Is theism true (regardless of your religion)?
What reasons are there for believing in a god?

Short, sweet, simple answer: If there is no creator or grand purpose, then everything is a total waste.

Nox

Our grand purpose is survival. That and nothing else. Everything else is just crap.

Why would everything be a waste? You probably just have flies in your eyes, that's why you can't see them.

why wouldn't everything be a waste. we live. if you spend all your time alive thinking about what happens after you die, then THATS a waste. maybe there is no purpose. maybe the 'purpose' of life is to live. we die, thats it, hope you enjoyed your stay.

look at insects. they are alive, and they have no purpose. why are we so diffrent, we are just more complex.

i don't understand people needing some great reson of why we are here. can't people just accpet that they are alone, with no purpose.

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Originally posted by Nox:
Short, sweet, simple answer: If there is no creator or grand purpose, then everything is a total waste.

Nox

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Please explain why in your opinion that "everthing is a total waste" with out theism. I'd like to understand your reasoning behind this statement.

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Originally posted by Nox:
Short, sweet, simple answer: If there is no creator or grand purpose, then everything is a total waste.

Nox

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Said like a true modern philosopher. Which is to say it doesn't have anything to do with the question.

Is there a God? Well, what's God? Maybe a spiritual (i.e., doesn't obey the laws of physics as we know or can know them) entity with a will/intelligence that is the cause of the universe, or at least plays a role in its existence.

That the universe can't explain itself seems pretty reasonable given things like the second law of thermo--there's a "winding down" to the universe, a decay and dispersal. It hasn't gone to infinity, so the simplest explanation is that the universe has existed a finite time, so it must have had a cause, and the cause for the universe can't be physical, since it must exist outside space and time; it must be spiritual. Aristotle thought this was *necessarily* true, but of course it's not; it just seems reasonable. If you postulate that the universe has existed backward into infinity, it's easier to imagine spiritual (extra-physical) forces keeping the decay from going to infinity.

So some sort of spiritual entity seems reasonable to explain the universe. As for intelligence and a will...one can argue either way, although personally the idea that any kind of multicellular life, let alone mammals, let alone us, came to exist without some kind of supernatural nudge is kind of hard for me to swallow. The thermodynamics, again, says that if you put the chem prof out on the rock and leave him there till the reaction goes to completion, you wind up with simple carbon compounds. It don't go the other way, naturally. (Yes, that's an oversimplification, but it's fun to say.)

So I would say that it's more likely than not that there's a God...but that's all you can say without that God revealing itself in some way. Then you're off "theism" anyway.

[This message has been edited by blindart79 (edited 11-04-2002).]

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Originally posted by RAOVQ:
why wouldn't everything be a waste. we live. if you spend all your time alive thinking about what happens after you die, then THATS a waste. maybe there is no purpose. maybe the 'purpose' of life is to [b]live. we die, thats it, hope you enjoyed your stay.

look at insects. they are alive, and they have no purpose. why are we so diffrent, we are just more complex.

i don't understand people needing some great reson of why we are here. can't people just accpet that they are alone, with no purpose.[/B]

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We never die. We breed, and give our genetic material to the next generation. It's the biological purpose of life. You're body is just a temporary shell. The mind (soul) is just a program that makes shure you breed and and make a best possible future for your genetic material. Just like every program, it had bugs --> we yerk off,...

I devided it up in a couple of steps

• We are born
  
• Our parents make shure we grow up to be healthy and productive beings
  
• We breed
  
• We make shure our breed will survive and try to make it easyer for it to survive (inventig stuff, technology)
  
• We die
  

So you see, we may be highly evolved, but we still live for one purpose, weather we like it or not.

Nature owns your ass.


[This message has been edited by XeNobiTe (edited 11-04-2002).]

WOW! And I mean WOW!

I am impressed. My singular statement really generated myriad comments.

Now BuD, I will expand on my comment but only briefly (I hope).

In trying to look at basic man, I look to the caveman: simple, uneducated, curious, and utimately a survivalist (Xeno's definition). The caveman would look up at the sky and wonder about the Sun, Moon, Stars, Clouds, Lightning, et al and attempt to explain the unknown through multiple stories and tales. Why? Because he didn't understand and wanted an answer. His answers became the myths and legends which evolved into the religions we are stuck with today.

Everyone already knows what I just said, so now I go back to the initial reason that the caveman asked the question...the caveman had an internal desire to understand (know) why things are the way they are. We are fortunate today to have a bunch of ready made scientific answers to explain away most of the primal questions and those scientific answers give many folks the same satisfaction that the caveman derived from his stories.

I am not of that ilk.

A mere brushoff answer to the question: Why am I here?...to breed, while true, is insufficient. Case in point...man himself. Multiple times I have talked about the lack of evolutionary proof that modern man evolved. Each new skeleton falls directly into one of the catagories already established by archeologists (ie. Neanderthal, Cromagnon, Homo Habilus, Homo Erectus, et al). No skeletons are examples of the transition being (transition being defined as having distinct elements of both groups- an intermediate being if you will). The argument can be made that we just haven't found it yet is getting tedious. We haven't found any transitional skeleton for any of the groups. Each new discovery only reconfirms and fits into one and only one of the original boxes. Now we've done a lap and we are back to the original question: Why?

If we indeed fulfilled the sole purpose of 'just breeding' then the concept of evolution would make sense because we would have a continuous flow of skeletal remains from primordial soup, through the euglena, to the ameoba, to modern man. However, we don't and it is not for want of having looked and looked hard.

My latest information says that modern man (Cromagnon) was an established earthly inhabitant by 100,000 BCE and first appeared as early as 300,000 BCE. Lucy (a Neanderthal) is credited with having lived 2,000,000 BCE and the last of Lucy's descendants died 50,000 BCE. And all of this "evolution" with zero transitional beings between the two species.

This is precisely why I am a theist.

Modern man exists here on the planet Earth for a reason. We are not products of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. We did not just 'poof' come into existence as the principle claims is the case in atomic particles. Whatever is the reason for mankind's existance is what my theism is all about. I still search. I am not content with the easy, brushoff answers provided by the organized religions or by quantum physics.

Sermon over.

Blindart,

I hope I never come across as a 'modern philosopher'. I am merely a seeker and have no answers, as demonstrated in the above tome. I hope I'm not misunderstanding your point.

Nox

thank you nox, amen brother, from bio122 (mostly evolution, genitics, ect) something has bugged me about evolution, you just made it crystal clear: there should exist at least some remains of these creatures that bridged the gap, but there is not... i want my money back, they never told the whole story!

Nox, just curious, but what religion are you?

Edit: I put a period instead of a question mark.

[This message has been edited by A-F Army (edited 11-04-2002).]

I am a theist.

Nox

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Originally posted by Nox:
I am a theist.

Nox

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Yes I realize this but isn't theism, just a way to classify the belief in one god.

Nox I liked your answear. I mean you no disrespect hear but, from this discussion alone it seems that you would rather be safe than sorry. By that I mean the following:
I'm a theist and believe in God so I will go to heaven.
Their might be a God so I will believe based on whatever and will go to heaven.
And the Atheist view which stats that their is no God and you go to hell.
A philosophy teacher once used this example to me when explaining why he is a theist. He said that their's a 2/3 chance that I'm going to heaven if I believe in God.
I personally don't accept either stance since their is no absolute facts either way. Although I always lean to the side of skepticism. I think that for the most part I agree with your statement but reach a different conclusion. I hope that I'm not misjuding your opinion on the matter though. I have read a great many books on the subject(yes including the bible and the Koran). My opinion of these as well as other organized religions is that they are misguided and have the wrong intentions when trying to validate a supernatural being. This is why I have a major problem with christians. I think that for anybody to actually be a theist that it would have to be individual and not in any sort of organized fashion. I hope that I made some sort of sense with these random thoughts.

.... And suddenly, without knowing exactly how, I found myself in a conditon that made me feel in the presence of something immensely sublime. A small luminous point appeared in the distance. For a moment it disappeared. But a second later it became visible again, this time much nearer. I could now see that the light emanated from a Christ- like being, whose every detail was made of dazzling white light spangled with blue. The light was so intense and vivid that it reminded me of those sparklers we used to put on Christmas trees. The sparks in my revelation, however, were much, much smaller, but also much more numerous.
There was again a pause, during which I found myself in darkness. But then the figure again illuminated the plateau. I looked directly into a figure made of fire. A Christ-being of dazzling brightness now moved straight towards me, raising its arms as if about to embrace me. I was totally paralysed. Unable to make the slightest move, I gazed straight at the radiant being's waist, now just in front of me and on a level with my eyes. But the figure kept moving forwards; and in the next moment it entered my own flesh and blood. A sublime feeling thrilled me. The paralysis left me. The divine light that had thus taken up residence within me enabled me to take a sweeping look at the world.
And I beheld continents and oceans, cities and countries, mountains and valleys - all bathed in the light now emanating from my own mind. In this white light the earth was transfigured into "the kingdom of God"...

When on the following morning I seated myself in the chair in which I had meditated, I was again at once enveloped in the divine light. I looked into a bright blue sky, which seemed to be drawn aside, so that another, still brighter sky appeared. And thus it continued until a sky appeared so exuberantlydazzling in its golden light and vibrating at such a velocity that I felt myself at the limit of what my organism and consciousness could endure. A single step, a single fraction of a second, more and the celestial oscillation, with the immense power of lightning, instantaneously would have put an end to my physical existence. But during the fractions of a second that the revelation lasted I experienced a world of holiness, purity, harmony and perfection. I found myself in an ocean of light. This was not, as in my first revelation, white as snow, but the colour of gold. Everything in every detail was fire of a golden lustre. Throughout were vibrating thin, golden filaments, glittering here and there, within and without. I felt that this was the very consciousness of God, his own sphere of thought. It was the substance, the omnipotence, the supreme power, through which the divine I ruled and directed oceans of worlds, galaxies and nebulae, in the microcosmos as well as in macrocosmos. I was spell-bound. The divine fire vibrated within me and without, above and below. "The spirit of God", which according to the Bible "moved upon the face of the waters", the "fire" that Moses saw burning in the thornbush, the "fire" that took Elijah into heaven, the "fire" through which Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, the "fire" that appeared above the heads of the apostles and subsequently changed Saul into Paul on his way to Damascus, the "fire" that throughout all times has been the "alpha" and "omega" in every form of sublime creation, manifestation or revelation blazed here before my own eyes, vibrated in my own breast, in my own heart, and enveloped my whole being. I felt I was bathing in an element of love. I was at the origin, the very source, of everything warm in a father's and mother's affection for their offspring, of mutual devotion in the amours of a young couple. I saw the power that made the hand sign the letter of pardon, abolish slavery, protect life's weaker ones, whether it be a little animal or a frail human being. I saw the sunshine that can melt the ice and remove the cold from every mind, transform the barren deserts of hopelessness and pessimism into fertile and sunny regions of consciousness, warm the heart, inspire the brain, making the individual forgive injustice, love his enemy, and understand the criminal. It was as if I was resting in the bosom of the Almighty. I was resting at the fountainhead of universal love, seeing divine perfection, seeing that I was one with the way, the truth and the life, and one with the great Father....

Well surly is a God and we can believe in God but it doesn't make us good or nothing, cause Satan believes there is God. Who is this God you believe in. Why don't people just talk to him and find out? Bunch of apes.

Nox you basically said you can't prove evolution so you became a theist. But you can't prove that either... so why do you follow one and not the other?

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Originally posted by nz man:
Why don't people just talk to him and find out? Bunch of apes.

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Talk to God? Your obviously not that intelligent are you? What is the God that you believe in? And please in your answear use full and complete sentences that make some sort of sense.

To all you folks who asked questions, I will answer tomorrow. It's been a long day (16 hours at the polls + getting ready and transport before that). I'm tired and going to bed.

Nox

I'm notricing that at least one theist in this argument believe the bible, closely to word for word. Well, no offence to anyone, but I think that the bible is a symbolic interpretation of actual events, if that makes sense. For instance, the Darwinian theory and the order in which the universe was created according to the bible are very similar. Not completely the same, but similar. I don't think God got a big piece of holy clay and sculped everything on a holy potter's wheel. God made basic animals then got better ideas. Boom. Creatures evolve into better creatures. God created the world in 7 'days' which were actually seven periods of time. Just like when Jesus was in the desert for 40 days. 40 days just means a long time. I do believe the phrase "40 years" occurs later in the bible.
Well, make of it what you will.

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Originally posted by BuD02:
I'm a theist and believe in God so I will go to heaven.

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Those are your words, not mine. You cannot find a reference written by me that talks about heaven other than one that is dripping with sarcasm.

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Originally posted by BuD02:
Their might be a God so I will believe based on whatever and will go to heaven.

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Never said this either.

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Originally posted by BuD02:
And the Atheist view which stats that their is no God and you go to hell.

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I only remember talking about hell whenever I described how some religion (Islam, Christianity) described it. As far as atheists, I have consistantly stated that I disagree with their belief that there is no "God" but never have I said that I would relegate them to hell.

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Originally posted by BuD02:
A philosophy teacher once used this example to me when explaining why he is a theist. He said that their's a 2/3 chance that I'm going to heaven if I believe in God.

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I had one like that too. I wonder if that isn't part of the philosophers lobotomy.

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Originally posted by BuD02:
I personally don't accept either stance since their is no absolute facts either way. Although I always lean to the side of skepticism.

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And I really, really like the disease you have contacted which originated on the Island of Skypsos.

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Originally posted by BuD02:
I think that for anybody to actually be a theist that it would have to be individual and not in any sort of organized fashion.

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And that is precisely how I feel...well with a few more things added (mostly because of my Skypsos affliction).

Nox

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Originally posted by govinda:
Nox you basically said you can't prove evolution so you became a theist. But you can't prove that either... so why do you follow one and not the other?

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No. I was a theist long before the evolution stuff came around. The evolution merely reinforced my theism.

And you are totally correct about my not being able to prove either one. I cannot. This is what I said before on religious philosophy/argument/discussion... I have reached the point of 'I believe'. Yes, I will listen to and think about what others believe. Those ideas may even change my mind, however, until (maybe even if) that happens, that is what I believe, be it right, wrong, or indifferent.

Nox

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Originally posted by nz man:
cause Satan believes there is God.

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Only in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. As far as most of the rest, Satan (or Satan's eviquivalent) is a God.

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Originally posted by nz man:
Why don't people just talk to him and find out?

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This is a problem for many people. You have personified/humanized God. Why? Because as a child you were taught that God is some big daddy sitting up in the clouds watching you (this may not be exact, but you get the point I'm making). Later, as we grew older, that simplistic answer didn't get it and we were taught a more abstract concept of God. However, the personification and personalization of God remained. Why? Because that is what we were taught. The earliest teachings are the hardest to remove. Take a look at how you refer to God as he. Who said so? I don't recall God ever claiming that.

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Originally posted by nz man:
Bunch of apes.

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Don't do this...especially here. Save this for Spurious or Bitch and Moan. You may not agree, but this forum is too intellectual for that.

Nox

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Originally posted by Aquius:
but I think that the bible is a symbolic interpretation of actual events

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I agree. The phrase that I have used (in the form of a question) is: Is the Bible a book OF religion, or a book ABOUT religion? Same thing as yours, just different words to express the same concept.

Nox

In reality, you really only have one life. Therefore the grand purpose of life is to enjoy it.

I'm a theist and believe in God so I will go to heaven.
Their might be a God so I will believe based on whatever and will go to heaven.
And the Atheist view which stats that their is no God and you go to hell.

Sorry Nox I didnt' mean for it to sound like you said it. That is something I heard in a class one time. Didn't mean to offend you by it.

Maybe your free will is an option?

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Originally posted by nz man:
Maybe your free will is an option?

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Option regarding what?