Somewhere ?
Do you believe in God?
Why? Why not?
Is a religion necessary to have contact to the Almighty?
Is a Church necessary to pray to God?
Have you ever experienced something out of this world, something that you may not explain with logic and intelligence?
Lets discuss !

Yes, I believe in God... Why? 'Cause I can sense and feel His presence in most aspects of my life... I think that religion is necessary to contact to Almighty, afterall there had to be invented a practical way to reach him... Church is needed so as to carry out and live some of the basic aspects of the dogma/ religion, however, it's not so vital for me to pray in Church. I pray inside me, I can do it anytime, I can talk to God and ask Him to hear me no matter the place I find myself at that time... I don't believe you have to experience something outside of this world to enhance your religion... The fact am living and having a normal life is more than enough to thank Him...

I believe in God as well,
as I was in high school I was aspiring to be a hard liner socialist who does not believe in God etc, but in materialism, dunno how and where I was transformed.
But there is a God I feel.
Once I experienced something transcendental, for a minute or two I felt myself in complete unison with the nature . ( It was the grass I smoked I presume :lol: )
But I am of the opinion that I dont need people like Ratzinger so that I will be closer to the Almighty.

Oh boy.....I just had this debate in another forum.

Here is what I wrote there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who or what is a God?

We define God is one BEING perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the universe.

With that in mind……..

IF…….. Humans will eventually have the ability to combine chemicals and create a DNA chain, thus creating a life form. THEN……Are we then God's? Should the ones we created pray to us?

IF…….. If there is a civilization out there that is so advance that it can manipulate DNA and space/time. THEN……are they God's? Should we pray to them? Or is that idolatry?

IF…… they indeeed "created" man or at least planted the DNA path, THEN…… are you going to bow and pray to them OR are you going to deny them and pray to the Gods that created them? Do the God/God’s that created them even exist or something YOU created in your mind?

Are you going to say, "Yeah, you are powerful and smart and all those good things but you are not the real God. The real God is someone more powerful and smarter then you." What if the Supreme being is no more "supreme" then an advanced civilization?

I keep basing my arguments in a circular argument of logic. "IF...THEN". Ultimatly, no one can prove there is a God but that should not stop anyone from believing in one. If their God brings comfort and understanding as well as a moral center then that's great BUT if their God expects sacrifice of others and subjugation then it is a false God justifying mans evil deeds.

@Spartan

That is a logical explanation indeed. Mr. Spock would have agreed.

I beleive that God exists,because i can't possibly imagine that everything was made simply by luck. I beleive that an outside force started or pushed the evolution in a precise direction.The main flaw of the evolution theory is exactly concerning the first cell and the next steps.Even a simple cell,which is not high intelligent life,is something we can't create.The human DNA has been decoded and mapped and the only thing we can do is use already pre-made cells for our purposes.

The regulating systems inside a cell are so fine and complicated that even if we know how they work,we are unable to reproduce them on our own.We know what's in a cell,we know the reactions that are taking place,we can determine the DNA sequence of a cell,but we can't make that cell.

To understand the complexity of life,one should study molecular biology and biochemistry.That should give an idea of life in molecular level.Then fisiology shows how this is translated in organ and systemic level.

As Spartan says,what if a day we can?The same question can be turned over.What if we really can't?I think each generation of people lived and thought according to the data that had at that time,because it's the more logical thing to do.WIth the current data,personally i have excluded "luck-evolution" as the only force.I think cloning was possible as soon as we decoded the DNA and gene therapy will also become much more widespread in the future as will stem cells use.i beleive we will be in condition to regenerate body parts,but i don't see us creating from scratch a single cell.So,i may die wrong ,but at least my error will be based on my OWN logical conclusion.The hypothesis of "what if we one day create a cell" is out of bounds for my current imagination,as is the hypothesis "maybe one day we ll grow wings".I actually find more possible that humans grow wings than creating a cell from zero.Creating intelligent life is even more impossible for me.

The issue goes even further.Suppose we manage to copy a cell.Is it the same to make a copy and to make something that haven't existed before?Because,even if there are other intelligent life forms in the universe,and one of the came to our planet and planted a cell,who made the first cell of their civilization?Simple luck isn't enough for me.And copying isn't the same as making the original either.

What if God was one of us?

LOL Modus, there is song like that from the 90's. Dont remember the singers name.

Anyway I believe in a devine deity, because the universe would be frightening if life just would die out.

He would have turned crazy? :D

Yes indeed... LOL

I believe in a balance between bios, logos, and chronos, and I also think that chaos is an indispensible part of these three. I'd like to conceive the universe in a sort of quantum physics paradigm. Well in ancient times people believed there must be a number of Gods to take care of all elements of the universe, bu still thanks to new developments such as time management, total quality management, assembly line etc. I think just one God can deliver the same services. Anyway it seems I am an Agnostic, and tend to ask the famous question "Is there a God" in another form "If there is a God, who will make the most benefit?"

Regards
Hakan

Well,if you think about the Principle of conservation of energy from Physics,we do have energy when we live (we are full of electrically charged substances and chemical gradients).when we die,these can't simply disappear in a second.

Something other interesting is the life is a paradox of Physics.The organization in more regular structure,is against entropy.

@ Spartan
I saw this topic actually somewhere else before, dunno where know.
I found stuff interesting.
I am of the opinion that religion plays a bigger role in Europe than we, Turks, may imagine.
U-Boot you are in Italy now, right? There is a book from Joseph H. H. Weiler, that was written in italian originally.
The german name was "ein christliches Europa" have a look when you have time for that. Weiler is a very famous Lawyer from NYU, and a jew.
But in this Book he dives deep into the teachings of Catholics.

I am not a very religious person but I believe that universe definitely has an admin... ehhmm.. I think I'm too much into this forum stuff nowadays.. Hope I won't be banned too early :)

Dear Orko-8, elder son of the dragon, king of seven seas, and mountains too,

It seems you poor moderator to have attempted establishing a link between God and my brother Lord. This is unacceptable. Lord is not Lord to the extent that he (i.e. Lord Anonymous) deals with ephemeral things such as whiskey and girls (are you sure his wife does not visit this forum very often), and Lord (who is not anonymous, and has more of spiritual tasks) is not our Lord. ýn other words Lord is not Lord. You see I am confused too.

now it is heresy Modus.
You would have been burned for that.

Right.Where did i put Ratzinger's phone number.Hmm... :call:

Yeahh lets burn the heretics !! :gang beat:
he is a Turk as well , hmm, :bricks: first of all lets torture him so that he could be purified.

So, given that I am a heretic, I should have given up my deepest dreams of establishing a co-forum with my Greek compatriots at the Heaven. May be I can join you some thousands years later.

Dont worry Modus,

since heaven is so exclusive almost everyone we know will be in hell :lol:

We can have barbeque meetings hehehehhe

:roflmao: I like my steaks well done please

:lol: Ah, the eternal question. :D

If we define God in the way that Spartan did, I don't believe he exists. It is also possible that I wouldn't want to believe. The keyword here is believe. It is a faith, something impossible to prove, unless God someday appears in the Times Sq and says, "hello folks, here I am". Until then I will be an atheist.

I do believe that there is something above us, but I prefer to call it life, nature, reality (ok, reality sucks). Think evolution. That's God to me. I think that makes a pagan, right? :lol:

Oh, mighty Zeus, deliver us from evil!

Thanks ...Iam the Lord...i can forgive you all... <_<
Also i tend to be a more Human Lord...like the ancient Gods...have some weakness is allways good... ;) aka drinking from time to time a Chivas...and testing vriginitys... :hathello:


:applause:

LOL, I thought you were married Lord, wont your wife anger and revenge on mankind hehe.

At least we know your weakness. If I offer every month a bottle of this drink I will live a prosperous life :P

That line of thought comes from one too many science fiction books.

I think I started to question God's existence and possible explanations around 14 or so which coincides with a massive amount of general and fiction reading.

Unfortunately, I really believe in evolution and by definition, I believe that we are nothing more then a collection of chemicals that assembled in the proper way, gives us life and consciousness. I say “unfortunately” because that logic makes me no better then an ant or a plant with the only difference is placement on the food chain.

As for cloning....

I think that within the next 10 years we will be recombining DNA and within the next 50 years we will be creating complex chains. Within 100 years, man will be replacing machines with custom made life forms to suit his purposes.

With that said………..

To a large extant, believing in God/God’s is normal and not believing is the exception. It's hard for the human mind to believe that there are nothing more then carbon with a scattering of the periodic table. That is why most seek to understand and validate themselves by believing that they are made by a supreme being. “God created man” so if the supreme being saw fit to create us, then we must be special.

I disagree with you Spartan. There is more in life than just carbon with a scattering of the periodic table. To make my point I will give some examples:

-Ever fell in love? Do you really believe it's just a matter of a chemical reaction, or perhaps it's more than that, it's a "feeling"... something that isn't, couldn't and shouldn't be logical and can't be explained... I believe we can all agree that people ususally marry out of a feeling called love, and not just to have sex on a daily basis.

-And what about the strong bond people feel with their places where they were born and raised -incl. you Spartan and half of this forum-. You yourself chose the nickname Spartan, while you live most of your life in Canada, and probably whole your social life is staged in Canada.. However you will probably feel a strong bond with Greece and Sparta both modern and ancient, that for a great part can't be explained rationally...
If life was just carbon with a scattering of the periodic table, we wouldn't feel the pride for our history we wouldn't feel the link with our ancestors...

-Why do people endager themselves and are willing to die for strangers who are in trouble.. Probably there is more than a rational answer to everything, and we sence a moral feeling of good and bad..

Rationalism is a good basis, but doesn't and can't give us all answers... It isn't as you stated a matter of wanting to believe, it's a matter of wanting to feel.. (WOOOOOOOOO, I seem like some preacher, I who haven't gone to church the last 12 years...). Besides that, isn't the theory of Darwin and Big Bang a matter of wanting to believe too??

As for God, I believe he exists, although not a strict way. The way I see it, everyone whos personal balance in life was mostly positice when life ended, is welcome in paradise. And hell is reserved for a few bad to the bone people (raipers etc.)..

I spoke yesterday with him and he asked me to say hello to everyone in this forum! :bricks:

Actually SPartan we have been recombining DNA for some decades now.Insuline for example we make it by recombining the specific gene to the DNA of bacteria,so the bacteria starts producing insuline.Still,we can't even make the bacteria itself starting from the chemical elements alone.

Life is much more complex than "a mix of chemical elements".Otherwise we would ve seen many types of life on earth itself that have no connection between them.For example,a DNA not made by Adenine,guanine,thymine and cytosine but from other nucleotides.Or life forms not based on nucleotic acids for their genetic material.

Anyway,it's hard to explain without becoming incomprehensible and writing a book.

U-boot,

Sooner or later, we will master it, control it, abuse it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pindos,

The conscious mind is a mystery and a wonder. It makes us who we are and how we act. Believing in deities is also a conscious decision and as I said in another post, there is nothing wrong if one wants to believe in one God, in many Gods or in one's self.

Last night I was invited in a Jewish friends home to share a Passover meal. The religious ceremony that preceded the meal was interesting and didactic. From my “foreign point of view”, what I saw was a ceremony that defined them culturally and religiously. I have also shared a meal and attended weddings of non Judeo-Christian friends. What you always find are religious and cultural ceremonies that reinforce who and what they are. Nothing wrong with that.

However……

That does not make God as real as a truck.

Two pillars of “disbelief”.

If…..we were created by a supremely advance physical being THEN…..should we pray to him/them because he/they created us? Or at least seeded the creation of us?

If….he is only a manifestation of our conscious minds THEN…..believing in him/them is no more real then the fleeting electrical impulses between neurons.

On a personal note.......

The irony of it all is that sometimes I wish I had the comfort of belief….but the voices in my head just wont let go of their damn logic. Could that be the devils work? *laughs nervously*

Oh well, at least I know where I'm going to be BBQ'ing when I die..........

Although we may wonder at the complexity of the mind, it is to my best knowledge, a machine. Recent experiments have shown that the brain has the ability to "re-programm" itself so that it works better in a specific environment or a specific task. This is why blind people have acute touch or hearing senses.

As for love, here is another fact. Ever heard of the 7-year period after which love fades out? It is possible that this period corresponds to the fact that in the wild it will take approx 7 years for a couple to raise a child, old enough to avoid the childhood death dangers. Things like that show us that we are just another animal.

Another anathema to very religious people. Evolution.....




P.S. I'm the one on the far left.

Today the science of love has been explored by scientists and it was almost proved that love is a chemical reaction. I watched a PBS documentary a few weeks ago called "Science of Love". There are other investigations on the same subject by Discovery, BBC, etc. All say that it is indeed a chemical reaction. Like the affection to chocolate. If not for this chemical reaction called love, I believe people get married due to several other reasons such as; not having to live and die alone, the need for sharing responsibilities, having offsprings, the need for attaching yourself to someone so that you will have a purpose to live, etc. The notion about falling in love and getting married, on the other hand, is the most illogical but also the most common behaviour of the humans.

I do not find myself in any kind of affection towards my ancestors. I believe in unification, humanity and our precious planet Earth. For me Greece, Turkey, USA, etc. are irrelevant and illogical formations created by humans for the sake of primitive instincts and inferior development levels. My nick name "Picard" very well indicates that. It signifies future, one world, no poverty, no money, spiritual self-progress, the good... I would rather find myself in the Federation than in the Ottoman Empire or among the Huns or Mongols, who are my ancestors.

If I ever endanger myself to save a stranger, my motive will be self-enlightment for progress. I think this is what you would call "the good".

Logic is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom is the only way for order, for eliminating chaos and harmony. It does give us all answers. If not today, maybe tomorrow.

Yes... He exists... He is the Creator. But not as defined by religions nor by their holly books. Religion is irrelevant. I strongly oppose the concept of religion. Religion is a superstition created by humans to bring order to their otherwise disorderly societies. Yes, it has been needed, given the inferiority of our human race. The Creator would not deal with tiny little things such as sending me to Hell because I am not praying five times a day or because I am not fasting. Creator is the final point for the good. It is a force that surrounds us. It is within ourselves and around us at the same time.

I havent read everyones responses to this..I have a longer and more complex explination...basically though I dont beleive that out planet..and all the life on it were created by accident..and that everything is so interdependant on each other for survival by accident.

So someone else must be running the show...

For me the essence of God is in two numbers.. Phi and Pi... is in the Geometry around us spanning from the subatomic level to the galaxies.. the Golden Mean and the Golden Spyrals...

The universe follows patterns... Life follows patterns... the world around us is not and it can not be that seperated as we think... all is one... and that one is God...

To find an answer to this question, one must search inside him/her. Its a personal metter how one understand God, and what God means for someone. I think that the most people believe in God, whether they admit it or not. Many times we hear the phrace " I dont believe in God but i believe i a superior power that exist" The people who says this, believe in God but he/she dont whant to admit it.
If we search deep iside ourselfs maybe we will discover the God.

The laws of physics demanded that energy and matter cannot be created nor destroyed; they can only be changed in form.

So where did matter or energy come from? I realize that this is a scientific answer to a philosophical question, but I believe that the point has been made.

Your argument is that God exists within the boundaries of our minds or does he (she) control the physical universe? So why believe in him? Just top derive comfort and security? Or because we fear what we do not understand so we pray to it?

So you are saying that he DOES control the physical. After all, matter and energy are "real" and not a mere perception of our minds.

So we have God:

*Does not exist at all.

*Does exist in our minds.

*Does exist in the physical world.

Surely there must be an answer. Do we have real evidence of his existence
or does empirical evidence suffice? Unless of course one believes that we are a product of his creation to justify his existence. Unless of course one believes in creation.

On the other hand digenis argument in his physical is by the very existence of science. If matter and energy can not be created or destroyed, then surely someone placed the energy AND/OR the matter there to begin with.

But wait.....

What if energy and matter just existed? What if space and time form an endless loop onto itself? It expands then collapses over a certain time and then collapse, only to repeat the cycle? Certainly no God in any form we know off could just endlessly repeat a cycle? To what end? A grand experiment spanning unknown trillions of years?

Then the other questions that begs an answer.....

If there IS a God, why should we bow to him? Does powers beyond our comprehension be sufficient to worship him? Are we that limited that something we do not understand should be worshiped? Should ants worship humans because we can control their existence? Does scale of power become the arbitrator of worship?

Yes, he has a face, he has a name and we all know where he lives and how he thinks and how he operates and what we as people must do.. his name is Zeus. :thumbsup:

If we take this conversation in Greek then i believe that the answer is rather easy Spartan (and dear friends)..

The word "exists" in Greek is "Yparxw".. this word consists of two parts "Ypo" meaning i'm under something, and the word "Arxh" which means command, rule, order...

So "Yparxw" means that i'm under/following a rule, a law, an order, a command...

God is beyond any rule, any law, any order, any command.. therefore God doesn't exist...