Sometimes I Think God Is Just Something We Think About In Our Heads.

Discussion in 'Agnosticism and Atheism' started by Gangster Guru, Jan 7, 2017.

  1. tikoo

    tikoo Senior Member

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    Know yourself is finite , yet not confined by social language . Oh , this
    is only social language . Sorry .

    iruhjeejehoo'ri

    Oh , god , what've I said now ... !
     
  2. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

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    [​IMG]
     
    themnax likes this.
  3. tikoo

    tikoo Senior Member

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    God is best in your feets , walking wild .
     
  4. heeh2

    heeh2 Senior Member

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  5. Rots in hell

    Rots in hell Senior Member

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  6. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    to me, a god, is just a self aware being that has no requirement for physical form in order to exist.
    while it is certainly possible for none to exist, i believe we live in a much more wonderfully strange universe then what you see is what you get.
    i don't think they owe anything to what anyone tells anyone to think they know about them though.
    they seem to be mostly harmless, but much stranger then any belief claims or imagines.
    if you were created in the image of one, in a literal sense, you would be invisible.
    it is in our nature though to create, and it is in that sense alone that we reflect them.

    the weakness of wanting to be feared, is a human flaw, not a godly one.
    how much, if anything, they have to do with anything, i have no idea either.
    the universal wonder of strangeness does not require to be personified,
    but one or many gods could very well exist without having to do so.

    i really believe it or they, are completely innocent of the claims of any of the major beliefs,
    and if they have anything to do with any of them, it is only by shear coincident accident if they do.

    there are other possibilities then i mention, of course. because it is beyond any of us, to imagine all of them.
     
  7. gentledove

    gentledove Members

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    Why do chickens have wings?
     
  8. heeh2

    heeh2 Senior Member

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    Because they are delicious.

    Thats why L Ron Hubbard invented them in the first place.
     
  9. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    if gods exist, its because THEY feel like it.
    anything we think we know about them, THAT is the fantasy in our own minds (to which they owe nothing).

    a lot of people, i will never understand why this is so complicated for them,
    seem unwilling or unable to understand,
    that these are two very separate things.
     
  10. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    why not?

    if you were an all powerful being, would you want to spend forever gluing every hair on every furry creature?
    or would you not, with your all powerful mind, automate the process?
    and if you automated the process, would this not be, what humans have come to observe, and give the name evolution?
     
  11. Visexual

    Visexual Member

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    Now I never bought into what my parents and the church tried to convince me of. And I never really gave it much thought after I realized it just wasn't believable to me.

    One night when I was about 23, I came back from the NCO club to my apartment drunk. I kept a typewriter on the kitchen table back then in case I thought of something to write. I remember getting up the next morning and seeing a paper in the typewriter with this poem typed;

    The Scholar
    By Rich Eubanks


    Graduation day at Heaven ‘U’

    And all are happy except the few

    Who failed to make the passing score

    And are doomed to stay among the poor


    But those who worked and those who tried

    And some who cheated and some who lied

    Will get their ticket on this fine day

    To that sweet domain of excessive pay


    Each year there’s one who comes out best

    Who’s done much more than all the rest

    This year the one who’ll leave cum laud

    Is that bright young student, Homer God


    Now tell us Homer how did you achieve

    This tremendous honor you will receive

    We know you studied the creation of man

    So try to enlighten us if you can


    He reached in his pocket and pulled our a jar

    Filled with bright atoms each resembled a star

    “Now then,” says Homer, “I’ll try to describe

    My reason for honor, my reason for pride


    These are just sterile atoms except for the few

    Where I planted bacteria from which simple life grew

    I studied these daily, yes taxing my mind

    Not really knowing just what I might find


    On one of the atoms to my great surprise

    Life kept on evolving in structure and size

    ‘Till at last the process had carried them through

    To the point where the life was like me or like you


    I computed the difference in their size verses mine

    Found their one million years to be one week of my time

    Which helped me control their future you see

    I had supreme power over what they would be


    I guided their lives and kept them in line

    For they were like children and they knew they were mine

    I even implanted a gene of my own

    Into one of their females so my will would be known


    I fed propaganda of life after death

    For they feared non-existence, it set them at rest

    They are so temperamental, they can’t coexist

    And the slightest temptations they just can’t resist


    Now I am finished, my degree I have earned

    I thank these small people for what I have learned

    Now I have no more use for this jar I have here

    Except maybe a memento for drinking my beer

    I'm serious, I don't remember typing it. There was another poem that showed up, just as mysteriously, a few weeks later;

    Peace Talk
    By Rich Eubanks


    There’s an ant on my foot

    Tell me ant, what’s on your mind

    Are you on a new adventure

    Or thinking of those you left behind

    I know you perform great feats

    Carry things twenty times you size

    You’ve fought the best of fighters

    Fooled them with you small disguise


    There’s an ant on my leg

    Tell me ant, what about your love life

    Do you have a steady girlfriend

    Or a family and a wife

    I’ll bet you’re quite the lover

    And can be a real little demon

    Knocked up hundreds of other ants

    But, do ants even have semen


    There’s an ant on my chest

    Tell me ant, what’s your true feeling

    Do you think the world is good

    Or the whole damn planet’s reeling

    Does you world have our same problems

    Do black ants hate the red

    Are you sick and tired of fighting

    Do you wish that you were dead


    There’s an ant on my nose

    Tell me ant, have you liked our little talk

    Are you considering our little discussion

    I noticed you stopped your walk

    Are you starting to really like me

    What’s wrong, you're starting to pant

    Why damn! You went and stung me

    Go to Hell, you stupid ant

    OK, just thought it might be of interest and worth a chuckle or two.
     
  12. wooleeheron

    wooleeheron Brain Damaged Lifetime Supporter

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    Me, myself, and I tend to debate who is in charge around here, and who gets to decide whether God is just in our head.
     
  13. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    while i don't believe anything has to be known in order to exist, nor that anything that exists owes anything to what people tell each other,
    the one thing i for sure do not believe in, is the goodness of anything that wishes to be feared.
    (the good news is that its only what humans tell each other that says it does)
     
  14. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    once upon a time (before laurance ronnald hubbbard, hatched out of the great egg), they, or at least their ancestors, could actually fly.
     
  15. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    we don't KNOW that anything "can't" exist, but we do know, that whatever we tell each other about it, is WE doing the telling.
    (even if some distant ancestor of us carved it in stone)

    (if one god can exist, and there's nothing to stop it from doing so, but if there's supposedly one, why not billions of them? a whole parallel universe totally populated by them, or a committee of a.i's inside a computer that predated and somehow survived the big bang?

    there's really only two things i don't believe: one is the goodness of wishing to be feared, and the other is the indebtedness of anything, to what humans tell each other.

    everything else is at least possible. not just beliefs that have been proposed, but the near if not total infinity, of those which have yet to be imagined)
    (as for demons and saitans, i mean anything existing for no better reason then to plague humanity, like we're even that big of a deal in this universe, or defining evil as not buying into and supporting some hierarchy, among beings who would have no rational need of one.

    but evil doesn't have to be an entity or even a side, just a form of behavior that is seriously harmful in totally needless ways, and its real root, isn't anything as external as a wish to accumulate symbolic value, but a very deep internal cultural choice, that is often passed off as gender nature which it isn't, to wish to be feared)

    just as the real root cause of human suffering, is the hatred of logic. and by that, i mean on a social, statistical level, rather then completely up to each of us, the way the desire to be feared is.

    and that is the real source of where beliefs can do their unintentional harm. because outside of all out fanatacysm, the hatred of logic isn't their objective, but all too often, it is, so to speak, their vehicle.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2020
  16. Dax

    Dax Members

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    I very much doubt if there is a single "believer" on the planet who would believe in a god if he/she hadn't been taught to do so by their parents/teachers.
     
    scratcho and tumbling.dice like this.
  17. Pete's Draggin'

    Pete's Draggin' Visitor

  18. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

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    Not so quick...............


    [​IMG]
     
  19. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    An interesting idea I've heard a few times recently to explain certain aspects of belief is that we're primed to attribute agency to things in the world. Some think this is an evolutionary adaptation, for instance, the consequences of mistaking a stick for a snake are far less significant than just assuming all stationary stick-like things are inanimate.

    We can see this sense of agency highlighted distinctly in polytheistic faith. In Ancient Greek mythology, some of the Gods such as Zeus and Poseidon are personified as weather like lightning and storms. Furthermore, I think we have what I'll call an "awe capacity" where this agency attribution thing kicks in. In Ancient Greece, a civilization without electricity and relatively limited understanding of science, had their awe capacity kick in during significant lightning and sea storms and attributed agency to them. We have better understanding of lightning and storms but some today probably look at the vast expanse of the cosmos and have that awe capacity kick in.


    As an aside, I agree that socialization is a strong factor in acquiring religious belief, but aren't most aspects of knowledge, views and beliefs acquired through parents/teachers? Like if I hadn't heard e=mc² I don't think I would intuit that there is a energy - mass equivalence.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2020
  20. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Cognitive psychological explanations of religion are currently in vogue in evolutionary psychology,owing to field work of cognitive anthropologists like Pascal Boyer. Another cognitive explanation is what Michael Shermer calls "patternicity", the human tendency to perceive patterns in our surroundings, such as faces in clouds. This too can be functional up to a point, but in some cases, like paranoid schizophrenia, can result in seeing patterns that aren't there. Such tendencies are often correlated with high levels of dopamine. But religion is a highly complex, multi-causal phenomenon, which accounts for its resiliency. Besides cognitive factors and behavioral conditioning (including teaching by trusted information sources), there are also the unconscious ego defense functions for solving existential challenges (see Atran, In Gods We Trust ;Freud, Future of an Illusion). But we shouldn't leave out the sociological side, and the functions of religion in promoting social solidarity (Durkheim), social class interests (Marx), and political legitimation Religion, Legitimacy and Politics : Religion, Politics and Public Expectations . As for the "awe capacity", or what Rudolph Otto called "the numinous",one of the most poignant expressions of that religious or quasi-religious sentiment I recall is by Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow:“The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.”
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2020

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