and its way of doing things. A superior, powerful, omniscient omnipresent, omnipotent entity that says "hey I'm gonna make the Sun and Moon look the same size from Earth so humans do the maths and notice I am very much real, that's neat"
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Mar 9, 2023 10:09:34 GMT -5
Yes, I care. I care a lot, to tell you the truth. From my point of view, I am not humanizing God. In fact, I think that God made humans with personality traits similar to His. And that's why these messages are perceptible to us if we want to see them. I mean when I read about proteins and DNA. I can really see a programming language involved in this. I think cells have artificial intelligence. And organic systems too. For example, when I read about self-regulation of enzymes... Enzymes have active sites where reactions are catalyzed. But some of them have other points in their formation that can detect the concentration of the products formed. this is linked to the three-dimensional formation of enzymes. This formation is related to the position of the polymeric strand of amino acids that form it. the sequence of the strand is determined by genes that are at a specific location in the DNA. For the information in the DNA to form itself, even over many years, to the point of forming an enzyme that way is really a very big coincidence. And if you take into consideration that you need enzymes to be able to create your own DNA... You need a lot of coincidences just for that to happen. And if you take into account that life began on earth as soon as conditions were possible, you have to believe that these coincidences occurred very quickly. Why does DNA replication, and the formation of specific proteins, need to work well from the beginning, otherwise the DNA ends up losing its properties... And it's one thing to have DNA, another thing is to have genetic information in it... The Most DNA does not contain genetic information. But genes begin and end with a specific sequence of nucleotides. Leaving all this to coincidence is too much for me...
And if you couple all of this with the fact that I literally saw people possessed by demons very similar to the accounts of demonic possession recorded in the Bible, (not unknown people unfortunately, not people who were trying to convince me of something, not during a religious ceremony), as I said... I followed the case closely, along with other people. I usually don't talk about it, because I don't think it's right to talk... I'm making an exception, because I care about you. I saw it with my own eyes, I felt physical strength beyond normal, I remember what the demons said... It was horrible. And I wasn't alone when these things happened. And the victim's family resorted to doctors for help, but anesthetics had no effect. And when it finally ended, using biblical recommendations to deal with the matter (and it wasn't exorcisms, just getting rid of some objects and some practices) it was all over. But not without physical consequences on health, t my friend. By God, I'm not lying... I'm not making any of this up. When I said that there are spirits capable of possessing people's minds, I can speak of this as an eyewitness. And if these spirits exist, someone created them. They are not organic beings.
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Post by Esmé's meme is meh on Mar 10, 2023 7:47:42 GMT -5
I didn't mean to sound disrespectful or like I was making fun of your beliefs/opinions so sorry if I came accross as that, it wasn't my intention. I very much believe in God, I have my issues with religion but that's a whole other story.
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