God

[Sabre]

xD

Witches gone wild!

*cues steel drums*

 

[Shadeska]

Holy ****, Thothie.

And none have tried to eat you or use your body in some type of crazy spell yet?

 

[Dejiko]

Holy ****, Thothie.

And none have tried to eat you or use your body in some type of crazy spell yet?

That's what the first one did. Now he regenerates!

 

[CrazyMonkeyDude]

He has a constant green pulse around him? Wouldn't that mean he can't go anywhere near epileptics?

Oh wait that's Rejuvenate.

 

[Thothie]

Holy ****, Thothie.

And none have tried to eat you or use your body in some type of crazy spell yet?

Oh hell, I went through that (and much worse) at least three times before I even got outta high school. Those were the simple and easy days... These days, I consider myself lucky if my date doesn't attempt to devour my soul within the first week (only to be horribly disappointed to find that a previous ex already owns it, and keeps it in her dungeon.)

(Meh...)

Ya know... While my argument for the existence of God, at the beginning of this thread, is pretty solid IMO (even if it says nothing about His nature), it's kinda frightening. It does suggest, more or less, that the aspect of God we are all going to get sacked with, the variant of God who will affect us the most, be we believers or not, is going to be the one the most people, or at least the most powerful people, believe in.

Take these Westboro Baptist psychos for instance. The hate they believe to be the will of their god, going by the voting records, is only the ultimate manifestation of what most of the people in my country, currently the most powerful country on Earth, believe in.

Pull back in time a bit...

The Aztecs... They sacrificed thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, to Quetzalcoatl, and even some of their own children to Tezcatlipoca - as did the Mayans before them to their gods. For all the abominable murder and blood they drenched themselves in, I'm willing to bet that, not once, did they concern themselves with the question, "Is my god evil?"

The terror those two religions brought forth, however, was born out of necessity. In both cases, their follower's limited farm lands had been salted from over farming and poor crop rotation. Their cities couldn't maintain the populations they had, much less withstand competition from the farmers intruding on their land, which was ever expanding out of desperation, as their starving people grabbed for more. Most of those sacrificed were from among those competing farmers. The sacrifices were a desperate matter of survival for their own people. (Granted, I dunno if they had to be so flashy about it.)

So, coming back to the Westboro Baptists and their ilk... Their god demands murder of whole swaths of sinners, even those that are a merely the result of nature, rather than choice, simply to make themselves to feel devout? To feel more self-righteous? What the Aztec and Mayan gods demanded of their people, sort-to-speak, was out of the desperate desire save their people. So, for all intents and purposes, for all their bloody baby eating, those corrupted gods were more benign than the one these Baptists worship.

So which god is more evil... The one who demands mass sacrifices for the survival of his people, or the one who demands it so you can feel better about yourself? Is the Westboro god, the one who, more and more, is becoming the god of this country, really, in the end, even more evil than the ones who drenched those pyramids in blood so long ago?

...I shudder to think of the future, if the answer is what I believe it to be, and the blinding entropy of reason, and access to education, continues in the direction it's been going around here lately.

* edit: abdominal != abominable, even if I did skip breakfast.

 

[FER]

You should check the Shin Megami Tensei game franchise, might be quite interesting in that aspect.

 

[Tentadrilus]

I choose not to believe in any sort of deity purely because science seems to be a more interesting way of explaining things. Sure, when it comes to the how-everything's-made stuff, religion currently has a one-up, but science is catching up fast. There are theories to explain why and how we appeared, and why we can't find any aliens, as well as how the world was created. We're delving into the secrets the universe and are uncovering more information about our past and our surroundings every day. Scientists need not busy themselves with why we're here (they've already worked that out; we, along with any other sentient animal in the universe, exist purely to survive and procreate) because the interesting bit is HOW we got here.

"What about the Big Bang?" you ask. Well, that's what the Large Hadron Collider is for; space is far from empty. The Higgs field fills the space between celestial objects, and is full of microparticles which are constantly being created and destroyed. Scientists believe particles created in this field may be the key to the Big Bang, and as such are trying to recreate the Higgs Boson within CERN. If the damned thing will work for more than about a month at a time, then we might finally get some answers.

Possibly CERN's most embarrassing failure is that the LHC was shut down completely because a seagull dropped a bit of sandwich onto some equipment on the surface, causing it to overheat and stop working. Some scientists believe that it's the Higgs Boson attempting to sabotage the LHC from the future, i.e. we've already found it but it's causing rifts in the SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM which is stalling our attempts to... find it. I can't possibly go into any more details, because you have to be a physicist or quantum mechanic to understand all that stuff.

I'm probably 150% wrong, but that's how I look at it. I respect you and your beliefs and do not wish to cause offense.

 

[FER]

science seems to be a more interesting way of explaining things

More interesting than a six armed woman or a were-elephant?

Christianity IS boring, specially since all its pagan gods were removed away so christianism looks less evil.
Seriously, non mainstream-christian religions are fun; HELL, nordic vikings believed the world came from some dude having sex with a cow.

 

[Tentadrilus]

I'd say the six-armed woman and the were-elephant were more awesome than interesting. I'd definitely follow a religion with a were-elephant in it if I was theistic.

 

[FER]

Dont take a religion choice so seriously, its more like picking your favorite sport's team

 

[The Man In Black]

More like picking a country during a World War Free-for-all.

 

[Shadeska]

Thothie, from my minimal experience of only 17 years, it would seem that the Westboro Church is a violent minority. I guess one could view them as a monotheistic-terrorism group, spreading hate and fear through Jesus and a corrupted god. There's truly no one else like them, except themselves, which explains why most of their congregation is composed of blood relatives... icky...
Anyway, the majority of Christians belong to certain denominations like Baptist or Catholic. All of which, my church have assured me, are only "half right." Which is also incorrect, because if God is as strict about baptism as they've lead me to believe since birth, there is no "half right." The Bible talks about lukewarm people though, so it's all cool I guess. And nobody's perfect so we must get points for effort. Especially the whores and tax collectors. There were tons of those in the Bible and I bet they all went to heaven. I think we're all in the clear if we follow the old ten commandments, get baptized like it says in the New Testament, and then tell other people about Jesus in a calm, non-threatening manner.

Of course, that's assuming all this is real. Which, well, damn...that was a long time ago. Our history books are accurate, this man existed. Why don't they record his miracles? Do we really have to get rid of a religion thought to be "American" for the sake of being politically correct? If we did at one time consider this "our" religion, don't we have a right to advertise it as much as any other country does theirs? Where am I going with this? If this is real, why do I have to think about it so much? I'm not going to blindly follow anyone. Anyone.
And it would seem that at some point in EVERY religion, the only remaining answer they can give you is "Faith." You have to believe. We don't know anymore than this, you'll just have to trust us. I guess that's because they're religions. But then science does the same thing. "Oh, we just need more time, we'll figure it out eventually."

What if we took all the "confirmed" knowledge about every religion, added them up, and looked for flaws? Right? What would we have left, truth? Or just really good lies?


And to think that I'm the A.V. guy for these people...

tl;dr
idk

 

[Thothie]

[science will one day answer all]

I'm afraid, that as many people do nowadays, you are confusing the purpose of science and religion.

Religious creation stories are parables designed to describe man's spiritual place within the cosmos. They are not, primarily, intended to be an accurate description of how the universe came to be, but why it came to be, and in what way we should perceive our place within it. As I've quoted before, Religion only answers the question "Why", and Science only answers the question "How". Any science or religion that attempts to overreach itself beyond the true scope of one or the other of those questions, ceases to be science or religion, and immediately transforms into the other.

Fundamentalists lose sight of this fact, be they religious fundamentalist or atheistic fundamentalists. But fundamentalism of that sort is never about science or religion, it is only about power.

All major religions, at their core, are essentially the same. All major religions teach living only for the life beyond this one, of spiritual enlighten through self denial, and of caring for ones fellow man.These are all things science cannot teach. Just as religion cannot teach nor predict the mathematical flight of quantum particles, science cannot teach how to lead a good life.

 

[FER]

Tough I think many let religion lead their every aspects in life.

 

[Thothie]

That... Would be the idea. Every major religion has Wise Ones that live their lives fulfilling the ideals of their religion's teachings. These religions invariably advertise that the path to enlightenment or salvation is achieved by emulating the lives so exemplified. Not sure what that has to do with my previous assertions though.

 

[Tentadrilus]

I've never seen religion as an option purely because I've never needed to know the why. As I said before, from an evolutionary point of view, we're just here to keep our race going. From an astronomer's point of view, we're here to explore the stars and attempt to take over outer space (just like plans are pretty much trying to take over the world). I can't think of anything that could compare to the majesty of the galaxy. We are here through pure chance; we're the luckiest sentient beings in the pure universe. After all, we could only appear because the stars were literally aligned correctly. Anyway, I digress.

Basically, I reckon we're just here to explore the rest of space. Whether we actually get off the planet before the Doomsday Theory takes hold, however, is a different story.

 

[Wrath]

Figured this would be a good place to put this?

 

[Thothie]

Basically, I reckon we're just here to explore the rest of space. Whether we actually get off the planet before the Doomsday Theory takes hold, however, is a different story.

Well there's your why (incidentally, more or less, the conclusion I've come to as well).

I'm not saying you can't live a good life without religion, mind you. Personal philosophy and belief can work just as well, but even science can't bring you to the above conclusion, beyond its necessity as a matter of survival. And even with ultimate conclusion in hand, it doesn't give any motivation nor direction for ones life. For human beings, to paraphrase JFK and Commander Adama, it's not enough just to survive, you must also be worthy of survival.

Humans, individually, rarely grasp, or even try to grasp, the grand scheme of things, but are only interested in the narrow scope of their individual lives. It's difficult enough to get folks to recycle for the survival of the greater whole, never mind convince them to divert large amounts of their own resources in an effort to get the species off the planet. Religion is one of the rare exceptions to this rule. The majority of humanity takes some time out in an attempt to contemplate something they admit is beyond their understanding in religion. Such contemplation could very well be a step towards getting humanity on the space train, but without that step, I doubt enough of the species could be motivated into saving itself before the next cataclysm puts an end to all higher life on the planet for a third time.

Maybe if the pope comes out and says that God told him all believers need to move to Alpha Centauri, or something...

Still, as I always say, partly as a result of this basic limitation inherent to our species, the same limitation that, sadly, is largely responsible allowing us to have come as far as we have, that we're in all likelihood doomed to die here along with the planet. ...Barring benign alien intervention, extraordinarily incompetent hostile alien intervention, or the second coming. ...Although... After having read World War Z, I'll have to add "or a particularly vicious zombie plague" to my usual list of things that might wake humanity out of its stupor long enough to save it.

 

[CrazyMonkeyDude]

Maybe if the pope comes out and says that God told him all believers need to move to Alpha Centauri, or something...

"Weve discovered an alien race called Marklar, and we need to bring the word of Jesus to them. We need billions of dollars to build a spaceship."

 

[Shawn]

Still, as I always say, partly as a result of this basic limitation inherent to our species, the same limitation that, sadly, is largely responsible allowing us to have come as far as we have, that we're in all likelihood doomed to die here along with the planet. ...Barring benign alien intervention, extraordinarily incompetent hostile alien intervention, or the second coming.

I also reached that conclusion a while ago. We are absolutely, without a doubt, totally ******, unless, God casts Solve Problems for 777d42 points of fixing shit, The Galactic ******* Federation upgrades us to at least a Type 3 civilization, or Space Conquistadors attack us and we nuke the crap out of them (because all we're good at is waging war) and take their shit.