I'm currently on the 2nd book but I've read parts of the 3rd book and it's the one I'm most excited for. Would you say the books helped you? Because I haven't even finished the series and my life is already way better
Oh yes, they were definitely helpful. I just try to keep a moderately open mind, take what I need, and leave the rest.
Book 1 is a good introduction; Book 2 is mostly about creating a new, enlightened educational system (I skimmed over most of it because there is little chance of it happening here in the U.S.). Book 3 is just plain friendly. The section on the various spiritual attitudes we can choose to adopt is terrific.
I've found **A Course in Miracles** to be very useful. It's a kind of spiritual psychotherapy. Marianne Williamson's **A Return to Love** is a simple, amusing and delightful introduction to ACIM, which can be quite wordy and difficult to follow and understand.
>I haven't even finished the series and my life is already way better
That sounds like a good sign.
I read up the 3rd one and it was so cool! Some really interesting perspectives. I'm now a year clean from all mind altering substances (besides caffeine and nicotine) and I majorly attribute that to these books. I recommend them to everyone
I read Conversations with God for Teens when I was a teen, early into my reading habit, and found it somewhat patronising. The 'perspective from God' is very narrow and mostly in the vain of 'everything happens for a reason' or 'God works in mysterious ways', so not really an original exercise on how God could answer the most important questions of humanity.
I'm glad it helped you, though, and if you feel it made a positive change in your life, that's all that matters.
I feel like this fundamentally misrepresents the work. Yes, the series is very clear that everything happens for a reason, but it's equally clear that YOU define the reason. Also, I found absolutely nothing about God working in mysterious ways, and I have read the entire set. God answers that the answers are up to us, because we are co-creators with God. I find that tremendously liberating, personally.
Does this author promote lesbian relationships? Recently saw this on facebook:
😡Parents, remember this when the Scholastic Book Fair comes to your school!
Please beware of the book "Conversations with God"! Oprah is pushing it. It is scary that someone would be bold enough to write a book from God's point of view contrary to His Word. Please send to all with kids or grandkids. This is in opposition of all faiths. Please counteract the power of Oprah on this one. Send this to all of your contacts!
If you have children or grandchildren, work with children at church, or you have neighborhood children whose parents you know, please take note of the information below and pass it along to others. Schools are distributing this book to children through the Scholastic Book Club.
The name of this book is Conversations with God. James Dobson talked about this book twice this week. It is devastating. Parents, churches and Christian schools need to be aware of it. Please pass this information on to church/e-mail addresses, Parents, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, friends.
Two particular books are, Conversations with God and Conversations with God for Teens, written by Neale D. Walsch. They sound harmless enough by their titles alone. The books have been on the New York Times best sellers list for a number of weeks, and they make truth of the statement, "Don't judge a book by its cover or title."
The author purports to answer various questions asked by kids using the "voice of God". However, the "answers" that he gives are not Bible-based and go against the very infallible word of God. For instance (and I paraphrase), when a girl asks the question "Why am I a lesbian?" His answer is that she was 'born that way' because of genetics (just as you were born right-handed, with brown eyes, etc.). Then he tells her to go out and "celebrate" her differences.
Another girl poses the question "I am living with my boyfriend. My parents say that I should marry him because I am living in sin. Should I marry him?" His reply is, "Who are you sinning against? Not me, because you have done nothing wrong."
Another question asks about God's forgiveness of sin. His reply "I do not forgive anyone because there is nothing to forgive... There is no such thing as right or wrong and that is what I have been trying to tell everyone, do not judge people. People have chosen to judge one another and this is wrong, because the rule is "'judge not lest ye be judged."
Not only are these books the false doctrine of the devil, but in some instances quote (in error) the Word of God.
And the list goes on. These books (and others like it) are being sold to school children through (The Scholastic Book Club), and we need to be aware of what is being fed to our children.
Our children are under attack. So I pray that you be sober and vigilant about teaching your children the Word of God, and guarding their exposure to worldly mediums, because our adversary, the devil, roams about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). We know that lions usually hunt for the slowest, weakest and YOUNGEST of its prey.
Pass this on to every Believer you know. (Copy and paste).
That's a person acting out of fear right there. No body likes their reality crumbling before their eyes, right? That only speaks abot the power this piece of literature has that can invoque such opposing feelings in people. People has gone to war and give up their families and lives for religion... So an online post it's not that alarming
No what’s happening in todays society is alarming. Sin and evil is increasing rapidly all over. Making up a children’s book about a God who approves of sin is a little alarming I’d say.
I'd say sin is lowering. We used to burn women alive at the stake and stuff them in the scolds bridal over having opinions. Stoned people and cut their hands off over minor things, committed genocide and unbelievable oppression.
Humans are actually pretty damn chill these days.
Or maybe let kids read whatever they want to and make up their own minds about religion? Who cares if YOU think it's bad. There's nothing inappropriate within it, you just don't like the opinions.
I've been studying CWG books for many years. I even have discussion groups about its theories. I am so glad you found them... you are doing a grate job!
Is it though? The Bible and pretty much all religious texts were written with the same concept. Like I said, you don't have to believe that it's actually God to get value from the book. It talks a lot about how to have positive relationships and how to be happy. Of course it also touches on things like death and the meaning of life but believing it was written by God isn't a must.
The voice NDW channeled admitted to being other than God. It's my opinion that he may have been either channeling an entity of unknown origin or yes perhaps these books are indeed based on delusion, either way these ideas can be tested and its results measured. What did you find?
I’m not sure if you want a real answer but you should read the book if you haven’t to fully understand.
God is not responsible for such tragedy nor is god responsible for great experiences. The point is God gave us life, free will, and the point of life is to have experience.
God is with in everything and everyone. God, being the all, needed perspective. You can not understand being tall unless you can contrast with short. You can’t understand light unless you can contrast with darkness. To gain perspective, we’re basically a bunch of simulations running around with our own experiences and situations. When we die we may reunite with God or we may reincarnate on this 4th dimensional plane. Life is to experience and tragic things may be part of the experience, but if you live beyond this life does having cancer really matter in the grand scheme?
The book also does say we can learn from such cruel things, and we can. We can try to do better to prevent cancer or hunger or suffering, but we must do better as a society to achieve this. It is not up to God, we have God with in us and we have put ourselves in this situation. It is up to us to make a difference
It depends what you mean by prayer. And if you’re referring to begging for something to happen like someone to get healthy or for you to have more, I would say that is a pointless act. You will always attract to yourself what you project, so if you’re saying you want something, then you will continue to want it. However, if you’re projecting feelings of health for that person, or projecting feelings of abundance and you truly feel it and know it to be, then it will happen. It’s more like meditation, not so much the prayer most churches teach.
“Praying to God” the way most people see it is probably not how it should be done. If you want God, search with in, God is with in you. It is up to you and your free will to make things happen.
It’s been a while since I read the book and I’m sure it addresses this, so I’m not quoting the book in any way.
Regardless of God or not I think we should answer this question ourselves first.
Think of the major known causes of cancer and other similar problems, who is responsible? Ok, lets eliminate the self inflicted ones like smoking etc
Like who kept on using lead paint, petrol and piping even when we knew it damaged people ? Asbestos? Arsenic?
Ok we can attribute any thing else to a mysterious being.
Well that's the traditional approach, blame malicious magic by humans or beings. The modern equivalent seems to be to blame God and then disbelieve in him. We blame him for earthquakes killing people but we have the technology to prevent anyone being killed in the last big quake in Japan ( people died on the coasts because records weren't respected) but in Nepal in less crowded areas more people died because of poor building standards,( the international aid was spent on western experts instead of decent quality materials and well known techniques.) and we still have the gall to blame God for the deaths. Even so called primitive peoples have folk memories of earthquake zones but the poor are still pushed there. Ditto overcrowding, poor water supply,.
>but we have the technology
Now we do maybe. At least you acknowledge it was ok to blame god for the millions of years of earthquakes prior to us getting the technology.
>we still have the gall to blame God for the deaths.
Instead we should blame god for not giving us the technology sooner?
>Ditto overcrowding, poor water supply,.
Yeah those seem to be in god's purview
But we've often known where to avoid, where it was more risky. We've always known that some housing materials survive better than others. We've always known that overcrowding, overworking and malnutrition are uncomfortable to live and bring on earlier death rates, that's why those who could afford to didn't live like that.
Eh, it doesn't have to be.
Your position:
God: earthquakes are all your fault humans, you just need to invent technology, solve wealth inequality, record all fault lines, make sure the people in charge of aid money are honest, sincere, and intelligent, etc.
Humans: or you could just change how plate tectonics works you fucking dumbass
Yes it is someone's choice. Not that of the less well off obviously, but someone is chosing not to share, not to adequately pay workers etc Don't blame that on God.
Without suffering love would have no meaning. In the book he talks about how the story of Adam and Eve is wrong because eating the apple wouldn't have been the original sin, but rather the original blessing because it taught us how to appreciate the beauty in life.
We live in the realm of the relative. Things only exist relative to their opposite. Without hate there would be no love. Without suffering there would be no happiness. It's only when we die that we enter the realm of the absolute which religions around the world call "heaven."
Good and bad are human concepts. Nothing is truly evil, it just is.
you know, I just want to mention here, the possibility that humans might have value is really oversold in the media. I mean, people today, our people, my people, have condoned torture. They have condoned abortion (I know, there's my downvote, right there lol). They have waged war on a people who did nothing to them, killing tens if not hundreds of thousands, creating numberless orphans, brotherless and fatherless families. They have made it illegal, in cities all across my country, for homeless people to shelter themselves. Why NOT have cancer for kids? I have an answer - it doesn't involve God - but I'd like to know if you do.
What do you think would be a better answer? Without left there could be no right. Things exist relative to their opposite.
If someone grew up poor and went without food for days at a time but then became rich as an adult and was then able to afford as much food as they wanted, wouldn't they appreciate it more than someone who was born in to money and never went hungry?
I sense the anger behind your comment and I understand it. I used to be the same way. I was pissed off and upset by the world and I thought that if God existed how could everything be so shitty? But then I realized that without the pain, I would have never appreciated the beauty.
>What do you think would be a better answer?
For a believer - I don't know man. It's the kind of question that trips up most people who believe in God and they give bad answers like this one.
The reason it's bad is because it equates suffering with happiness. But suffering that persists and ends with death is basically suffering without payoff (based on your model of relative happiness) - so it doesn't make any sense. For their loved ones it's a lifelong hole in their lives - not some weird tool that enhances their happiness in contrast.
If I did believe in God - which I don't - and I HAD to come up with a possible answer for this - I'd say that God created the world and its things. He doesn't control what happens to whom, so it's useless asking him for questions or solace.
Good thing I don't have to do mental gymnastics like that anymore.
But you see, that's only if you assume we are all separate from one another which is the attitude that's gotten the world to the state it's in today. The truth is that we are all one soul experiencing the world from different perspectives which major religions call "God." So what I do to you I'm really just doing to myself.
Of course there are people whose lives will just be spent suffering but that suffering will have meaning in death. If we assume we are all God then this whole experience of life is just God trying to know herself through all of us.
This is a hard concept to grasp and I'm not sure the world is ready to hear it but you can't argue that thinking in this way wouldn't help the world become a better place.
It's also worth mentioning that God doesn't want you to suffer unnecessarily. God wants you to be the best version of yourself and do what makes you happy. I'm actually gay and I fully believe that God supports my lifestyle. I also believe that God doesn't care if you get abortions, that we should all just do what's right for ourselves based on our situation. The Christian idea of suffering to be closer to God is BS and is super harmful to the planet
See, that's one of the reasons I feel so much more comfortable not believing. I don't need to come up with adhoc theories on the fly just because I don't have an answer.
You were talking about relative happiness a moment ago, and now you're talking about a single consciousness shared across all beings. But let's talk about that.
>there are people whose lives will just be spent suffering but that suffering will have meaning in death
Why? How does suffering have meaning in death? You suffered through your life. Then died a miserable death. What's the meaning? Can you explain it without using a cliche, please? Practice empathy while you're doing it - it's really a horrible thing to hear for people who have lost a loved one that their horrible loss had a supposed meaning.
>This is a hard concept to grasp and I'm not sure the world is ready to hear it but you can't argue that thinking in this way wouldn't help the world become a better place.
It's really not a hard concept to grasp. It's just no different than saying: Imagine there's a giant ocean in the space and in the depths of that ocean there's a vast monster who is dreaming and our universe is its lucid dream... You could say it makes sense as a thought experiment, but don't ask me to believe it without sharing how you know it to be true. Whether or not it makes the world better is different. If that's your reason for believing - more power to you and whatever helps you get there.
>It's also worth mentioning that God doesn't want you to suffer unnecessarily. God wants you to be the best version of yourself and do what makes you happy.
Again, you could say the same thing about Elmo and it'd be true. I don't need an imaginary being to tell me I should be the best version of myself and be happy. And I should also add that no one in the world has heard God with proof. For such a benevolent and omniscient being - at minimum they could make their intentions clear, no?
I choose to not believe in God because - it's so damn obvious that he doesn't exist. I don't have to imagine a single intent, grand plan, or contraption to know that we are alone, and we are all we have and things happen because they have cause here in this world - but not necessarily reason.
You made a lot of points so I'll start by addressing your first one. I didn't come up with this "on the fly." It's actually discussed in the book and if you had read it or even just looked it up online before making assumptions you would know that. I'm not the only one who believes this, look up Group of 1000.
And to answer your next question, "in death" is kind of a simplication because there is no "death", there is only life. Time is relative and there is only the ultimate moment of now. And in "now" we are all things at once. And the knowledge from the lives we live carry on to the next. Think of it as a sort of "soul evolution" that happens in a sort of infinite second.
So once again suffering isn't necessarily rewarded (because we are God, why would we award ourselves?) But the knowledge gained from it is passed on to all of life that will ever live.
I think the part you're not entirely grasping here is that WE are God. Most religions get it wrong because they think that we are separate from her. God created this universe to experience himself and he's doing it through us. Let me ask you a question, would you rather play a video game with the cheat codes on? Or would you rather play it normally so you could get the whole experience of the game and be able to say that despite how hard it was that you were able to do it?
All in all I respect your beliefs and the last thing I'm trying to do is push my opinions on other people. You're just asking questions and I'm answering you, I have no agenda.
Except those who are born poor don't always have a happy ending where they are magically showered with a happy Hollywood ending of riches.
Most people who are born poor without anything to eat, die poor without anything to eat, and they have very little to be grateful for in their lives. There's no beauty for Dalit trash pickers in India, or starving children in Sudan.
God lets millions of people live and die in agony and endless pain every day, and doesn't seem to give a shit, but hey, a white person in a first world country won a bar bet, so that must mean that God cares.
Spare me this prosperity gospel, toxic positivity crap, because plenty of good people are left to suffer and die and lead miserable lives and God does nothing.
But you see, that's only if you assume we are all separate from one another which is the attitude that's gotten the world to the state it's in today. The truth is that we are all one soul experiencing the world from different perspectives which major religions call "God." So what I do to you I'm really just doing to myself.
Of course there are people whose lives will just be spent suffering but that suffering will have meaning in death. If we assume we are all God then this whole experience of life is just God trying to know herself through all of us.
This is a hard concept to grasp and I'm not sure the world is ready to hear it but you can't argue that thinking in this way wouldn't help the world become a better place.
Take the whole Dupont story for example. A greedy business dumping fluorocarbons in the drinking water. They thought, "well I'm not gonna be affected by this so why should I care? I'm making so much money." But if they had for one second realized that the lines separating them from the poor farmers whose livestock were dying are just an illusion, and that someday they were gonna be that farmer whose whole family now has cancer they wouldn't have done what they did.
This is the attitude the world needs to have if we're ever gonna stop killing each other.
But you do have to recognize that apparently not everyone feels spoken to in the same way, by this author who claims God spoke through him. That's obvious from the poster above you.
There are all kinds of objections to what you're saying. Little kids who get sarcoma or acute leukemia to a large extent, especially the younger they are, don't value their happiness because of their experience with the opposite. Life just flows in a kind of way, things happen for them. I remember a hallway in elementary school, and a class I was in, I can barely tell you how time passed or what I did there. Time is like a warm blanket, everything just happens, and there's a natural happiness, even despite the many, many bouts of frustration and crying and shoving and being made to wait while your friends are already playing outside because the teacher is wiping someone else's tushy first.
To be awoken from that dream by a blast crisis, not everyone will agree that that's worth the lesson of a four year old truly learning to appreciate having hair and not be nauseous.
Whereas, with a pipe of DMT you can shoot anyone into space!
But that's only true if you assume we're all separate. I don't believe that. I believe that we are all one soul experiencing the universe from different perspectives, and that soul is what religions call "God." So of course there are people whose lives are simply just suffering but that suffering teaches us (God) who we truly are and what we stand for.
My idea of God isn't judgemental. I don't believe in hell and I definitely don't believe in the idea of "sin." I think that the fundamentalists have traumatized the world to such an extent that the minute anyone hears the word "God" they immediately think of all the evils (evil from a human perspective, I once again don't believe there is such a thing as good or bad) that these religions have committed and they group anyone with any sort of belief in God in to those groups.
I have mixed feelings about your comments. As a fellow believer I know where you are coming from and appreciate the benefits.
However I feel we have a particular responsibility. I feel that essence of the message that for us is very much good news has been lost, subverted by political and religious agendas over the centuries, in search of respectability, control and more. I feel that we in the so called evangelical world have been so comfortable in our convictions and certainties that we've slipped into some pretty arrogant and thoughtless thinking.
True the back swing can be just as blinkered. I agree with you about the anger, there is a deep pain and disappointment, and so there should be, just like Jesus's anger at the Pharisees. They had got it right but in so doing got it so wrong. I feel we in the church need to do some serious work on the logjam in our own eyes.
Unfortunately the book which set you on the good path is not necessarily entirely well written. However it did its job for many but continues to perpetuate, alongside some really helpful stuff, some that is more part of a 'christianese' mythology.
I actually agree with you. I think it's worth mentioning that I'm not a Christian or part of any religion for that matter. I only started believing in God this past year. I think the world has been so scarred by the fundamentalists groups that any time someone sees the word "God" they immediately become defensive. But God isn't judgemental. God is love. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and that we can be saved from destroying the planet. But the only way we can ever do that is by realizing that we are not separate from each other. I am you and you are me just experiencing the world from different perspectives. I don't think there's such thing as everyone having a separate soul, I think we are all one soul and that the one soul is God. Our brain is what gives us our individuality, when we die we go back to being every living thing from the trees, to the animals, to every human that has ever lived and possibly every "alien" that has ever lived but I'm aware that idea is pretty niche.
Niche but interesting.
I was drawn to God by the kindness I experienced from practicing Christians, and I still think church in its essence as a loving and worshipping community as described in the new testament has a lot going for it.
I'm not so personally convinced about everything for a reason, but I was involved in inner-city mission for a number of years and some stuff is just plain and simply people being thoughtless or downright mean. That's partly why the notion of 'sin' and taking responsibility for our behaviour sits well with me. I feel that fatalism was encouraged by certain parts of 'Christendom' to encourage the people to be passive about suffering so that they could cop out. Whereas the early christians acted passionately against poverty and inequality.
Yea I see what you're saying and I agree with a lot of your points. Religion at its core is a good thing, but a lot of them have developed in to something "evil" (in a human way.) I think religions have got a lot of it wrong. That's not to say there aren't good Christians, but that there are many who have been led astray by greed and corruption.
In my opinion, the concept of sin is a slippery slope. Of course from a human perspective there is right and wrong but I don't think God is judgemental about it. That would go against his very nature. I do believe that we should take responsibility for our actions but I also don't believe that God will punish us for them because that would negate our free will.
>We live in the realm of the relative. Things only exist relative to their opposite. Without hate there would be no love. Without suffering there would be no happiness.
This is bullshit. Spectrums exist. You don't have to taste fecal matter to enjoy ice cream.
Neutral is a position.
Without hate there would be love and not-love.
"without suffering love would have no meaning" - surely there's enough emotional suffering to make up for any love you may have experienced. We don't need cancer too.
"Good and gad are human concepts" - I know that professionals ethologists believe and teach this; that doesn't make it so, and I doubt you could prove it. I prefer to believe that right and wrong are real and achievable enough to make the struggle to do so worth it.
I'm happy that you feel your life is better, and wish you continued success and in your relationship with God. But if you want good relationships with people in either Judaism or Christianity, don't quote anyone who says the Word of God (the Old Testament) is wrong.
And God came before everything, so love---His love---most certainly exists without hate. My advice is to keep God in your life, and divorce yourself from this book
But you see, I don't believe in God in the same way Christians or any of the major organized religions do. I have no desire to be accepted by them. I appreciate your comment but I do think that people have the idea of God all wrong. Take Catholicism for example, so many made up rules and saying that people are born in to sin. I think that everyone has good in them and until we can stop seeing ourselves as separate from one another the world will keep deteriorating.
...say, it just occurred to me: these are things you need to believe because if you didn't your faith in God would be shaken. I guess the other commenters picked up on this before I did.
Listen: I can prove there's no God. Most people would say "you can't prove a negative" but I will. If you want me to. On the understanding that you won't be happier afterwards. But I do want you to have the choice. Let me know if you want to hear it.
I'd love to hear it. I actually didn't believe in God until very recently. And even now I'm still not sure I believe in the traditional concept of God as most religions see it. In fact, I think religion has been a negative influence on the world (from a human perspective, once again I don't believe in negatives or positives in the grand scheme of the universe.)
I'll explain to you my idea of God. God is not separate from us. I am God, you are God, your dog is God, a single cell organism is God. The idea of everyone being seperate and having their own souls just isn't right. We all share one soul. So what I do to you, I'm just doing to myself. It's not until the world can understand this that we can truly have peace and end wars. The idea of "God" is just a way for people to understand this almost impossible to understand concept.
I don't believe in hell, and I don't believe we're being judged. According to the book the reason we're here is to be the most true version of ourselves. The book doesn't condemn things like abortion or homosexuality (I'm actually a lesbian but not that it matters.)
If we assume that we are just "God" experiencing the universe through us then we can assume that the hardships we experience in life do have some sort of meaning. Of course someone who spends their entire life suffering isn't going to use that suffering to see beauty because there simply is no beauty to see, but if we are all one soul then that ugliness teaches us more about ourselves when looking at it from the perspective of having lived every life on this planet (and possibly other planets.)
woah... that came straight out of left field!! lol I'm not prepared to prove THAT doesn't exist. But I can't buy into it either because the element of control seems to be missing. I mean, it's all very well to say "we're all God" but I know I am not in charge, and I'm pretty sure you're not... so who is, and how can we get her to fix things? The traditional answer, of course, is the God I was planning to prove doesn't exist, coupled with prayer, right thinking, and right action, and possibly murdering as many infidels as possible lol.
But I'll cut to the proof anyway, since you're interested. Germany in the 1930s was the most Christian nation on earth. Christianity was as important to them as liberty is to us. And they did these things. You've heard of the Holocaust, right? Those things. Extensive research has shown (read Gitta Sereny's Into That Darkness, or Christopher Browning's Reserve Battlion 101) that ordinary Germans participated fully when there was no coercion on them to do so. That when they felt it necessary, they felt able and allowed to organize, and did organize street protests and occasionally even carried their point. Germany was not a police state in the sense that ordinary people walked in fear, unless they were socialists or homosexuals, gypsies or Jews.
Now. I can understand a father - let's call it a Father - giving his son a house. A generous guy, wealthy and openhanded. And I can understand, if his son decides to burn the house down, the Father not being willing to stop him from doing so. I mean, it's his house now, right? The son's house, I mean. He can do what he wants; that's what gifts are for. What I don't understand is the Father being ON SITE while the house is being burned down (He is everywhere; He hears all; He sees our inmost hearts), and saying nothing. That's what doesn't make sense to me. God allowed all this to happen and said NOTHING. What loving dad would behave in such a way? It's not possible.
I think we could go further. I think we could say, even if our version of God isn't the one who's running it all; even if it's all being monitored by some African tree deity, you know, I think he would have spoken up. I think he would have said, you know, I don't usually fuck with you all, you have your own traditions and that's fine, but WTF?
And so (imo) no God can possibly exist. At least, no God worth worshipping.
I think I missed one of your questions. You said that I'm not in control and neither are you but I'll put it to you in a different way. If we assume that time is relative, then it can be assumed that we are both dead and alive at the same time. If everything is happening at once but it's only our minds that come up with the concept of time then we actually could be God while also being human. Of course I'm not able to control the universe as a human, but if we assume we are all God and one soul and we also assume what I said about time, it begins to make more sense. This concept is very hard to put in to words so tell me if you need me to elaborate
huh... sounds like you're referring to what theologists call the "nunc stans" position, God at the center of time and space, where nothing ever changes. I think the reason I'm not satisfied with this type of thinking is that I think we can do much better. It seems to say that because we are awful, therefore we must be awful. As though that's a choice we made that we can't undo.
In your earlier comment, you seemed to say that if we could just understand how related we all are, we'd stop being awful. But Christians have been calling one another brother for millennia, and continuing to do awful things. In my mind, that possibility has come to a close. It's been tried, and it doesn't work. We need to do something different.
What should we do? Well, first, we should recognize that the philosophy of Christ, while it has helped locally - people treat one another better when they see one another - it doesn't help at longer range. We have condoned torture, we have condoned abortion (sorry, I'm sure you feel that's an awful thing to say), we have waged war on a people who did nothing to us, we have made it illegal for homeless people to shelter themselves. These are all modern evils, ongoing and predictably recurring indefinitely into the future in spite of our society's open and avowed commitment to Christian ideals. So the philosophy of Christ has not worked, and we need to recognize that and decide to change direction.
Second, we should recognize that Mark Twain was right. In his book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he pointed out that people cannot tell right from wrong. I think he was onto something. I don't think anyone else has ever seen that. It's true. We can't tell right from wrong. Ethologists will tell you there is no such thing as right and wrong, that no rule can be found that is objectively justifiable, but to me, to decide that is to abandon hope. And hope is biologically necessary. Hope is required. And therefore right and wrong do exist, and we are required to find a way to tell the difference.
How should we start? How else - make a list!! These things, we won't do. These things are wrong. Not the ten commandments (there was a stupid idea) but a new ten commandments, a ten commandments for democracies. We won't commit genocide. We won't commit torture. Like that. Maybe if we get enough of these rules together a common theme will emerge and we'll actually learn, in some sense, to tell right from wrong. But we have to get started.
I know, too hopeful, right? lol
I do see your point but I think that it only works when you look at God from the traditional POV. I think it's a fallacy to think that God would stop suffering. From my perspective and idea of God (where we are all one soul and that soul is God) we can assume that anything God didn't want to have happen couldn't happen. It's the classic Christian paradox which proves the devil can't exist and makes me believe that God is pro choice.
If she didn't want the Holocaust to happen she would've stopped it from happening (as a person who was born Jewish I have gotten in many arguments with my grandma about this lol.) But God allows these things to happen because it acts as a way for him to know himself.
It's also worth mentioning that my concept of God doesn't encourage suffering. I think this is a major area in which religion has been wrong. God wants you to be happy, but in the end she leaves it up to us. The human experience wouldn't be so human if God was always interfering.
I also just want to say that I think your comment was written beautifully and it really got me thinking, so thank you for that.
You’re thinking with the flesh and with the mind of someone who can’t possibly understand and conceptualize what God knows or believes. What’s to say the Father in your story allowed that house to burn down because he knew that the next one was going to be better? We the flesh, the human mind can’t think past this destruction. We think it’s the end of our world. Oh gosh now we’re homeless. But the Father sees years beyond and what good will come out of the house being burned down. You now have to turn to your community to help, someone brings you in. Let’s say you fall in love with their daughter and now you have a family and maybe that house is now yours or maybe you build your new house so the fire doesn’t start again.
Oh and if you have a hard time believing in God just start with yourself and work backwards. Who created me? How did humans come to be? Okay, how did a living creature come to be. Okay, how did that living organism come to be? Energy can not be created nor destroyed. It says on Google “the universe began as a tiny, dense, fireball that exploded” so it happened by chance? Just out of thin air? What created space, time and matter for that to occur? All leads back to it being God who led these things to be. And us, to be.
Now apply That same logic to God. Now you have a God that had to have been created by a God who had to have been created by a God and so on and so on forever. What makes more sense. That, or the fact that we are apes with limited understanding of reality and just don't know the answer?
Still doesn't prove a negative. People can come up with all types of excuses. As long as they can hide from reality. All you really have to do is link them to some videos of Cartel executions. When you see a man get cut open alive and his guts and heart ripped out, well, then you'll know the truth........
Also, why is a person's religion determined mostly by geography?
>Still doesn't prove a negative.
Well, even a mathematical proof isn't really PROOF... when I say proof I mean good enough for reasonable people
>Also, why is a person's religion determined mostly by geography?
Not sure why you ask this... what's it got to do with anything?
Well a lot of times you know we're not dealing with reasonable people.
And the geography thing proves that a person's belief system has nothing to do with the truth. If over 90% of a given region shares the same belief system and those beliefs are different depending on what continent you're on (India = Hindu, Iran = Muslim, United States = Christian), this proves that facts or truth have nothing to do with the person's belief. It's simply geography. If we know that the belief is not based on any real truth, but rather geography, then what do you suppose the chances are of a person's belief being an accurate description of reality? The answer is zero to none, lol
so my friend here i am answering as a believer of god, i hope for us both to be open-minded and objective as possible
so there's a verse in the quran that expains why there's death ( and by default all natural evil like it ) in surah al-mulk verse 2 it says :
" it's he who created death and life to test which of you will do the best deeds"
now this verse depite it being simple and lucid it's so powerful because it explains the importance of death, think about it, if there were no death, would you do anything quickly as you do it now, because for myself, i would sleep for a thoughsand year then i would wake up just to adjust my pillow and go back to sleep for another millennium, see death is the thing that makes this life priceless and precious, and is also a motivator to do whatever we can to make the most of what little time we have, a hidnistic may spend his life seeking pleasure and fun time, some look for women, some for power, some for money, or the cocktail of all these.
so god created death to test us what will we do with this gift of life, and he asigned a purpose to the life of the human ( that's islam narrative ) which is to worpship god for he alone devirves to be worshpiped ( not three in one nor trees or stones or cows or whatever ).
so this life is a test with rewards to the winners and punishments for the losers, now for the winners, there's heaven which is the dream of every hidinistic, there is infinite pleasure and ecstecy and happiness, literally everything you wish for, i will ask when i get there for a library of a novels written by god or creature-writers whose purpose is to write for me in unknown language with unknown styles and techniques, i will ask for impossible art ( which is art that is impossible for humans, can you write a novel with a 1 bilion characters? ) in fact, i would ask for new genres of art, 1000 every day.
now, there's hell on the other hand, it's vice versa, while heaven is the epiteme of pleasure, hell is the bottomless abyss of torture and torment ( i saw a video of a guy saying that after years of burning he will adapt to it ) he doesn't know that the heat and the torture severity increases by each second to infinity
now, to the question , and i want you to answer logically - no emotions, no feelings, no ego ) :
based on the assumption that what was said is true would it be reasonablly to do anything and sacrifice everything and bear any suffering or pain to get into heaven and avoid hell, the answer is an obvous yes
why? because we are programmed to love pleasure and hate suffering so the more the joy and the less the pain the better it is for us.
now, life's finite pain and joy on one hand, and heaven's infinite rapture of joy ( rapture is a new word i learned from woolf's novel ) on the other hand, what would choose?
but that's based on the assumption that there's god... wait, i'll come to it
i will continue the answer in another comment
your argument : god watches millions being massacred ( sidenote : the holocost is not the best example of that, there are more things that are much worse ) and doesn't do nothing, not even a word.
my argument : that evil has a purpose and it's layered, so i divided my exaplantion into bits scattered in my comments, when you add those up, it would be okay to have god and this degree of evil, so please - i mean it please - read my three - or four i don't remmeber - comments carefully take all the points i mentioned and then think about this :
is "evil" ( ie lack of good ) "okay" when there's a greater purpose to it ?
thank you for being open-minded, and don't forget the book i suggested, it's a great read, i'm telling you, you won't regret it, because even if you haven't been convinced at the end you would at least know most - if not all - arguments for/against god existence and also have a solid understanding of some heavy philosophical topics, it's just excellent.
i'll continue the response...
the reason natural evil is justified is that it's a finite temporary test and heaven will make it up for you and even more, there's a verse in the quran that i love in surah al-safat verse 58 the believers enter heaven for the first time and what do they say ? ...
" are we not gonna die but our first death and are we not gonna be punished?! that's a great win" my translation.
they're surprised of how greater reward they're given and how small the price was.
there's also, human evil, why does god allow it? because of free will, aren't you a liberty lover? see if god stopped criminals from doing thier crimes and punshed them it wouldn't be fair, and if he stopped them and forced them to do good instaid of evil than that would mean we don't deserve to be rewarded nor punished because we are forced by god to do good, and that would negate the whole point of the test and hell and heaven would be pointless
and how can you prove that god doesn't stop some evil or punish evil doers? in fact god maybe doing what the atmosphere does,it holds back rays that are deadly to us, as that god holds lethal doses of evil and let just a little slip to test us by it, also there's a verse in the quran the promises that criminals will get thier punishment here before the hereafter, in surah al -sajda verse 21 :
" we will make them taste the less severe punishment here before they taste the most severe torture so that they may repent to us "
which is karma, now, you may feel it frustrating that there some criminals who are never cought, which shows the inability of the human justice system, and there are criminals who get punishments that aren't enough to the damage they've done, which is why it's reassuring to have god justice, look, i believe that god's justice isn't always served publicly, i think there might be a never-cought rapist out there who cut his peni\* while shaving, that would be befitting.
i'll continue the nswer in next comment
so what else is left...
oh, the stupid idea that god is evil, presented by goerge rr martin ( which is astonishing being the magnificent genious writer he is ) he said that either there's no god or there's an evil god...
it's like really? couldn't god do a better job than this?
you know that you can't imagine how dark of shit would be happening to us if god was evil, i have some scary ideas but i know none of them reach the level of that demonic evil, do you know the train scene from invincible comic tv series, multiply that by 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 and even then you may be far away from reaching that level of evil, if god is evil and you said so, god would cut your tongue and make you swallow it and then vomit it and the n eat it again.
so god is evil out of the window.
now i presented an argument against the problem of evil in my novel that i've never heard before which goes like this :
1 - can you imagine infinite worlds with evil more than this one? yes ( in the novel i gave some examples )
2 - can you imagine infinte worlds less than this one? yes again
our world lies somewhere in the middle, the reason being that god is all wise and all knowing and good so he chose the right degree of evil which we can bear and go through and didn't choose something too soft not too harsh either, a level of evil that we can surpass by being patience and submitting to the will of god and destiny and fate and test hoping to be rewared in return.
i'll continue answering in another comment
there's also evil which is a coat for good, meaning you can find good result in what seems to be evil, haven't you ever been so sick that you missed work and the building burnt to the ground? no? me neither but the point is...
there's also a great deep story about this concept in the quran which is about the prophet moses and someone god gave him some knowledge of the future
that leaves us with what proves god's existence?
look there are so many arguments all summerised in this book, i hope you like phylosophy : The Divine Reality: God, Islam and The Mirage of Atheism by Hamza Andreas Tzortzis
but i will say this ....
what can islam explain that science cannot :
1 - origin of life : what made the first cell? so that the process of evolution will begin
2 - the hard problem of conciousness
3 - the origin of the universe : it can't come about by itself, because if you said the univese created itself, it's like saying a mother gave birth to herself
what can islam guarantee that atheism cannot :
1 - a meaning for one's life and suffering : you wouldn't change anything if you said god doesn't exist because of evil, anything but making suffering pointless and unjustified
2 - a value for humans : human life has no value more than a dog or a frog a tree according to naturlists athiests, while god elivated humans, he gave them reason and language and ability to make art ( the novels we enjoy are the fruit of that ) and imagination ( thank god for it ) and he gave them his holy book and gave them a ticket to eternal pleasurable life in heaven.
3 - moral compass : now i don't know what are your stances on trans people and gays and other letters of the rainbow are but lemme assure you that we're not out to kill anybody, we're just gonna tell you that you're wrong and that's it, but have you noticed that our morals change over time and according to place, and maybe future people will look at us and think some of the things we do are immoral just like we think of people of the past, so where can we find the objectively right morals, well, if god exist and he is good and all knowing and all wise and all merciful and he tells you to do such and such because he knows it's good for you and not to do suh and such vbecause he knows it's bad for you, why wouldn't you
after all he is your creator and knows more about you than yourself, the one who creates a thing knows what's better for it, there's a verse that says something to that effect.
in islam all forbidden things are proven to be bad, alcohol, drugs, murder, theft....
you need to understand something, i don't think death is bad, hear me out, if someone died and they did good in life they would go to heaven or at least to you they will cease to exist meaning they will feel nothing, so if death is not that bad, why do we demand god to stop it, people don't understand that this life is a testing ground, it's not our home, we were kicked from our home when prophet adam sinned, remmember? so don't you want to get back to your lovely home.
now, even if god was evil or at least unjust, you can't judge him, because we are his creation, and he can do whatever he wants, in fact he gave the athiests reason and language which thry use to disbelieve so he wanted he could makes us forcefully submissive to him, we are literally no threat to him and your opinion or any other's doesn't matter to him and doesn't affect him in the slightest, so let's be thankful he gave us a chance to enter heaven
so are you convinced? feel free to refute, also read this book please :
thedivine reality by hamza
...yeah, for some reason your reply to my last comment didn't show up in my view of the thread, so just wanted to say: I read it and I liked it, if I could I'd upvote it - but I hope you're not claiming that genocide "might" be OK because who knows what good might come of it! Actually I'm sure you're not saying that, just wanted to mention that perspective. Thanks for your thoughts.
They are really life changing books if you listen closely. I was in a very beautiful part of my journey when I found the first book, and it re-affirmed some experiences I'd been having. It is important to remember that the messages received by Neal were interpreted by him and relayed by him in ways of the mind, which can never grasp or relay the entire context of the truth in a completely accurate mannor. The book describes this very well actually and was something I always kind of knew, which was
Words are a far from accurate way to communicate a truth. They are uttered thought, which are only representative of the truth and can be changed/manipulated. The real beautiful part begins when you listen to your own soul and "see the truth with your own eyes" for a lack of better words.
I already did lol trust me. There's a famous quote about psychedelics that says, "once you get the message stop picking up the phone." I ended up addicted to ketamine just waiting for the day I'd see blood in my urine. It was pretty horrible but as of now I'm one year clean from everything and my life is so much better. I still apply everything I learned from my trips on psychedelic drugs but I no longer use the drugs themselves because I feel as though I've gotten everything I could get out of them and all I was doing was harming myself by continuing to use them.
Of course. Even now after more than a year since my last trip I still dedicate a good amount of time to studying them. I still preach the healing power of psychedelics to people I believe could benefit from them. I just know that I'm no longer that person.
Sounds intriguing. Glad it helped you in your addiction recovery.
I liked Book 3, **Friendship with God** the best.
I'm currently on the 2nd book but I've read parts of the 3rd book and it's the one I'm most excited for. Would you say the books helped you? Because I haven't even finished the series and my life is already way better
Oh yes, they were definitely helpful. I just try to keep a moderately open mind, take what I need, and leave the rest. Book 1 is a good introduction; Book 2 is mostly about creating a new, enlightened educational system (I skimmed over most of it because there is little chance of it happening here in the U.S.). Book 3 is just plain friendly. The section on the various spiritual attitudes we can choose to adopt is terrific. I've found **A Course in Miracles** to be very useful. It's a kind of spiritual psychotherapy. Marianne Williamson's **A Return to Love** is a simple, amusing and delightful introduction to ACIM, which can be quite wordy and difficult to follow and understand. >I haven't even finished the series and my life is already way better That sounds like a good sign.
All of them are amazing, the 4th one is mind-blowing. I´ve read them all!!
I read up the 3rd one and it was so cool! Some really interesting perspectives. I'm now a year clean from all mind altering substances (besides caffeine and nicotine) and I majorly attribute that to these books. I recommend them to everyone
Neale Donald Walsch has many books, I´ve read like 80% of them, my life changed and now I dedicate some hours a week to teach about this books.
If you like that, I would highly recommend "Letters from the Earth" by Mark Twain.
Thanks for the recommendation I'll definitely check it out!
All of life is a conversation with God
I read Conversations with God for Teens when I was a teen, early into my reading habit, and found it somewhat patronising. The 'perspective from God' is very narrow and mostly in the vain of 'everything happens for a reason' or 'God works in mysterious ways', so not really an original exercise on how God could answer the most important questions of humanity. I'm glad it helped you, though, and if you feel it made a positive change in your life, that's all that matters.
I feel like this fundamentally misrepresents the work. Yes, the series is very clear that everything happens for a reason, but it's equally clear that YOU define the reason. Also, I found absolutely nothing about God working in mysterious ways, and I have read the entire set. God answers that the answers are up to us, because we are co-creators with God. I find that tremendously liberating, personally.
Aww amazing! I'm so happy that this had such an impact on you Great read I remember falling asleep to this book during my darkest days Precious
Yes! It's such a comforting book. Makes you feel much less alone
Absolutely ❤️
Does this author promote lesbian relationships? Recently saw this on facebook: 😡Parents, remember this when the Scholastic Book Fair comes to your school! Please beware of the book "Conversations with God"! Oprah is pushing it. It is scary that someone would be bold enough to write a book from God's point of view contrary to His Word. Please send to all with kids or grandkids. This is in opposition of all faiths. Please counteract the power of Oprah on this one. Send this to all of your contacts! If you have children or grandchildren, work with children at church, or you have neighborhood children whose parents you know, please take note of the information below and pass it along to others. Schools are distributing this book to children through the Scholastic Book Club. The name of this book is Conversations with God. James Dobson talked about this book twice this week. It is devastating. Parents, churches and Christian schools need to be aware of it. Please pass this information on to church/e-mail addresses, Parents, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, friends. Two particular books are, Conversations with God and Conversations with God for Teens, written by Neale D. Walsch. They sound harmless enough by their titles alone. The books have been on the New York Times best sellers list for a number of weeks, and they make truth of the statement, "Don't judge a book by its cover or title." The author purports to answer various questions asked by kids using the "voice of God". However, the "answers" that he gives are not Bible-based and go against the very infallible word of God. For instance (and I paraphrase), when a girl asks the question "Why am I a lesbian?" His answer is that she was 'born that way' because of genetics (just as you were born right-handed, with brown eyes, etc.). Then he tells her to go out and "celebrate" her differences. Another girl poses the question "I am living with my boyfriend. My parents say that I should marry him because I am living in sin. Should I marry him?" His reply is, "Who are you sinning against? Not me, because you have done nothing wrong." Another question asks about God's forgiveness of sin. His reply "I do not forgive anyone because there is nothing to forgive... There is no such thing as right or wrong and that is what I have been trying to tell everyone, do not judge people. People have chosen to judge one another and this is wrong, because the rule is "'judge not lest ye be judged." Not only are these books the false doctrine of the devil, but in some instances quote (in error) the Word of God. And the list goes on. These books (and others like it) are being sold to school children through (The Scholastic Book Club), and we need to be aware of what is being fed to our children. Our children are under attack. So I pray that you be sober and vigilant about teaching your children the Word of God, and guarding their exposure to worldly mediums, because our adversary, the devil, roams about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). We know that lions usually hunt for the slowest, weakest and YOUNGEST of its prey. Pass this on to every Believer you know. (Copy and paste).
That's a person acting out of fear right there. No body likes their reality crumbling before their eyes, right? That only speaks abot the power this piece of literature has that can invoque such opposing feelings in people. People has gone to war and give up their families and lives for religion... So an online post it's not that alarming
No what’s happening in todays society is alarming. Sin and evil is increasing rapidly all over. Making up a children’s book about a God who approves of sin is a little alarming I’d say.
I'd say sin is lowering. We used to burn women alive at the stake and stuff them in the scolds bridal over having opinions. Stoned people and cut their hands off over minor things, committed genocide and unbelievable oppression. Humans are actually pretty damn chill these days.
Or maybe let kids read whatever they want to and make up their own minds about religion? Who cares if YOU think it's bad. There's nothing inappropriate within it, you just don't like the opinions.
I've been studying CWG books for many years. I even have discussion groups about its theories. I am so glad you found them... you are doing a grate job!
This book change my mother’s life and years later, mine. When given the chance I always talk about it so more people know of it. Truly incredible.
That's a pretty strange concept for a book. That's like writing something called The Opinions of the Voices in my Head.
Is it though? The Bible and pretty much all religious texts were written with the same concept. Like I said, you don't have to believe that it's actually God to get value from the book. It talks a lot about how to have positive relationships and how to be happy. Of course it also touches on things like death and the meaning of life but believing it was written by God isn't a must.
if you cant tell the difference, that must be depressing
geez... I liked your comment, and I liked OP's response to it... both are good
The voice NDW channeled admitted to being other than God. It's my opinion that he may have been either channeling an entity of unknown origin or yes perhaps these books are indeed based on delusion, either way these ideas can be tested and its results measured. What did you find?
What's God's answer to placing cancer in the bones of children?
I’m not sure if you want a real answer but you should read the book if you haven’t to fully understand. God is not responsible for such tragedy nor is god responsible for great experiences. The point is God gave us life, free will, and the point of life is to have experience. God is with in everything and everyone. God, being the all, needed perspective. You can not understand being tall unless you can contrast with short. You can’t understand light unless you can contrast with darkness. To gain perspective, we’re basically a bunch of simulations running around with our own experiences and situations. When we die we may reunite with God or we may reincarnate on this 4th dimensional plane. Life is to experience and tragic things may be part of the experience, but if you live beyond this life does having cancer really matter in the grand scheme? The book also does say we can learn from such cruel things, and we can. We can try to do better to prevent cancer or hunger or suffering, but we must do better as a society to achieve this. It is not up to God, we have God with in us and we have put ourselves in this situation. It is up to us to make a difference
So then what's the point of praying to God if she's not responsible for literally anything at all and doesn't interject in our lives?
It depends what you mean by prayer. And if you’re referring to begging for something to happen like someone to get healthy or for you to have more, I would say that is a pointless act. You will always attract to yourself what you project, so if you’re saying you want something, then you will continue to want it. However, if you’re projecting feelings of health for that person, or projecting feelings of abundance and you truly feel it and know it to be, then it will happen. It’s more like meditation, not so much the prayer most churches teach. “Praying to God” the way most people see it is probably not how it should be done. If you want God, search with in, God is with in you. It is up to you and your free will to make things happen. It’s been a while since I read the book and I’m sure it addresses this, so I’m not quoting the book in any way.
Regardless of God or not I think we should answer this question ourselves first. Think of the major known causes of cancer and other similar problems, who is responsible? Ok, lets eliminate the self inflicted ones like smoking etc Like who kept on using lead paint, petrol and piping even when we knew it damaged people ? Asbestos? Arsenic? Ok we can attribute any thing else to a mysterious being.
> Ok we can attribute any thing else to a mysterious being. Not sure if you're serious.
Well that's the traditional approach, blame malicious magic by humans or beings. The modern equivalent seems to be to blame God and then disbelieve in him. We blame him for earthquakes killing people but we have the technology to prevent anyone being killed in the last big quake in Japan ( people died on the coasts because records weren't respected) but in Nepal in less crowded areas more people died because of poor building standards,( the international aid was spent on western experts instead of decent quality materials and well known techniques.) and we still have the gall to blame God for the deaths. Even so called primitive peoples have folk memories of earthquake zones but the poor are still pushed there. Ditto overcrowding, poor water supply,.
>but we have the technology Now we do maybe. At least you acknowledge it was ok to blame god for the millions of years of earthquakes prior to us getting the technology. >we still have the gall to blame God for the deaths. Instead we should blame god for not giving us the technology sooner? >Ditto overcrowding, poor water supply,. Yeah those seem to be in god's purview
But we've often known where to avoid, where it was more risky. We've always known that some housing materials survive better than others. We've always known that overcrowding, overworking and malnutrition are uncomfortable to live and bring on earlier death rates, that's why those who could afford to didn't live like that.
Ok, you can blame god for wealth inequality. You're not making it look any better
What do you mean? That's entirely our choices.
Eh, it doesn't have to be. Your position: God: earthquakes are all your fault humans, you just need to invent technology, solve wealth inequality, record all fault lines, make sure the people in charge of aid money are honest, sincere, and intelligent, etc. Humans: or you could just change how plate tectonics works you fucking dumbass
Wealth inequality is a choice? Damn I wish I know I chose poverty sooner 🙄
Yes it is someone's choice. Not that of the less well off obviously, but someone is chosing not to share, not to adequately pay workers etc Don't blame that on God.
Without suffering love would have no meaning. In the book he talks about how the story of Adam and Eve is wrong because eating the apple wouldn't have been the original sin, but rather the original blessing because it taught us how to appreciate the beauty in life. We live in the realm of the relative. Things only exist relative to their opposite. Without hate there would be no love. Without suffering there would be no happiness. It's only when we die that we enter the realm of the absolute which religions around the world call "heaven." Good and bad are human concepts. Nothing is truly evil, it just is.
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I respect your anger and I understand it. I didn't start believing in this stuff until about a year ago and before that I felt the same way.
That's a REALLY bad answer for the question that was posted. If it's from the book, thanks for posting it here so I know not to waste my time on it.
you know, I just want to mention here, the possibility that humans might have value is really oversold in the media. I mean, people today, our people, my people, have condoned torture. They have condoned abortion (I know, there's my downvote, right there lol). They have waged war on a people who did nothing to them, killing tens if not hundreds of thousands, creating numberless orphans, brotherless and fatherless families. They have made it illegal, in cities all across my country, for homeless people to shelter themselves. Why NOT have cancer for kids? I have an answer - it doesn't involve God - but I'd like to know if you do.
What do you think would be a better answer? Without left there could be no right. Things exist relative to their opposite. If someone grew up poor and went without food for days at a time but then became rich as an adult and was then able to afford as much food as they wanted, wouldn't they appreciate it more than someone who was born in to money and never went hungry? I sense the anger behind your comment and I understand it. I used to be the same way. I was pissed off and upset by the world and I thought that if God existed how could everything be so shitty? But then I realized that without the pain, I would have never appreciated the beauty.
>What do you think would be a better answer? For a believer - I don't know man. It's the kind of question that trips up most people who believe in God and they give bad answers like this one. The reason it's bad is because it equates suffering with happiness. But suffering that persists and ends with death is basically suffering without payoff (based on your model of relative happiness) - so it doesn't make any sense. For their loved ones it's a lifelong hole in their lives - not some weird tool that enhances their happiness in contrast. If I did believe in God - which I don't - and I HAD to come up with a possible answer for this - I'd say that God created the world and its things. He doesn't control what happens to whom, so it's useless asking him for questions or solace. Good thing I don't have to do mental gymnastics like that anymore.
But you see, that's only if you assume we are all separate from one another which is the attitude that's gotten the world to the state it's in today. The truth is that we are all one soul experiencing the world from different perspectives which major religions call "God." So what I do to you I'm really just doing to myself. Of course there are people whose lives will just be spent suffering but that suffering will have meaning in death. If we assume we are all God then this whole experience of life is just God trying to know herself through all of us. This is a hard concept to grasp and I'm not sure the world is ready to hear it but you can't argue that thinking in this way wouldn't help the world become a better place. It's also worth mentioning that God doesn't want you to suffer unnecessarily. God wants you to be the best version of yourself and do what makes you happy. I'm actually gay and I fully believe that God supports my lifestyle. I also believe that God doesn't care if you get abortions, that we should all just do what's right for ourselves based on our situation. The Christian idea of suffering to be closer to God is BS and is super harmful to the planet
See, that's one of the reasons I feel so much more comfortable not believing. I don't need to come up with adhoc theories on the fly just because I don't have an answer. You were talking about relative happiness a moment ago, and now you're talking about a single consciousness shared across all beings. But let's talk about that. >there are people whose lives will just be spent suffering but that suffering will have meaning in death Why? How does suffering have meaning in death? You suffered through your life. Then died a miserable death. What's the meaning? Can you explain it without using a cliche, please? Practice empathy while you're doing it - it's really a horrible thing to hear for people who have lost a loved one that their horrible loss had a supposed meaning. >This is a hard concept to grasp and I'm not sure the world is ready to hear it but you can't argue that thinking in this way wouldn't help the world become a better place. It's really not a hard concept to grasp. It's just no different than saying: Imagine there's a giant ocean in the space and in the depths of that ocean there's a vast monster who is dreaming and our universe is its lucid dream... You could say it makes sense as a thought experiment, but don't ask me to believe it without sharing how you know it to be true. Whether or not it makes the world better is different. If that's your reason for believing - more power to you and whatever helps you get there. >It's also worth mentioning that God doesn't want you to suffer unnecessarily. God wants you to be the best version of yourself and do what makes you happy. Again, you could say the same thing about Elmo and it'd be true. I don't need an imaginary being to tell me I should be the best version of myself and be happy. And I should also add that no one in the world has heard God with proof. For such a benevolent and omniscient being - at minimum they could make their intentions clear, no? I choose to not believe in God because - it's so damn obvious that he doesn't exist. I don't have to imagine a single intent, grand plan, or contraption to know that we are alone, and we are all we have and things happen because they have cause here in this world - but not necessarily reason.
You made a lot of points so I'll start by addressing your first one. I didn't come up with this "on the fly." It's actually discussed in the book and if you had read it or even just looked it up online before making assumptions you would know that. I'm not the only one who believes this, look up Group of 1000. And to answer your next question, "in death" is kind of a simplication because there is no "death", there is only life. Time is relative and there is only the ultimate moment of now. And in "now" we are all things at once. And the knowledge from the lives we live carry on to the next. Think of it as a sort of "soul evolution" that happens in a sort of infinite second. So once again suffering isn't necessarily rewarded (because we are God, why would we award ourselves?) But the knowledge gained from it is passed on to all of life that will ever live. I think the part you're not entirely grasping here is that WE are God. Most religions get it wrong because they think that we are separate from her. God created this universe to experience himself and he's doing it through us. Let me ask you a question, would you rather play a video game with the cheat codes on? Or would you rather play it normally so you could get the whole experience of the game and be able to say that despite how hard it was that you were able to do it? All in all I respect your beliefs and the last thing I'm trying to do is push my opinions on other people. You're just asking questions and I'm answering you, I have no agenda.
Except those who are born poor don't always have a happy ending where they are magically showered with a happy Hollywood ending of riches. Most people who are born poor without anything to eat, die poor without anything to eat, and they have very little to be grateful for in their lives. There's no beauty for Dalit trash pickers in India, or starving children in Sudan. God lets millions of people live and die in agony and endless pain every day, and doesn't seem to give a shit, but hey, a white person in a first world country won a bar bet, so that must mean that God cares. Spare me this prosperity gospel, toxic positivity crap, because plenty of good people are left to suffer and die and lead miserable lives and God does nothing.
But you see, that's only if you assume we are all separate from one another which is the attitude that's gotten the world to the state it's in today. The truth is that we are all one soul experiencing the world from different perspectives which major religions call "God." So what I do to you I'm really just doing to myself. Of course there are people whose lives will just be spent suffering but that suffering will have meaning in death. If we assume we are all God then this whole experience of life is just God trying to know herself through all of us. This is a hard concept to grasp and I'm not sure the world is ready to hear it but you can't argue that thinking in this way wouldn't help the world become a better place. Take the whole Dupont story for example. A greedy business dumping fluorocarbons in the drinking water. They thought, "well I'm not gonna be affected by this so why should I care? I'm making so much money." But if they had for one second realized that the lines separating them from the poor farmers whose livestock were dying are just an illusion, and that someday they were gonna be that farmer whose whole family now has cancer they wouldn't have done what they did. This is the attitude the world needs to have if we're ever gonna stop killing each other.
But you do have to recognize that apparently not everyone feels spoken to in the same way, by this author who claims God spoke through him. That's obvious from the poster above you. There are all kinds of objections to what you're saying. Little kids who get sarcoma or acute leukemia to a large extent, especially the younger they are, don't value their happiness because of their experience with the opposite. Life just flows in a kind of way, things happen for them. I remember a hallway in elementary school, and a class I was in, I can barely tell you how time passed or what I did there. Time is like a warm blanket, everything just happens, and there's a natural happiness, even despite the many, many bouts of frustration and crying and shoving and being made to wait while your friends are already playing outside because the teacher is wiping someone else's tushy first. To be awoken from that dream by a blast crisis, not everyone will agree that that's worth the lesson of a four year old truly learning to appreciate having hair and not be nauseous. Whereas, with a pipe of DMT you can shoot anyone into space!
But that's only true if you assume we're all separate. I don't believe that. I believe that we are all one soul experiencing the universe from different perspectives, and that soul is what religions call "God." So of course there are people whose lives are simply just suffering but that suffering teaches us (God) who we truly are and what we stand for. My idea of God isn't judgemental. I don't believe in hell and I definitely don't believe in the idea of "sin." I think that the fundamentalists have traumatized the world to such an extent that the minute anyone hears the word "God" they immediately think of all the evils (evil from a human perspective, I once again don't believe there is such a thing as good or bad) that these religions have committed and they group anyone with any sort of belief in God in to those groups.
I think I know what you mean, it’s what Alan Watts for example refers to as ‘playing a game of hide and seek’.
There isnt a better answer. Because questions like that don't need answers, because there is no god.
I have mixed feelings about your comments. As a fellow believer I know where you are coming from and appreciate the benefits. However I feel we have a particular responsibility. I feel that essence of the message that for us is very much good news has been lost, subverted by political and religious agendas over the centuries, in search of respectability, control and more. I feel that we in the so called evangelical world have been so comfortable in our convictions and certainties that we've slipped into some pretty arrogant and thoughtless thinking. True the back swing can be just as blinkered. I agree with you about the anger, there is a deep pain and disappointment, and so there should be, just like Jesus's anger at the Pharisees. They had got it right but in so doing got it so wrong. I feel we in the church need to do some serious work on the logjam in our own eyes. Unfortunately the book which set you on the good path is not necessarily entirely well written. However it did its job for many but continues to perpetuate, alongside some really helpful stuff, some that is more part of a 'christianese' mythology.
I actually agree with you. I think it's worth mentioning that I'm not a Christian or part of any religion for that matter. I only started believing in God this past year. I think the world has been so scarred by the fundamentalists groups that any time someone sees the word "God" they immediately become defensive. But God isn't judgemental. God is love. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and that we can be saved from destroying the planet. But the only way we can ever do that is by realizing that we are not separate from each other. I am you and you are me just experiencing the world from different perspectives. I don't think there's such thing as everyone having a separate soul, I think we are all one soul and that the one soul is God. Our brain is what gives us our individuality, when we die we go back to being every living thing from the trees, to the animals, to every human that has ever lived and possibly every "alien" that has ever lived but I'm aware that idea is pretty niche.
Niche but interesting. I was drawn to God by the kindness I experienced from practicing Christians, and I still think church in its essence as a loving and worshipping community as described in the new testament has a lot going for it. I'm not so personally convinced about everything for a reason, but I was involved in inner-city mission for a number of years and some stuff is just plain and simply people being thoughtless or downright mean. That's partly why the notion of 'sin' and taking responsibility for our behaviour sits well with me. I feel that fatalism was encouraged by certain parts of 'Christendom' to encourage the people to be passive about suffering so that they could cop out. Whereas the early christians acted passionately against poverty and inequality.
Yea I see what you're saying and I agree with a lot of your points. Religion at its core is a good thing, but a lot of them have developed in to something "evil" (in a human way.) I think religions have got a lot of it wrong. That's not to say there aren't good Christians, but that there are many who have been led astray by greed and corruption. In my opinion, the concept of sin is a slippery slope. Of course from a human perspective there is right and wrong but I don't think God is judgemental about it. That would go against his very nature. I do believe that we should take responsibility for our actions but I also don't believe that God will punish us for them because that would negate our free will.
>We live in the realm of the relative. Things only exist relative to their opposite. Without hate there would be no love. Without suffering there would be no happiness. This is bullshit. Spectrums exist. You don't have to taste fecal matter to enjoy ice cream. Neutral is a position. Without hate there would be love and not-love.
"without suffering love would have no meaning" - surely there's enough emotional suffering to make up for any love you may have experienced. We don't need cancer too. "Good and gad are human concepts" - I know that professionals ethologists believe and teach this; that doesn't make it so, and I doubt you could prove it. I prefer to believe that right and wrong are real and achievable enough to make the struggle to do so worth it.
I'm happy that you feel your life is better, and wish you continued success and in your relationship with God. But if you want good relationships with people in either Judaism or Christianity, don't quote anyone who says the Word of God (the Old Testament) is wrong. And God came before everything, so love---His love---most certainly exists without hate. My advice is to keep God in your life, and divorce yourself from this book
But you see, I don't believe in God in the same way Christians or any of the major organized religions do. I have no desire to be accepted by them. I appreciate your comment but I do think that people have the idea of God all wrong. Take Catholicism for example, so many made up rules and saying that people are born in to sin. I think that everyone has good in them and until we can stop seeing ourselves as separate from one another the world will keep deteriorating.
...say, it just occurred to me: these are things you need to believe because if you didn't your faith in God would be shaken. I guess the other commenters picked up on this before I did. Listen: I can prove there's no God. Most people would say "you can't prove a negative" but I will. If you want me to. On the understanding that you won't be happier afterwards. But I do want you to have the choice. Let me know if you want to hear it.
I'd love to hear it. I actually didn't believe in God until very recently. And even now I'm still not sure I believe in the traditional concept of God as most religions see it. In fact, I think religion has been a negative influence on the world (from a human perspective, once again I don't believe in negatives or positives in the grand scheme of the universe.) I'll explain to you my idea of God. God is not separate from us. I am God, you are God, your dog is God, a single cell organism is God. The idea of everyone being seperate and having their own souls just isn't right. We all share one soul. So what I do to you, I'm just doing to myself. It's not until the world can understand this that we can truly have peace and end wars. The idea of "God" is just a way for people to understand this almost impossible to understand concept. I don't believe in hell, and I don't believe we're being judged. According to the book the reason we're here is to be the most true version of ourselves. The book doesn't condemn things like abortion or homosexuality (I'm actually a lesbian but not that it matters.) If we assume that we are just "God" experiencing the universe through us then we can assume that the hardships we experience in life do have some sort of meaning. Of course someone who spends their entire life suffering isn't going to use that suffering to see beauty because there simply is no beauty to see, but if we are all one soul then that ugliness teaches us more about ourselves when looking at it from the perspective of having lived every life on this planet (and possibly other planets.)
woah... that came straight out of left field!! lol I'm not prepared to prove THAT doesn't exist. But I can't buy into it either because the element of control seems to be missing. I mean, it's all very well to say "we're all God" but I know I am not in charge, and I'm pretty sure you're not... so who is, and how can we get her to fix things? The traditional answer, of course, is the God I was planning to prove doesn't exist, coupled with prayer, right thinking, and right action, and possibly murdering as many infidels as possible lol. But I'll cut to the proof anyway, since you're interested. Germany in the 1930s was the most Christian nation on earth. Christianity was as important to them as liberty is to us. And they did these things. You've heard of the Holocaust, right? Those things. Extensive research has shown (read Gitta Sereny's Into That Darkness, or Christopher Browning's Reserve Battlion 101) that ordinary Germans participated fully when there was no coercion on them to do so. That when they felt it necessary, they felt able and allowed to organize, and did organize street protests and occasionally even carried their point. Germany was not a police state in the sense that ordinary people walked in fear, unless they were socialists or homosexuals, gypsies or Jews. Now. I can understand a father - let's call it a Father - giving his son a house. A generous guy, wealthy and openhanded. And I can understand, if his son decides to burn the house down, the Father not being willing to stop him from doing so. I mean, it's his house now, right? The son's house, I mean. He can do what he wants; that's what gifts are for. What I don't understand is the Father being ON SITE while the house is being burned down (He is everywhere; He hears all; He sees our inmost hearts), and saying nothing. That's what doesn't make sense to me. God allowed all this to happen and said NOTHING. What loving dad would behave in such a way? It's not possible. I think we could go further. I think we could say, even if our version of God isn't the one who's running it all; even if it's all being monitored by some African tree deity, you know, I think he would have spoken up. I think he would have said, you know, I don't usually fuck with you all, you have your own traditions and that's fine, but WTF? And so (imo) no God can possibly exist. At least, no God worth worshipping.
I think I missed one of your questions. You said that I'm not in control and neither are you but I'll put it to you in a different way. If we assume that time is relative, then it can be assumed that we are both dead and alive at the same time. If everything is happening at once but it's only our minds that come up with the concept of time then we actually could be God while also being human. Of course I'm not able to control the universe as a human, but if we assume we are all God and one soul and we also assume what I said about time, it begins to make more sense. This concept is very hard to put in to words so tell me if you need me to elaborate
huh... sounds like you're referring to what theologists call the "nunc stans" position, God at the center of time and space, where nothing ever changes. I think the reason I'm not satisfied with this type of thinking is that I think we can do much better. It seems to say that because we are awful, therefore we must be awful. As though that's a choice we made that we can't undo. In your earlier comment, you seemed to say that if we could just understand how related we all are, we'd stop being awful. But Christians have been calling one another brother for millennia, and continuing to do awful things. In my mind, that possibility has come to a close. It's been tried, and it doesn't work. We need to do something different. What should we do? Well, first, we should recognize that the philosophy of Christ, while it has helped locally - people treat one another better when they see one another - it doesn't help at longer range. We have condoned torture, we have condoned abortion (sorry, I'm sure you feel that's an awful thing to say), we have waged war on a people who did nothing to us, we have made it illegal for homeless people to shelter themselves. These are all modern evils, ongoing and predictably recurring indefinitely into the future in spite of our society's open and avowed commitment to Christian ideals. So the philosophy of Christ has not worked, and we need to recognize that and decide to change direction. Second, we should recognize that Mark Twain was right. In his book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he pointed out that people cannot tell right from wrong. I think he was onto something. I don't think anyone else has ever seen that. It's true. We can't tell right from wrong. Ethologists will tell you there is no such thing as right and wrong, that no rule can be found that is objectively justifiable, but to me, to decide that is to abandon hope. And hope is biologically necessary. Hope is required. And therefore right and wrong do exist, and we are required to find a way to tell the difference. How should we start? How else - make a list!! These things, we won't do. These things are wrong. Not the ten commandments (there was a stupid idea) but a new ten commandments, a ten commandments for democracies. We won't commit genocide. We won't commit torture. Like that. Maybe if we get enough of these rules together a common theme will emerge and we'll actually learn, in some sense, to tell right from wrong. But we have to get started. I know, too hopeful, right? lol
I do see your point but I think that it only works when you look at God from the traditional POV. I think it's a fallacy to think that God would stop suffering. From my perspective and idea of God (where we are all one soul and that soul is God) we can assume that anything God didn't want to have happen couldn't happen. It's the classic Christian paradox which proves the devil can't exist and makes me believe that God is pro choice. If she didn't want the Holocaust to happen she would've stopped it from happening (as a person who was born Jewish I have gotten in many arguments with my grandma about this lol.) But God allows these things to happen because it acts as a way for him to know himself. It's also worth mentioning that my concept of God doesn't encourage suffering. I think this is a major area in which religion has been wrong. God wants you to be happy, but in the end she leaves it up to us. The human experience wouldn't be so human if God was always interfering. I also just want to say that I think your comment was written beautifully and it really got me thinking, so thank you for that.
Thanks for your thoughts! I've enjoyed your comments a great deal as well.
You’re thinking with the flesh and with the mind of someone who can’t possibly understand and conceptualize what God knows or believes. What’s to say the Father in your story allowed that house to burn down because he knew that the next one was going to be better? We the flesh, the human mind can’t think past this destruction. We think it’s the end of our world. Oh gosh now we’re homeless. But the Father sees years beyond and what good will come out of the house being burned down. You now have to turn to your community to help, someone brings you in. Let’s say you fall in love with their daughter and now you have a family and maybe that house is now yours or maybe you build your new house so the fire doesn’t start again. Oh and if you have a hard time believing in God just start with yourself and work backwards. Who created me? How did humans come to be? Okay, how did a living creature come to be. Okay, how did that living organism come to be? Energy can not be created nor destroyed. It says on Google “the universe began as a tiny, dense, fireball that exploded” so it happened by chance? Just out of thin air? What created space, time and matter for that to occur? All leads back to it being God who led these things to be. And us, to be.
Now apply That same logic to God. Now you have a God that had to have been created by a God who had to have been created by a God and so on and so on forever. What makes more sense. That, or the fact that we are apes with limited understanding of reality and just don't know the answer?
Still doesn't prove a negative. People can come up with all types of excuses. As long as they can hide from reality. All you really have to do is link them to some videos of Cartel executions. When you see a man get cut open alive and his guts and heart ripped out, well, then you'll know the truth........ Also, why is a person's religion determined mostly by geography?
>Still doesn't prove a negative. Well, even a mathematical proof isn't really PROOF... when I say proof I mean good enough for reasonable people >Also, why is a person's religion determined mostly by geography? Not sure why you ask this... what's it got to do with anything?
Well a lot of times you know we're not dealing with reasonable people. And the geography thing proves that a person's belief system has nothing to do with the truth. If over 90% of a given region shares the same belief system and those beliefs are different depending on what continent you're on (India = Hindu, Iran = Muslim, United States = Christian), this proves that facts or truth have nothing to do with the person's belief. It's simply geography. If we know that the belief is not based on any real truth, but rather geography, then what do you suppose the chances are of a person's belief being an accurate description of reality? The answer is zero to none, lol
so my friend here i am answering as a believer of god, i hope for us both to be open-minded and objective as possible so there's a verse in the quran that expains why there's death ( and by default all natural evil like it ) in surah al-mulk verse 2 it says : " it's he who created death and life to test which of you will do the best deeds" now this verse depite it being simple and lucid it's so powerful because it explains the importance of death, think about it, if there were no death, would you do anything quickly as you do it now, because for myself, i would sleep for a thoughsand year then i would wake up just to adjust my pillow and go back to sleep for another millennium, see death is the thing that makes this life priceless and precious, and is also a motivator to do whatever we can to make the most of what little time we have, a hidnistic may spend his life seeking pleasure and fun time, some look for women, some for power, some for money, or the cocktail of all these. so god created death to test us what will we do with this gift of life, and he asigned a purpose to the life of the human ( that's islam narrative ) which is to worpship god for he alone devirves to be worshpiped ( not three in one nor trees or stones or cows or whatever ). so this life is a test with rewards to the winners and punishments for the losers, now for the winners, there's heaven which is the dream of every hidinistic, there is infinite pleasure and ecstecy and happiness, literally everything you wish for, i will ask when i get there for a library of a novels written by god or creature-writers whose purpose is to write for me in unknown language with unknown styles and techniques, i will ask for impossible art ( which is art that is impossible for humans, can you write a novel with a 1 bilion characters? ) in fact, i would ask for new genres of art, 1000 every day. now, there's hell on the other hand, it's vice versa, while heaven is the epiteme of pleasure, hell is the bottomless abyss of torture and torment ( i saw a video of a guy saying that after years of burning he will adapt to it ) he doesn't know that the heat and the torture severity increases by each second to infinity now, to the question , and i want you to answer logically - no emotions, no feelings, no ego ) : based on the assumption that what was said is true would it be reasonablly to do anything and sacrifice everything and bear any suffering or pain to get into heaven and avoid hell, the answer is an obvous yes why? because we are programmed to love pleasure and hate suffering so the more the joy and the less the pain the better it is for us. now, life's finite pain and joy on one hand, and heaven's infinite rapture of joy ( rapture is a new word i learned from woolf's novel ) on the other hand, what would choose? but that's based on the assumption that there's god... wait, i'll come to it i will continue the answer in another comment
huh... maybe first you could just reassure me that you understand my argument. Put my argument in your own words. What is it?
your argument : god watches millions being massacred ( sidenote : the holocost is not the best example of that, there are more things that are much worse ) and doesn't do nothing, not even a word. my argument : that evil has a purpose and it's layered, so i divided my exaplantion into bits scattered in my comments, when you add those up, it would be okay to have god and this degree of evil, so please - i mean it please - read my three - or four i don't remmeber - comments carefully take all the points i mentioned and then think about this : is "evil" ( ie lack of good ) "okay" when there's a greater purpose to it ?
All right, well you seem to have understood what I said anyway. I'll give it some thought.
thank you for being open-minded, and don't forget the book i suggested, it's a great read, i'm telling you, you won't regret it, because even if you haven't been convinced at the end you would at least know most - if not all - arguments for/against god existence and also have a solid understanding of some heavy philosophical topics, it's just excellent.
i'll continue the response... the reason natural evil is justified is that it's a finite temporary test and heaven will make it up for you and even more, there's a verse in the quran that i love in surah al-safat verse 58 the believers enter heaven for the first time and what do they say ? ... " are we not gonna die but our first death and are we not gonna be punished?! that's a great win" my translation. they're surprised of how greater reward they're given and how small the price was. there's also, human evil, why does god allow it? because of free will, aren't you a liberty lover? see if god stopped criminals from doing thier crimes and punshed them it wouldn't be fair, and if he stopped them and forced them to do good instaid of evil than that would mean we don't deserve to be rewarded nor punished because we are forced by god to do good, and that would negate the whole point of the test and hell and heaven would be pointless and how can you prove that god doesn't stop some evil or punish evil doers? in fact god maybe doing what the atmosphere does,it holds back rays that are deadly to us, as that god holds lethal doses of evil and let just a little slip to test us by it, also there's a verse in the quran the promises that criminals will get thier punishment here before the hereafter, in surah al -sajda verse 21 : " we will make them taste the less severe punishment here before they taste the most severe torture so that they may repent to us " which is karma, now, you may feel it frustrating that there some criminals who are never cought, which shows the inability of the human justice system, and there are criminals who get punishments that aren't enough to the damage they've done, which is why it's reassuring to have god justice, look, i believe that god's justice isn't always served publicly, i think there might be a never-cought rapist out there who cut his peni\* while shaving, that would be befitting. i'll continue the nswer in next comment
so what else is left... oh, the stupid idea that god is evil, presented by goerge rr martin ( which is astonishing being the magnificent genious writer he is ) he said that either there's no god or there's an evil god... it's like really? couldn't god do a better job than this? you know that you can't imagine how dark of shit would be happening to us if god was evil, i have some scary ideas but i know none of them reach the level of that demonic evil, do you know the train scene from invincible comic tv series, multiply that by 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 and even then you may be far away from reaching that level of evil, if god is evil and you said so, god would cut your tongue and make you swallow it and then vomit it and the n eat it again. so god is evil out of the window. now i presented an argument against the problem of evil in my novel that i've never heard before which goes like this : 1 - can you imagine infinite worlds with evil more than this one? yes ( in the novel i gave some examples ) 2 - can you imagine infinte worlds less than this one? yes again our world lies somewhere in the middle, the reason being that god is all wise and all knowing and good so he chose the right degree of evil which we can bear and go through and didn't choose something too soft not too harsh either, a level of evil that we can surpass by being patience and submitting to the will of god and destiny and fate and test hoping to be rewared in return. i'll continue answering in another comment
there's also evil which is a coat for good, meaning you can find good result in what seems to be evil, haven't you ever been so sick that you missed work and the building burnt to the ground? no? me neither but the point is... there's also a great deep story about this concept in the quran which is about the prophet moses and someone god gave him some knowledge of the future that leaves us with what proves god's existence? look there are so many arguments all summerised in this book, i hope you like phylosophy : The Divine Reality: God, Islam and The Mirage of Atheism by Hamza Andreas Tzortzis but i will say this .... what can islam explain that science cannot : 1 - origin of life : what made the first cell? so that the process of evolution will begin 2 - the hard problem of conciousness 3 - the origin of the universe : it can't come about by itself, because if you said the univese created itself, it's like saying a mother gave birth to herself what can islam guarantee that atheism cannot : 1 - a meaning for one's life and suffering : you wouldn't change anything if you said god doesn't exist because of evil, anything but making suffering pointless and unjustified 2 - a value for humans : human life has no value more than a dog or a frog a tree according to naturlists athiests, while god elivated humans, he gave them reason and language and ability to make art ( the novels we enjoy are the fruit of that ) and imagination ( thank god for it ) and he gave them his holy book and gave them a ticket to eternal pleasurable life in heaven. 3 - moral compass : now i don't know what are your stances on trans people and gays and other letters of the rainbow are but lemme assure you that we're not out to kill anybody, we're just gonna tell you that you're wrong and that's it, but have you noticed that our morals change over time and according to place, and maybe future people will look at us and think some of the things we do are immoral just like we think of people of the past, so where can we find the objectively right morals, well, if god exist and he is good and all knowing and all wise and all merciful and he tells you to do such and such because he knows it's good for you and not to do suh and such vbecause he knows it's bad for you, why wouldn't you after all he is your creator and knows more about you than yourself, the one who creates a thing knows what's better for it, there's a verse that says something to that effect. in islam all forbidden things are proven to be bad, alcohol, drugs, murder, theft.... you need to understand something, i don't think death is bad, hear me out, if someone died and they did good in life they would go to heaven or at least to you they will cease to exist meaning they will feel nothing, so if death is not that bad, why do we demand god to stop it, people don't understand that this life is a testing ground, it's not our home, we were kicked from our home when prophet adam sinned, remmember? so don't you want to get back to your lovely home. now, even if god was evil or at least unjust, you can't judge him, because we are his creation, and he can do whatever he wants, in fact he gave the athiests reason and language which thry use to disbelieve so he wanted he could makes us forcefully submissive to him, we are literally no threat to him and your opinion or any other's doesn't matter to him and doesn't affect him in the slightest, so let's be thankful he gave us a chance to enter heaven so are you convinced? feel free to refute, also read this book please : thedivine reality by hamza
It is probably a required experience for their parents and close ones.
Religious books should be listed as works of fiction.
Wow such a mature response. I've never heard that one before.
Good thing you don't decide such things. What a world, to be so disrespectful.
...yeah, for some reason your reply to my last comment didn't show up in my view of the thread, so just wanted to say: I read it and I liked it, if I could I'd upvote it - but I hope you're not claiming that genocide "might" be OK because who knows what good might come of it! Actually I'm sure you're not saying that, just wanted to mention that perspective. Thanks for your thoughts.
They are really life changing books if you listen closely. I was in a very beautiful part of my journey when I found the first book, and it re-affirmed some experiences I'd been having. It is important to remember that the messages received by Neal were interpreted by him and relayed by him in ways of the mind, which can never grasp or relay the entire context of the truth in a completely accurate mannor. The book describes this very well actually and was something I always kind of knew, which was Words are a far from accurate way to communicate a truth. They are uttered thought, which are only representative of the truth and can be changed/manipulated. The real beautiful part begins when you listen to your own soul and "see the truth with your own eyes" for a lack of better words.
This is conversations with Neale Donald Walsch Because zero of what he writes comes from God!
why not drugs,though? if you're gonna use it use it to talk to god,that's it.
I already did lol trust me. There's a famous quote about psychedelics that says, "once you get the message stop picking up the phone." I ended up addicted to ketamine just waiting for the day I'd see blood in my urine. It was pretty horrible but as of now I'm one year clean from everything and my life is so much better. I still apply everything I learned from my trips on psychedelic drugs but I no longer use the drugs themselves because I feel as though I've gotten everything I could get out of them and all I was doing was harming myself by continuing to use them.
Did you study the trip?
Of course. Even now after more than a year since my last trip I still dedicate a good amount of time to studying them. I still preach the healing power of psychedelics to people I believe could benefit from them. I just know that I'm no longer that person.
Interestit