now if there was a god wouldnt you think that everybody would be happy and be living in a perfect world with no fighting or bad things which happen?
Maybe, but if you had kids you would let them ride a bike wouldn't you? Even though they'll probably fall and skin their knee up something awful? Gotta let kids learn from their mistakes. Granted that is much smaller in terms of scale but probably proportionate when considering the enormity of a possibility like a god.
its not God's fault that we fight and hurt ourselves. He gives us the right to make our own decisions, and we experience the concequences for those decisions.
But would you let your children dump toxic waste into the rivers, play with nuclear weapons (the ultimate matchbook), and have promiscuous sex for fun? Granted that your example was in much smaller in terms of scale, but ... just like you'd let your child do the small, maybe even medium things that they could get hurt from, would you not protect your child from doing the dumb things that they and everyone else would absolutely regret?
Maybe the 'bicycle ride' is a metaphor for the collective human experience. Sure, in this lifetime we dump toxic waste, contract STD's and get crushed and drowned by the floods of storms, but it only affects our species presently. If you take a look at the human experience, branching from perhaps the beginnings of civilization til now . . . We've faced a hell of a lot more. It's been a rough road. I guess the only new problem now is riding the bicycle off the cliff. Still, if God is an all powerful being, couldn't God have created a world which we could learn from our mistakes and struggle without atrocities, horror and grief? Voltaire asked this question, his suggestion: Maybe God is very powerful, but not ALL powerful. Who knows. The truth is that you are here. There is suffering, struggle and chaos in this world. There is also peace, growth and balance. Work with what you have, not what may have been or should have been. That will only lead to countless hours of discussion leading only to possibilities. With certainty, you are here, whatever here is. Live. Grow. Understand.
i think the important thing is that we can choose not to contribute to making that suffering more. i think this is far more important then even wither or not there is a god or why it does or does not do what we immagine it to or think it should. we can also apply ourselves to learning HOW that suffering is REALLY caused and thereby how to ACTUALY avoid doing so. the cookbooks and mumbo jumbo of beliefs may be an easier sell then trying to get everyone to do their thinking. i think that's why we have them. but being an easier sell doesn't appear to have made that approach more effective in reducing suffering and harm. that being the case i see no objection in rethinking that approach to the problem. =^^= .../\...
In the case of whose opinion meet what's opinion, there must be evil to balance the good and there must be good to balance the evil... Simply put, no... Raziel X
Depends on what your definition of god is.... But an all-powerful god that claims to love us like sons and daughters and wants us ti be with him for eternity...yes, it would seem logical that the world would seem more like a utopia (heaven) from the start. The christian excuse for this would be that god gave us free-will, we are free to make bad, or violent decisions. But if there is a god, who knows what his intention is or if he even gives a shit about us at all. Maybe he cares more about whats going on in planet B45XC in solar system 567321907. You could speculate on "god" absolutely forever.
It seems to me that you take a very egotistical view on life, a view that humans are the only important form of life in the greater scheme of things. That we are the species that counts. It is a view I can't possibly accept. I don't think are greater intelligence makes us any more important than any other life in the universe - I think it makes us more responsible for our actions, but not more important. I don't think we are here as some sort of god-made adolescent training ground for heaven. Our atrocities affect more than just ourselves. There is life all over the planet affected by our mistakes, and I just can't accept that they were put here by a higher being to innocently suffer our consequences as well.
Are we even the most intelligent? Maybe other lifeforms simply know that everything is as it should be, so they don't struggle against our self-destruction. Maybe intelligence = emotional maturity...and we are very unintelligent from that perspective. Maybe none of what happens here actually matters.
no, actualy these two things are totaly unrelated. the conditions we individualy experience are for the most part the collective doing of our own species. those that are not are simply the diversity of reality itself. i'm not saying a god couldn't control these things, but what would be its incentive to do so? how can a child, such as our own species, ever grow up if its parents never stop wiping its ass for it? i believe there is something that exists. what i don't believe is that it is under any obligation to be what anyone expects of it. only the likelyhood that itself intends us no harm even that is not its obligation, just an observable probability =^^= .../\...
I don't see us as any more or less important than the tiny grub beneath the log or the mosquito on our skin. Life seems to be growth for all things, not just us. Sera Michele, I was just working with the topic. I don't believe in a grand scheme for humanity at all, was just toying with possibilities. Just wanted to clear that up. I am on the same page as you.
Agreed. That empathy is quite important I think. It's quite easy to tell if an infected mosquito bite caused an infection, but it's nigh on impossible to tell if a mosquito bite is the only reason you're still alive. I think the definition of god is such that even people that supposedly believe in the 'same' god will disagree about him/her/it/us/them/everything. It's just a product of the connections and mixed messages we get. Does god=light or did god create light? Did god create people or people create god or god=people? Religion isn't for me... every answer leaves me with more questions.
well said man. in the same analogy, there are as many pet owners as there are pets. Therefore, why only limit it to one god?
we are a minor part of it all, its just that we have, well, the ego to let us realize the whole, and wonder where we fit into it. There are things that predate us, there are things that are younger than us, but we are but part of a cycle, not the main link in the chain. There are mulitiple levels of divinity, and there is the human level as well. There are deities that are products of our ancestry, deities that are part of nature, and deities that are part of chaos and life. It is a mulitiple layered world, and humans have important roles in some parts of it, just as other plants, animals and spirits have their place in theirs.
Themnax Agree totally. We exist as the species we are due to the forge of adversity. Thats how species evolve, by being the ones that survive the forge. That same forge killed 90%+ of all the species that have ever existed before we even showed up as upright homonids some few millions of years back. Adversity breeds character [in our case, adaptabillity. reason+hands] All the war and pain we inflict on ourselves as a race should get sympathy from some deity? What a 'poor me' attitude that is. We all know that if we work together we can make the world anything we want it to be. If we dont do that.. then who is to blame but us? Occam
