Does God Exist?

[Eternal_Bliss 0]

IS JESUS the topic of disscussion or not I cant say.....as I didnt start it !!and I cant say what JESUS was as I am not in a position to do that...but I have my own brain and I can say that there are many religions in this world besides Chirstianity and one should stop following any religion blindly(the religion one is born with) but inquire about it, with the intellegence which GOD has given us and have our own opinion rather then bad-mouthing other's point of veiw.... AND WHO KNOWS PPL MIGHT HAVE TWISTED THE FACTS TO SHOW TO OTHERS THAT SOMEONE IS THEIR ONLY TRUE SAIVOR..

[Chesso 0]

Of course, alot of people twisted facts back then or just believed it was something more, I mean they had no other way to explain it, so they had to interpret it in their own way.Same thing still happens today eh heh heh.But either why the outcome was the same, were here and we'll die and that's that eh, might as well make the most of it I guess (easier said than done).

[mitchellmckain 0]

IT seems to me U ARE too preocupied by ur own Ideas to understand others.......UR cup of the mind is already full so U cannot take any more( no wonder !!!!!)

 

This sounds like the words of someone looking for a convert rather than a discussion. If this is your outreach program then you are right I am not an easy mark for you to achieve your numerical goal. Indeed, I am not a blank slate on which you can write, I am a scientist, philosopher and theologian with a masters from a theological seminary and a masters in physics, which just means that I have studied a lot of ideas from a lot of different people and I have been thinking about these things a lot. Do I understand everything? Of course not.

 

Discussion provides the opportunity for learning new things, but with someone like me it is a back and forth exchange. If you require a blank slate, there is always your children, but the challenge here is to see if you can make your ideas understood to people who already have a different way of thinking. There is always a question of context. Are your ideas too alien to be of any meaning to me or is some of what you say applicable in a different context. It is the idea of discussion that instead of just talking at people we talk back and forth. Everyone is the speaker and everyone is the audience.

 

Besides there is always the chance that participants in a discussion like this will have ideas that are uniquely their own. I think that the possible ideas are infinite. So no matter what I may have already studied there is always the chance of meeting someone who does not simply parrot what they have read or been taught.

 

AND regarding the world as a PRISION who said this world is one. I rather wanted to mean the world as a oppurtinity or a door which GOD has given us to unite with the HIM.....and I didnt say that u dont have to participate completly in the EVENTS around U to find SALVATION.......U have to rather help the ppl around u TO SEEK GOD...

 

Prison (suffering) or illusion (maya), it does not really matter, the point is that the world is viewed as something to escape from, and that still sounds like a denial of its beauty and value, which lessens what one can learn from it. You seem to believe in many paths as the Buddhists do, but if so each must find the one path that works for him. I can only speak of the path which I can see and understand.

 

Look Christianity too has its own forms of denial and a huge blind spot when it comes to seeing the value of the natural world. It is so focused on the question of good and evil in human thought and behavior that it completely ignores the natural world, leaving the door open for its abuse and destruction. It has taken time for the Western world to realize the cliff which it is quickly approaching, when the earth will only recover after the human race is extinct.

 

to some of the ppl in this world, ideas which are alien to them are EVIL and DEMONIC and those of their own are TRUE which I find hard to understand. FOR THEM either the things in the world is BLACK or WHITE no GREY SHADES for them

 

I see that you are disturbed by my subtle comparison of the way that Hinduism views the world and the way that I think Lucifer and his demons view the world. But I did not really mean imply that Hinduism is demonic. I meant only exactly and no more than what I said, that I cannot see it that way. I absolutely believe in religious freedom and I rejoice and embrace diversity in human thought and practice. For me even the shades of gray are too restrictive, I need the whole spectrum. Shades of gray still imply an absolute standard of good and bad by which you can judge all things, but in a full color spectrum you can see that some things are just different and neither better nor worse.

[Eternal_Bliss 0]

AM I SEEKING A CONVERT ????? first off all I want to make it clear that in hinduism no one can be converted to, like in other religions( ISLAM or CHRISTIANITY or any other religion of the world)....in HINDUISM it is said that "sarva dharma sambhava"sarva:every, dharma: religion, sambhava: possible i.e. all the religions are the way to GOD...NO one will find hindu holy man preaching their religion and seeking converts having a goal to convert the whole world it is followed mosty in the INDIAN sub-continent..So conversion doesnt come in the question...and appreciating other religion I was saying that we should undestan other's point of veiw and have our own unike way which is the most satisfying to us....and cant be Baised over one particular religion simply coz we r born with it.......

[Chesso 0]

Heh heh, I was somewhat born into a religious type family but none of them are for it anymore, they kind of learned better of it.It was alot of the uhhh, well education system trying to push kids into it, highly religious people pushing into it.... it makes alot of people want to forget about it and not even consider it eh.

[mitchellmckain 0]

IS JESUS the topic of disscussion or not I cant say.....as I didnt start it !!

No the topic was the question, "does God exist?" What was particularly peculiar in this thread was that it was introduced in the science section rather than under religion and philosophy. But I already addressed that in my first post in this thread.

The problem is that God is a subject of religious rather than scientific thought and religion is neccessarily highly subjective. So with Eternal_Bliss we have his Hindu-influenced thoughts about God and with me we have my Open Theist-evolutionary creationist-Christian-pragmatic-existentialist-mystic-physics-influenced thoughts about God.

and I cant say what JESUS was as I am not in a position to do that...but I have my own brain and I can say that there are many religions in this world besides Chirstianity and one should stop following any religion blindly(the religion one is born with) but inquire about it, with the intellegence which GOD has given us and have our own opinion rather then bad-mouthing other's point of veiw....

You presume much to assume that anyone is following their religion blindly. In fact, I would go so far as to say that such a presumption falls most easily from the mouth of someone who is following their own religion or philosophy blindly. I, for example, was not born Christian. I was a child of the sixties generation, people who believed in no religion, marriage or government, but in free sex and the dictates of reason.

In some sense a religious discussion between people of different religious beliefs is impossible without in some manner "bad mouthing other points of view", that is why it is banned from polite conversation and public venues. It is why in the west we have this separation between the religious and the secular.

Therefore to carry on such a religious discussion between people of different religious beliefs, we must have two minds, the subjective religious mind and the objective "secular" mind. So with one mind we can express our religious point of view and with the other mind we can draw back to the secular acceptance of opposing points of view.

AND WHO KNOWS PPL MIGHT HAVE TWISTED THE FACTS TO SHOW TO OTHERS THAT SOMEONE IS THEIR ONLY TRUE SAIVOR..

See. this is a good example of what I was saying. Eternal_Bliss is offended by the words attributed to Jesus saying "I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me", just as I am offended by the ideas of the reincarnation and maya. In Eternal_Bliss' mind those words of Jesus could only be the product of fraud just as in my mind the ideas of reincarnation and maya sound like the ideas of demons. In all likelihood, our ideas of the truth, no matter how much we think they are right, are actually all wrong, which is why it is very important that no one be able to impose their ideas on someone else, for imposing the wrong ideas on other people would very wrong indeed, wouldn't it?
Edited October 7, 2006 by mitchellmckain (see edit history)

[Chesso 0]

I would most certainly say so yes.It's one reason why I don't knock religion out of people and a good reason why I don't let them knock it into other people that are weak and prone to verbal bullying (of a sort).None of us have an absolute answer nor any full on proof of the existance or non-existance eh.Or we can do is discuss and speculate I suppose.But either way, whether it exists or not, I don't see the world coming to a sudden halt if people stopped believing, the world seems to turn just the same for religious or non-religious so meh >_>, what's the difference? .

[Eternal_Bliss 0]

IF U belive in the word of JESUS then there is not much option left for us as he claims he is the "only way"!!BUT hold on there.....did JESUS REALLY SAY SO.....I mean when JESUS died after that many of the gospels have been written and not every version was same and the CHURCH chose only few of them to make the New Testament. Why ???? On what basis???? Is it possible that some of the versions were simply rejected coz it didnt fit in with the image of christianity that the church wanted to project I was also astonished by the similarity between the story of JESUS and that of BUDDHA who came to the world before JESUS..for instance, like virgin birth ,the prophecy that JESUS will get born , his temptation by the satan and how he didnt give in to the temptation and the angels rejoiced over it...and many more and also to some extent to KRISHNA...like when he was born his life was in danger and so he was taken to some safer place (EGYPT in case of JESUS and DWARKA in case of KRISHNA).....could it only be a coincidence.....Who Knows?? So it is better to leave the question unanswered as we cant find it out exactly.......

[mitchellmckain 0]

IF U belive in the word of JESUS then there is not much option left for us as he claims he is the "only way"!!BUT hold on there.....did JESUS REALLY SAY SO.....I mean when JESUS died after that many of the gospels have been written and not every version was same and the CHURCH chose only few of them to make the New Testament. Why ???? On what basis????

Is it possible that some of the versions were simply rejected coz it didnt fit in with the image of christianity that the church wanted to project
I was also astonished by the similarity between the story of JESUS and that of BUDDHA who came to the world before JESUS..for instance, like virgin birth ,the prophecy that JESUS will get born , his temptation by the satan and how he didnt give in to the temptation and the angels rejoiced over it...and many more and also to some extent to KRISHNA...like when he was born his life was in danger and so he was taken to some safer place (EGYPT in case of JESUS and DWARKA in case of KRISHNA).....could it only be a coincidence.....Who Knows?? So it is better to leave the question unanswered as we cant find it out exactly.......

Interesting. I know a great deal of the story of Siddhartha Gautama and none of those things you mention are a part of it. He was born to Śuddhodana and Māyādevī (King Sudhodhana's wife), there was the prophecy at his birth that he would either be a great king or a great holy man. I think perhaps that these other things you have claimed are a distortion by your organization (Hare Krishna?) in order to make him fit into your organation's peculiar syncretism of the ideas which you have borrowed from world religions, to make both him and Jesus incarnations of your god, Krishna or Vishnu or whatever. But I prefer to listen to what both of these men (Siddhartha and Jesus) really had to say rather put words into or take words out of their mouths in order to fit them into some manufactured ideology.
Edited October 8, 2006 by mitchellmckain (see edit history)

[Eternal_Bliss 0]

FIRST I dont think any organisation named "Hare Krishna" exists, let alone me being a part of it. For the record I am not a part of any organisation be it Buddhist, Hindu or Christian. I am just a student in a college who is a bit curious about the world religions and to know the truth about it KRISHNA existed like thousand of years before JESUS and BUDDHA even BUDDHA existed hundreds of years before JESUS and this is clear as pure water and the similarities are (1) Krishna was miraculously conceived and born of the Virgin Devaki ("Divine One") as a divine incarnation. (2) He was born at a time when his family had to travel to pay the yearly tax. (3) His father was a carpenter yet Krishna was born of royal descent. (4) His birth was attended by angels, wise men and shepherds, and he was presented with gifts. (5) He was persecuted by a tyrant who ordered the slaughter of thousands of infants who feared that the divine child would supplant his kingdom. (6) His father was warned by a heavenly voice to flee the tyrant who sought the death of the child. The child was then saved by friends who fled with them in the night to a distant country. When the tyrant learned that his attempt to kill the child failed, he issued a decree that all the infants in the area be put to death. Writing about Krishna in the eighteenth century, Sir William Jones stated, "In the Sanskrit dictionary, compiled more than two thousand years ago, we have the whole history of the incarnate deity, born of a virgin, and miraculously escaping in infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country." (Asiatic Researches, Vol. I, p. 273). (7) The Bible states that Jesus and family fled to Egypt afterward to escape from King Herod. According to the Christian apocryphal text "the Gospel of the Infancy," the family traveled to Maturea, Egypt. Krishna was born in Maturea, India, hundreds of years earlier. (8) He was baptized in the River Ganges. (9) The missions of Krishna and Jesus were the same - the salvation of humanity. (10) Krishna worked miracles and wonders such as raising the dead and healing lepers, the deaf and the blind. (11) Krishna used parables to teach the people about charity and love. (12) Jesus taught his disciples about the possibility of removing a mountain by faith. According to tradition, Krishna raised Mount Goverdhen above his disciples to protect his worshipers from the wrath of Indra. (13) "He lived poor and he loved the poor." (14) Krishna washed the feet of the Brahmins and transfigured before his disciples. (15) Krishna's teachings and Jesus' teachings were very similar. The celebrated French missionary and traveler, Evarist-Regis Hucv, who made a journey of several thousand miles through China and Tibet, stated, "If we addressed a Mogul or Tibetan this question, 'Who is Krishna?' the reply was instantly 'The savior of men." According to Robert Cheyne, "All that converting the Hindoos to Christianity does for them is to change the object of their worship from Krishna to Christ." Appleton's Cyclopedia says this about the teachings of Krishna: "Its correspondence with the New Testament is indeed striking." (16) There is an extra-canonical Hindu tradition which states that Krishna was crucified. According to some traditions, Krishna died on a tree or was crucified between two thieves. (17) He descended to hell, rose bodily from the dead, and ascended to heaven which was witnessed by many. (18) Krishna is called the "shepherd god" and "lord of lords," and was considered "the redeemer, firstborn, sin bearer, liberator, universal Word." (19) He is the second person of the trinity, and proclaimed himself the "resurrection" and the "way to the Father." (20) He was considered the "beginning, the middle and the end," ("alpha and omega"), as well as being omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent

[mitchellmckain 0]

FIRST I dont think any organisation named "Hare Krishna" exists, let alone me being a part of it. For the record I am not a part of any organisation be it Buddhist, Hindu or Christian. I am just a student in a college who is a bit curious about the world religions and to know the truth about it

I am well aware of this tactic by newer religions to change their name and fragment into smaller groups, in order to avoid previous bad impressions. However in this case you are only avoiding the rather good impressions I have from visiting (over ten years ago) a rather small group here in Utah with their own broadcasting station. What you call yourself is irrelevant. The system of beliefs is still distinctive. And while I would absolutely love sharing one of your vegitarian dinners with you, our theological convictions are likely to remain at odds with each other.

KRISHNA existed like thousand of years before JESUS and BUDDHA even BUDDHA existed hundreds of years before JESUS and this is clear as pure water and the similarities are

Yes I looked up Krishna. He did not sound even remotely similar to either Jesus or Siddhartha, with his thousands of wives -- more like a petty tyrant of pre-history with delusions of godhood. No offense intended. Those are just my frank impressions, to explain why I am not interested in a theology that tries to cast Jesus in the same mold. Furthermore Krishna sounds like just the opposite of Siddhartha as well. Perhaps since you believe in reincarnation, you see the same person changing and learning over time, but I do not.

[pencilpoint 0]

I really dont think Jesus exists if you dont think he is. If you think he is real, then he exists in your mind. thats my opinion at least

[Chesso 0]

I would agree with that pencilpoint, and if they want to believe it in there heads well heck go for it lol.As long as it doesn't cut into my daily activity's i'm not too worried at all .

[hasanarbab 0]

ok lads, I'm gonna go to pretty strict talking here. I love to discuss on topic like this one. Proof of God's existance? hmmmm1. can you prove that you were born? A human can not know what he does not see. so what he does not see he accepts that by someoneone else's experience or somebody else tells him about. none of us have seen ourselves being born. even if we see the video of our birth we cannot say that it i s real, because we were not the one watching all this. we are just told that "he is dad and she is mom". we do except it because it's being planted in our brains since we even don't know, what's happening arround. Everyone of us does not know if his or her parents are their biological parents unless someone knows he was adopted. Now in modern age you can have a DNA test. Should everybody go for it?2. when you create something, does it know that who you are? unless you tell it that who you are. Like, if you create a robot, you know how will it work and you are the creator who can make this robot work whatever the way you want. you decide it to be a warrior or a sergeory robot or a mechanic robot or whatsoever. it knows only that much what you have implanted in its memory.Why dows not the same rule applies for a human? we know or can know in later times only the much whatever is inside this universe. because our creator lets us know only that much and besides he tells us by whatever the means that he is here and there and everywhere.3. the biggest proof of God's being is.......It's beenmillions of years or may be billions of years, humanity always had this discussion that if God exists or not. Do we still fight on the existance of anyone else? do we fight on Adam that he is the First human or not. do we fight on other anciant stuff???? no. it's only God. so he does exist that's why we talk about him.I'll come with some more proofs later......................

[DrK3055A 0]

ok lads, I'm gonna go to pretty strict talking here. I love to discuss on topic like this one. Proof of God's existance? hmmmm
1. can you prove that you were born? A human can not know what he does not see. so what he does not see he accepts that by someoneone else's experience or somebody else tells him about. none of us have seen ourselves being born. even if we see the video of our birth we cannot say that it i s real, because we were not the one watching all this. we are just told that "he is dad and she is mom". we do except it because it's being planted in our brains since we even don't know, what's happening arround. Everyone of us does not know if his or her parents are their biological parents unless someone knows he was adopted. Now in modern age you can have a DNA test. Should everybody go for it?

2. when you create something, does it know that who you are? unless you tell it that who you are. Like, if you create a robot, you know how will it work and you are the creator who can make this robot work whatever the way you want. you decide it to be a warrior or a sergeory robot or a mechanic robot or whatsoever. it knows only that much what you have implanted in its memory.

Why dows not the same rule applies for a human? we know or can know in later times only the much whatever is inside this universe. because our creator lets us know only that much and besides he tells us by whatever the means that he is here and there and everywhere.

3. the biggest proof of God's being is.......
It's beenmillions of years or may be billions of years, humanity always had this discussion that if God exists or not. Do we still fight on the existance of anyone else? do we fight on Adam that he is the First human or not. do we fight on other anciant stuff???? no. it's only God. so he does exist that's why we talk about him.

I'll come with some more proofs later......................

OK Hasan Arbab, I don't intend to start a flame, because all opinions deserve respectfulness, but i disagree with the 3 logical arguments you stated as proofs.

1. You can never proof anything with a 100% certainty, neither what you can see. Senses are tools that provide our cognitive system a way to obtain data from the outside (they are sensors). Muscles are actuators, that make the system interact or modify the outer environment. Everything of those consist of electrical and chemical signals that can be interfered to recreate an untrue (or less certain) model of reality. The extremal case is a situation pictured out from The Matrix film (Wachowsky brothers-1995), where there is a virtual reality created from a big computer that sends electric signals to human bodies directly to sensitive nerves. In real world, we can see the boundaries of our senses, when they can't depict a logical conclusion for some situations (illusion), or when they fail to depict the reality as it is perceived in an usual condition (allucination, psicosis). We know that we exist, because we can remember facts of our existence, extract, and sort the data in order to find relationships among items of the reality around us. And this lead us to the following point....

2. The clue for this matter is the existence of an inteligence threshold for a being to realize about how it was created and how it came to this world. We can not travel backwards in time, but we can rewind the tape to watch what happened. This is named as deductive reasoning. We can use the data adquired in our memory to learn about facts of reality and deduct what happened before, due to our inteligent stage. Also, we can have certain control of what happens to something that we created, but we can't decide for every aspect of that thing, because we understand some rules of the universe, but not all (that's impossible due to our nature of trying to quantize the infinity). Concept of "Creator" is not always the same as "omnipotent", maybe is never the same.

3. The discussion about the existance of god relies on the fact that god is not an ancient, but the most ancient, the origin, the begining of everything (as for we short sighted human that conceive the time as linear, so there must exist a begining and will exist an end of reality). There are some other discussions about ancient topics (in fact, there've been writen lots of books about ancient professors of many disciplines) . But the strongest discussion is the one that links every human to a common origin. The one that tries to give a short and pleasant answer to the trivial question "where do we come from?", the only need to accept this answer is "faith". But this "faith" has nothing to do in order to proof certainty.

Still i think that "beliefs" are good, because they impulse us to research and discover things that can lead us to some answers, but many times lead us to many more questions.
Edited October 27, 2006 by DrK3055A (see edit history)