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Do you believe that God is “good”?</p>
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<p>I think you misunderstood. The laws of logic are inviolate. Period. I can’t go up, down, shrink vertically and stay in one piece simultaneously. Nobody can, regardless of whether they’re omnipotent.</p>
<p>Reincarnation’s the way to go :).</p>
<p>But to be honest with you guys, I don’t mind dying. Most people fear what they don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out what happens after wards!!</p>
<p>Lol, this thread made me love some of yall.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m immortal, soooo… not really an issue for me. :)</p>
<p>You go into the ground.</p>
<p>I dunno what happens after death, all I know is I’m scared pantless by the prospect of it and I’m glad it’s a long way off right now. Can any Christians answer this for me: What happened to the millions (maybe billion/s?) of people that died before Christianity/Judaism was even thoguht of?</p>
<p>An even better question: what happens to people who were never exposed to Christianity?</p>
<p>Let’s wait for the theologists to fabricate a story for this one.</p>
<p>There seems to be some confusion regarding the phrase “all powerful”.
All-powerful means having all the power that it is possible to have within our universe/continuum/mileau. This does not mean being able to do anything. Some things are un-doable. God is part of the universe.</p>
<p>Omnipotent means being able to do anything. Nothing is beyond accomlishment. An omnipotent God is outside and beyond the universe</p>
<p>Whether God is omnipotent or merely all-powerful is critical. An omnipotent God that allows evil is a cruel tyrant. An all-powerful God that is doing all He/She can for us is a loving being. </p>
<p>I believe in an all-powerful God that loves and cares for us but is spread pretty thin.</p>
<p>Okay, so the concept of some higher power has been around since the dawn of civilization, correct? Literally MILLIONS of different beliefs exist, yet no one really knows the answer. Chances are SOMEONE is right, whether it’s Billy Graham or the guy who walks up and down the street professing god to be a stop sign. Who knows, maybe we’ll get up there (if there even is an “up there”) and see a relatively friendly, if hairy Caucasian gentleman asking us to join him later on that night for a Miles Davis show (bebop, incidentally, is the music of the heavens). Or, and no more or less likely, the afterlife is nothing but a giant highway, with hell as a divinely comic traffic school of sorts. Point is, beliefs have no rhyme or reason; they just are, and people, regardless of their connections to the Western World, should be entitled to them. </p>
<p>Personally, I think organized religion is a sham: an irresistable reward achieved through unattainable goals. The holy texts were probably written as moral compasses; parables for right and wrong. They give people something to strive for, and a reason to make them act “right”, which, in the majority of cases succeeds. Still, and this isn’t a feature unique to Christianity, terrible things (wars, persecutions, crusades) are carried out in its name, be it 1350 or 2009. </p>
<p>Elements in the Bible and other holy stories aren’t unique and can be found in dozens of ancient texts. Just because the stories are canon doesn’t mean they happened. Could they have happened? Unlikely, but not impossible. Still, a number of these stories are completely implausible. People can’t live to be 600 or walk on water. Entire rivers can’t be turned to blood. People like Jesus, like Zoroaster, like Muhammad, very well could have existed, and could have gained tremendous followings through their words. The likelihood of those words being truth? Far lower. </p>
<p>When you die, there are no pearly gates, no 72 virgins; only darkness. Your cold, decaying corpse and whatever person that was inside of it slowly corrode until you eventually turn to fertilizer. After reading this, your beliefs haven’t changed, and nor should they. No one should take religious advice from a seventeen year old. I’m probably wrong, but the chances of me, or anyone else, for that matter, being wrong are just as high as the chances of you being wrong. It’s a level playing field.</p>
<p>Yeah I’ve always wondered that too. If God were real, why did he only expose himself to people in a certain region of the world? Cos it’s probably a bunch of made up crap for humans to comfort themselves.</p>
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<p>You don’t have to be Christian to be “saved.” …</p>
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<p>When I trying to figure all this out in Catholic School, I thought of some pretty silly ways to explain all this stuff to myself. I think of some aspects of free will as like watching a car accident happen. You can see it before it happens, but you don’t stop it. Obviously this comparison is full of holes, but its the general idea. Basically, he/she/it knows that humans will make mistakes, but allows them to make them anyway because they have free will and can choose to make those mistakes.</p>
<p>Since he made us intentionally (designed us, right?), and knew what we would do before he made us, he shares responsibility with us for everything we do.</p>
<p>I don’t like thinking about death. IMHO I feel as most CC’ers are not religious, perhaps from the fact that our cognitive abilities do not permit us to accept things as true without scientific/mathematic/etc. confirmation</p>
<p>what will happen to me after death? i really don’t know, or even want to know. some part of me wants to believe that there truly is a heaven/god, yet the intellectual/reasoning side of me does not want me to believe so.</p>
<p>I think you just stop being. Like do you know when you are asleep… no you don’t? well you do but only once you have woken up. If you aren’t concious you don’t know. It kinda freaks me out the whole dying thing. Not actually dying but just not being anymore you know…</p>
<p>People actually have proof of what happens after death from near death experiences. It doesn’t seem as bad as most people believe it is. 99 percent of the people come back from near death experiences without being afraid of death, no matter what their religion is. I find that amazing. </p>
<p>The “just stop being” argument doesn’t make sense…if humans have been around for millions, and possibly billions, of years, what does a person do after they have lived for only 70 years in comparison? There has to be another side to life to keep the circle going. </p>
<p>“On a side note, God cannot be all-knowing and humans cannot have free will at the same time. If God is omniscient, he knows what is going to happen. Therefore, humans have no free will. On the other hand if humans have free will, God cannot know what is going to happen, so he is not all-knowing. Just something to think about.”</p>
<p>What about God being all knowing AND humans having free will? Since the future isn’t set in stone, humans create it with their own free will. God sees all “future” possibilities and lets humanity decide. </p>
<p>Just some ideas…I’m not an expert on all of this but this is how it makes sense to me.</p>
<p>for more information, see [Near-Death</a> Experiences and the Afterlife](<a href=“http://near-death.com/]Near-Death”>http://near-death.com/)</p>
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I just took the probability from the post I was responding to. Why are you arguing against the Big Bang? I never mentioned it.
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I’m just saying that the probability of whatever you believe actually happening is pretty low too, whatever that may be.</p>
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Do you believe that God is “good”?
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I would assume so, yes. What can you think of that could classify God as “bad?”</p>
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The future doesn’t exist, it’s just going to. God doesn’t know something that isn’t.</p>
<p>I hate how so many discussions on religion turn into “Atheism or Christianity” with no other religions, no in-between. There are gods besides the Abrahamic one. There are ones that are not omnipotent, omniscient, or even benevolent.</p>
<p>Anyway, I believe that good people, repentant people, most people, the vast majority of people go to Heaven. There was something I remember reading in the Bible when I was really really little about Heaven being what you (individually) think it is. So that’s what I think it’s like. But it’s ultimately about being in union with God. Everything on Earth is about solacing you that you cannot be in union, so in Heaven, you are. And that’s where those in Heaven derive their greatest pleasure.
And the unrepentant go to Hell, where I think the only pain is distance from God (emotionally, not physically).
Some days I believe in very different Hells. Sometimes I believe everyone is asleep in Hell. But heaven is always the same.</p>
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<p>Then he isn’t all-knowing.</p>
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<p>Well what do you expect? When the majority of people in an area are one religion, that’s the religion that’s going to be discussed. </p>
<p>Personally, I don’t like how many people just assume a god exists. Here we are, arguing over whether god is omnipotent, all-knowing, all-powerful, or whatever, and no one knows whether this god even exists or not.</p>
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<p>There’s a difference between not knowing and not existing.
Basically, I see God at the end of everything, of all time. Whatever is “future” for us or for our descendants, or for the Earth, or the Sun, or some alien race that rises up a billion years from now, is past for Him. It’s sort of like projecting the idea of “whatever happened, happened” into the future. Whatever will happen, will happen. Tenses are sort of meaningless here, but we will make/have already made our choices. There is no future.
Maybe I’m silly, but I’ve never seen a conflict between free will and God being omniscient.</p>
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<p>I get what you mean, but if we assume He doesn’t exist, then there’s not much to argue about. How much He doesn’t exist? The state of His non-existence?</p>