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| Think you know God? | Started by: TheSpacePope on Oct 01, '08 18:58 |
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Ok, so Bill Maher is about to release his new film Religulous. From what I hear its his opinion on the current state of religion. Bill is known for sweeping generalizatios in his opinions, but I think its a safe bet to say that the film will probably anti-organized religion. So I ask you? Do you know God? Do you know just the one or do you keep several in your back pocket? Is "organized religion" worth anything or is it just another way for a few people to con a lot of people? Personally, as Mafia.org's spiritual, astrological and moral advisor I think my opintion here should be held back in the interest of objectivity, but if God wills that I express it then I must comply. God and I had brunch this morning and he gave Religulous one thumb up and one down. A bit more info: http://www.dcables.net/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=140&gclid=CPbqjaiohJYCFRGHQAodcSimEA |
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WHUPS! Try this link instead. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0815241/ |
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| Reply by: TheSpacePope at Oct 01, '08 18:59 | |
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| Athiesm isnt allowed in my Kingdom. So I wont be seeing this crap. | |
| Reply by: King_Cav at Oct 01, '08 19:44 | |
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I will be sure to see it, simply because religion is such a perplexing phenomenon in today's world. Bill Maher has used the religion theme throughout his career as a comedian, so his views are well known. Given that, I expect he will put a new spin on the topic rather than rehash his views again. My personal view is that NOBODY knows jack shit about religion or "God", whatever your definition of "God" may be. To assume that you know anything about such a higher being is arrogant at best. Delusional is probably more accurate. If I can quote Mr Maher, and this isn't a direct quote, but rather his line of thinking: "Nobody knows anything about God. GOD doesn't want you to know anything about God. What was the first sin? Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge. Get it? KNOWLEDGE! It says right in the first book of the Bible that you cannot know anything about God". I'm not going to pass judgment on his interpretation of that biblical story, but it is something interesting to think about. So, no one can really claim to know the real truth. This is way organized religion is a crock of shit. The entire basis is that some guy wearing a robe stands in front of a crowd and preaches "God's word". Well, nobody knows what God's word is. The Bible? Ha! The Bible was written by men, and men are fallible, not to mention selfish liars protecting their own wealth and personal interests. If we are to believe everything in the Bible, then the earth is only 6000 years old. Of course, we know this not to be true, but some Bible thumpers still swear that it IS true. They probably still think the Earth is flat, too. I have my own set of beliefs. To express them simply, it is all about being a good person. Since we cannot know if there is a higher being, and if there is a higher being, we cannot know what he wants us to do, the best course of action is simply to be a good person. Does someone need help? Help them. Do you have more than you need and someone else does not have enough? Share what you have. Do not hurt people. Do not lie to people if it is a hurtful lie. Protect all living things. (Ok, MOST living things. Fuck mosquitos.) What I just expressed is sort of an individualized style of Buddhism. The difference between Buddhism and most other religions is that Buddhism focuses on the earthly realm, while other religions focus on the afterlife. That makes a bit more sense to me. |
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| Reply by: FlyingPig at Oct 01, '08 19:54 | |
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| Does this mean that organized religion has no value? | |
| Reply by: TheSpacePope at Oct 01, '08 23:58 | |
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That's a separate issue. It can have value when it gives people hope or something to believe in, or it can have negative impacts when it creates feelings of hatred towards other religious groups and makes people judgmental over those who do not share their worldview. My only point was that it is a farce, because it attempts to define a universal truth based only on faith, which usually conflicts with scientific knowledge, and is in direct conflict with the hundreds of other religious belief systems. Like the South Park guys say, what happens if it turns out that only the Mormons are right? The rest of us would be pretty screwed. If everyone insists their religion is the one true religion, that necessarily means that there are billions of others who have it all wrong. |
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| Reply by: FlyingPig at Oct 02, '08 00:39 | |
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Fair enough. Anyone else? Surely Flying Pig isnt the only one with an opintion on religion or God! What about the idea of revelation? No, not the book. The idea that God still speaks to people. Does he? Is there even a remote possibility? Why? Why not? When/if he does speak to someone does it drive them nuts and cause them to sleep on bus benches and yell religous prophesy at passing cars? Or is that a side affect of spending too much time playing mafia-themed role playing games? |
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| Reply by: TheSpacePope at Oct 02, '08 18:49 | |
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Whenever I mention, God or the notion that there is something beyond the physical realm. "Religion." "What religion?" "Reeeligion." You get the picture. It's really annoying. Like FP, I tend to reject organizated religion, for many reasons, but unlike FP, I don't reject the Bible. Yes, this book was written by the corruptible hand of man, but with so many opportunities for corruption and political motivation to have it shift in one direction or another, we'd see tremendous inconsistency. This is not a debate of the Bible, our conversation here dear friend is about God. As a student pursuing science and more specifically the deep and dirty of genetics, I'm surrounded by people who reject any thought that we were created. Simply from quarks to living and complex organisms, with a billions of years in between. That maybe be the case, but not without the hand of God, consider the room your in right now and imagine it's atomic contents, imagine the gas molecules bouncing off each other, imagine the fine vibration of the molecules that hold together, that make up the solids in your home. Aside that, consider the complex nature of your body, consider all of it's functions, again consider the room for error at the molecular level that throws the entire equation off. It's a beautiful thing, I believed and revered the Grand Architect, through intuition, not by breaking down the atoms on my table, that's all extra, I suppose... and to believe you need child-like faith, an intuition that Someone molded with meaning and each proton and particle has purposing in the grand scheme. |
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| Reply by: Lucky_Lombardi at Oct 02, '08 19:30 | |
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My personal opinion on organised religion is that it is there to keep the masses contained. The bible is a guidebook written by man, apparently from god. Now noone was there to witness god passing on his transcriptions and as man is well know to do could have right a royally ballsed up the translation. My own personal belief is this, if a man or woman lives all their life in a small community that has had no access to christianity or religion and have lived a good life and treated things in what would be considered and honest and decent way, there is no reason they shouldn't be allowed entry into heaven. I don't go to church, ironic as my mother is a minister but thats just me. I live my life to the best I can, I try to be a nice guy, help people out when I can and just generally do the right thing. So if the big guy doesn't want me in heaven just cause I won't bow down to religion well that's his loss not mine, I'll have lived my life, I'll have done it in a way that is good and to me thats all I want. |
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| Reply by: Dante_Balboni at Oct 03, '08 09:35 | |
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One of my big hang ups is the statement: "no one was there" or "no one knows" While that may be true, it may also NOT be true. There is a great deal of the scripture written by the hand of man through the mouth of god. Is it not fair to say that just as we think that no one knows the will of god, maybe someone MIGHT actually know the will of god? At one point in history, giving religion the benifit of the doubt for a moment, God DID have prophets he spoke to. Still giving religion the benefit of the doubt - why wouldnt he still do that today? |
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| Reply by: TheSpacePope at Oct 08, '08 02:30 | |
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You are not giving religion the benefit of the doubt, Space Pope. What you are doing is simply tossing aside any and all notions of logic, knowledge, and common sense. God does not speak to people. We are not that important in the greater scheme of things for him to waste his time. Fuck sakes, human beings are arrogant. "God created man in his own image" Yeah....suuuuuuuuure he did. Because we are such noble creatures, aren't we? For the first few years of life, we sit in our own feces and vomit on a regular basis. After we grow into adulthood, we go around killing people of other cultures and ethnicities. (Especially if they don't pray to the same god as us!) Very god-like, indeed. It is simple arrogance that deities in every religion resemble human beings. We simply cannot fathom there being something that is greater than us, unless it is sort of like us. If we are so fucking awesome, why were dinosaurs created millions of years before us? Oh yeah, the religious wackos believe that the Earth is only six thousand years old and that man and dinosaur coexisted, despite solid scientific evidence to the contrary. One of my big hangups is referring to "God" as a "He". Yes, I realize I did it myself, for convenience's sake. If God exists and has a gender, she is a woman. Woman are the birth givers, right? God gave birth to all forms of life, in a sense. But really, if there is any higher form of existence, nobody can even come close to explaining it. If it is such a divine being that can create a universe, how would pathetic human beings ever be able to understand it? My basic point is that if there is anything out there that resembles a higher being, we really need to quit pretending like we have any clue what it is. The Bible is a good book which teaches important values. But that's all it is. Just a book. It was not written by a lightning bolt or by someone who was having a chat with God. |
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| Reply by: Hi at Oct 08, '08 15:29 | |
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Oh, dont misunderstand me. Im not giving religion anything. All I did was ask "what if". There are just as many people who will swear by "logic and reason" that God, DOES in fact, still talk to people as there are people who insist that there's absolutly no way that he does. In my opinion, both of those YES NO arguments sound pretty absolute. YES- God is unchanging and still continues to hear and answer prayers and even talk to people. NO- God doesnt exist and never has, or we arent important enough for a higher power to speak to us. Im not promoting anyhthing either way. Sure I have my beliefs, but wouldnt it just seem more accurate to speak for ones own self and say "I dont know for sure". |
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| Reply by: TheSpacePope at Oct 08, '08 19:50 | |
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The Space Pope, you've misunderstood me, yes there may have been someone there at the time. But that person is long long dead now. All religion is now based on faith as those who could confirm facts are dead buried and supposedly in heaven. There is a certain quote I love and I feel it may be appropriate here. "Blind faith is and ironic gift to the creator of human intelligence" God gave us the ability to think for ourselves, the intelligence to questions things we feel are wrong, yet when it comes to him he wants no questions just blind obedience. While people won't want to admit it, God is as much a dictator as Castro or Hitler, controversial I know of me to say this, But look at the bible God cause mass deaths, he reign hell down on earth because man turned away from him. Hell he was worse than most dictators if you think about the great flood. according to the bible he pretty much wiped the majority of life out. just because they were adhereing to His laws, His rule. |
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| Reply by: Dante_Balboni at Oct 09, '08 10:25 | |
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At the risk of going in circles I'll just ask: How can we be sure? If there is a belief that God DID talk to someone why cant he still do so? To be clear Im not saying that anyone is wrong here, but I have noticed a pattern of very definite answers concerning those questions. Like I said: There are just as many people who KNOW God lives and interacts with us as there are people who KNOW there is no God or that he doesnt interact with us. How can we be sure? Both sides of the argument, to me, still sound like an issue of faith. Faith that he's there or faith that he isnt. |
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| Reply by: TheSpacePope at Oct 09, '08 18:39 | |
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On the subject of people talking to God or gods: Nothing has really changed. It's only that, now that we know more about the mind, and psychological disorders, people who were once widely revered as prophets are now regarded as mentally disturbed. See: Gary Busey. Think about it-- if you're in the ancient world, with the local society's primitive ideas of "God", which became ingrained in every aspect of life, and you see a schizophrenic, how would you explain their strange behavior? God did it. Or demons (which, I suppose, is the novel approach to "God did it"). Either way, it's fear-induced juju. |
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| Reply by: RonMexico at Oct 09, '08 20:21 | |
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| On the subject of this Bill Maher, I have nothing insightful to add, but I hear the Ben Folds song "JesusLand" will be featured. Ben Folds rocks! | |
| Reply by: Troy_McClure at Oct 10, '08 01:13 | |
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| no i dont know god but i know that he is their for me when i am down or when i want tro kick some ass he calms me down or when my girl cheats on me he takes me to a special place my own place and tells me what to do | |
| Reply by: Italin_Don at Oct 14, '08 21:57 | |
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If there is a belief that God DID talk to someone why cant he still do so? The QUESTION is, are we listening? I'm a man of faith. As FlyingPig drew out, we are filthy creatures, and he is humble and truthful in saying so. We filthy because of our hereditary sin debt, carried first by Adam and passed on to us, as well as our trespasses. But, despite our own short comings, the Father is one of compassion and charity, providing a means to cleanse our debt, with His Son's guiltless blood shed on calvary's tree. A clear conscientious and Home in Paradise, You can't go wrong. Life is short, in the grand scheme, while we're relative to time and space in life, once that's over, it's only just begun. Consider what matters at the end of the day. Amnesty or the Alternative. |
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| Reply by: Sal_Giaquinto at Oct 14, '08 22:56 | |
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| I have a fue questions for all of you. If god made us who made him? If god is so powerfull how come he never helps the ones in need? | |
| Reply by: adrienne at Oct 18, '08 04:48 | |
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| Is he trully real or just a story that humans made-up to have something in common? | |
| Reply by: adrienne at Oct 18, '08 04:50 | |
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