What do you believe?

its always possible that your spirit milk comes from cat spirits.

 

Well, I do love kitties. And they love me.

 

Life. It's the only thing we are sure of.

 

Life is more of a function than a belief.

Its like believing in gravity lol

 

O.K. but some people find themselves with the difficulty of 'Being Alive'.

So I personally believe she may be alive. Than the belief, and there must be one also at that level of non-expectation: is believing as good as just plain belief. ::the belief in the abstract Her as opposed to the abstract god/him.

 

thank you famewalk

 

I believe that every religion is a successful cult. Blatantly announcing your own ideals to an ignorant society despite their distaste for change, is foolish at best. Especially when you are outnumbered by so many. It sets you up for nothing but ridicule and judgment. Putting yourself through exposure and torture for your beliefs and the sins of others is a perfectly good way to get people to follow your ideals apparently...I mean sure its very epic and all but I'm not convinced, because its a tale 2000 years old. Have you ever heard how fast rumors can deform and become a LIE in themselves? Think about high school.

Lets face it realistically. If Christianity never existed when it did, and some guy came up to you in modern times with a beard, long hair, acted peaceful and told you that if you do good things, good will come to you when you die, what would your response be? I think that the image of Christianity is one of mankind's first documented impulses for peace. Everyone obeying 10 simple rules and doing to others what they would want done to them is a great ideal, but its execution has caused many problems, hence law enforcement. Law enforcement and religion are failed attempts at peace. Its time for a newer/better way.

As people advance and our intelligence grows, the more we will need solid proof that something spiritual really does exist. Otherwise gradually growing realism will take away any need for faith or religion. There will always be people who still hang on to it, but my guess is its one big fad. One that will fade once we prove that nothing is there.

 

Apparently some people in the "ignorant society" were ready for change, considering how rapidly Christianity spread after the death of Jesus. Some of us, fortunately, aren't so concerned about "ridicule and judgment" that we're afraid to challenge prevalent but wrong beliefs and ways of doing things.

I don't see what that has to do with anything. Obviously, the response to Jesus back then was positive, but many Bible experts would argue with you that His message was that "if you do good things, good will come to you when you die". People are attracted to new religions for a variety of reasons, including the charisma of the founder and the content of the message. If somebody came up to me with that message, my response would probably be different than that of a person who was searching for what that bearded somebody was offering.

If you're defining success as perfect social control, I'd agree with you. But I think of success in more relative terms, don't agree that behavioral conformity is the ultimate objective, and think the "failure" is that of the wrongdoer. All religion can do is lead the horse to water. Drinking it is the horse's job, and if the animal wants to die of thirst, too bad.

Quite a long run for a "fad". Do you really think that anyone will be able to "prove that nothing is there." Science can give us lots of things, but meaning and morality aren't among them.

 

Technically, religion cant either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism

 

You have your beliefs, I have mine. To each his own.

 

Mankind demands a beginning and a boundary, so:

in the beginning there was a sea of spirit, and it filled all space.

 

Totally on board with that.

 

every reality beyond the collective arrogance of human society can be observed to cheerfully ignore what mankind demands.

invisible things, great and small, will sometimes lend a sympathetic ear, and give great hugs, but are no more obliged to mankind's demands, then the rest of existence.

mankind demands too many things that are self contradictory,
and if the diversity of existence where limited to human comprehension,
we'd not only be worse off, we probably wouldn't exist.

 

Okay then. To comprehend, mankind needs a beginning and a boundary, so:

In the beginning there was a sea of spirit and it filled all space. It was static, content, aware of itself, a giant resting on the bosom of its thought, contemplating that which it was.

Then it moved. It withdrew into itself, until all space was empty, and that which had filled it was shining from its center, a restless, seething mind. This was the individuality of the spirit; this was what it discovered itself to be when it awakened; this was God.

God desired to express Himself, and He desired companionship. Therefore, He projected from Himself the cosmos and souls. The cosmos was built with the tools which man calls music, arithmetic and geometry: harmony, system and balance. The building blocks were all of the same material, which man calls the life essence. It was a power sent out from God, that which we may think of as a primary ray, which by changing the length of its wave and the rate of its vibration became a pattern of different forms, substances and movement. This created the law of diversity which supplied endless designs for the pattern. God played on this law of diversity as a person plays on a piano, producing melodies and arranging them in a symphony.

 

to call humanity's arrogance a collective ego trip is not a failure of comprehending anything. greater things then we can imagine are not prevented from existing, and whatever happens to be greatest among them is what generically we call god.

there is no natural requirement for it to be infallible, nor to have created us, nor anything, however much and in whatever way it may or may not have contributed to the process. a process entirely independent of anything mankind need, desires, nor chooses to pretend.

nor is there any requirement for lesser unknown things to be in any way at odds with it.

my faith is not in men choosing to pretend their species to be the center of the universe, nor in any unseen thing being in any way obliged to resemble the claims of any belief, but in the near infinite diversity, of nature's reality.

oh it's not as cold and impersonal as all that, but its not dependent on what we choose to imagine to be warm and cozy, nor fearsome and hostile either.

and no, beginnings and boundaries are NOT "required", that's a load of propaganda if there ever was one. times before any baseline you care to set are likely to have existed, as are times after.

nor does that require some eternally steady state. whatever the human mind imagines itself to need, beyond the survival of the body for it to dwell in, and possibly not even that, is simply what some other human mind as chosen for whatever reason, to claim.

 

Each design carried within it, inherently, the plan of its evolution, which was to be accomplished by movement, growth, or as we generally think of it, change. This corresponds to the sound of a note struck on a piano. The sounds of several notes unite to make a chord; chords in turn become phrases; phrases become melodies; melodies intermingle and move back and forth, across and between and around each other, to make a symphony. The music ends as it began, leaving emptiness, but between the beginning and the finish there has been glorious beauty and a great experience.

(The terms 'light', 'heat' and 'electricity' with regard to the cosmos are of no use in this type of discussion aince they are effects observed sensorily, within the earth's atmosphere: the sun might be, to the surviving individuality, an idea, an influence, an angel.)

Everything moved, changed, and assumed its design in various states of form and substance. Activity was begun and maintained by the law of attraction and repulsion: positive and negative, attracting each other and repelling themselves, maintained the form and action of all things.

All this was a part of God, an expression of His thought. Mind was the force which propelled and perpetuated it: mind did everything God imagined; everything that came into being was an aspect, a posture, of mind.

 

Souls were created for companionship with God. The pattern used was that of God Himself: spirit, mind, individuality; cause, action, effect. First there had been spirit; then there had been the action which withdrew spirit into itself; then there had been the resulting individuality of God.

In building the soul there was spirit, with its knowledge of identity with God; there was the active principle of mind; and there was the ability to experience the activity of mind seperately from God.

Thus a new individual, issuing from and dependent upon God, but aware of an existence apart from Him, came into being. To the new individual was given, necessarily, the power to choose and direct its own activity; without free will it would remain a part of the individuality of God. Mind, issuing as a force from God, would naturally fulfill His thoughts, unless directed otherwise. The power to do this - to direct otherwise the force of mind - is what man calls his free will. The record of this free will is the soul. The soul began with the first expression which free will made of its power, through the force of mind. The first thought which it generated of itself, the first diversion of mind force from its normal path, was the beginning of the soul.

The nucleus of the soul was in balance, positive and negative force in equal power, producing harmonious activity: the positive initiating, impregnating, thrusting forward; the negative receiving, nourishing, ejecting. The steps of this action were the stages of thought: perception, reflection, opinion.

Thus the soul consisted of two states of consciousness: that of the spirit, bearing a knowledge of its identity with God, and that of the new individual, bearing a knowledge of everything it experienced.

 

If God does not exist; the outside world could be deceived OR deceiving by the Soul. You sound like the view of Scientology from 1994 commented viz. the telephone. Thus they claimed to be spiritualists seeking the ignorance of their prey for lab.-like conditions.

 

What?

 

I believe that the first scratch ticket I buy will land me somewhere between one and four dollars, just as I believe that our placing of words builds a puzzle of sorts. The God-or-not thing certainly is a wide topic with an endless amount of possibilities, I personally choose not to believe any one thing, placing faith in any one belief might as well be nothing more than gambling. Time "may" tell, or time may tell nothing. I will probably end up waiting this one out.