Do you believe in God and why

[AsianAtHeart]

3 minutes ago, Tagged said:

What plants and animals feel and think we do not know, but coming from people who believe in higher power, Im surprised they dismiss intelligense and feelings with animals and plants. 

Please don't misinterpret what I have said here.  I did not address either intelligence or feelings.  I addressed moral choice.  Animals are not sinners.  They are unable to make choices for themselves of that nature.

 

The Bible's definition of sin is found in 1 John 3:4.  It says "sin is the transgression of the law."  In order to disobey the law, one must make a conscious decision.  Animals merely follow instinct.  While they can be trained by people to do either good or bad, they have no true sense of right and wrong.  They are not free moral agents.  They exist for us.  We exist for God.  God desires our love.  He doesn't want us to say "I love you" as if we were a programmed robot, He wants us to love Him of our own free will.  A man would not likely appreciate the avowed love of a woman gotten by force of gunpoint.  Neither does God desire such love from us.  We have the choice.

[Sunmaster]

2 minutes ago, AsianAtHeart said:

This is obviously a description of the ideal, of a place where no sin is.  Such was our earth once, before sin entered.

And this is why I never bothered reading the bible...

[oldhippy]

59 minutes ago, AsianAtHeart said:

The Bible, in the book of Isaiah, describes what it is like in God's home.

 

This is obviously a description of the ideal, of a place where no sin is.  Such was our earth once, before sin entered.

animals can sin ?

but then again, they used to be able to talk, like that snake in paradise.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

/

[mauGR1]

47 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

And this is why I never bothered reading the bible...

On comparative, reading the Hindu explanation of higher realms and the Buddhist vision of reality has made me understand more some apparently controversial paragraphs of the Bible.

Often the same truth is described with different words.

The problem with holy words, is that often, after thousands of years, after being selected, interpreted and translated various times tend to lose some meaning.

[oldhippy]

3 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

On comparative, reading the Hindu explanation of higher realms and the Buddhist vision of reality has made me understand more some apparently controversial paragraphs of the Bible.

Often the same truth is described with different words.

The problem with holy words, is that often, after thousands of years, after being selected, interpreted and translated various times tend to lose some meaning.

....And next you come with your own personal interpretation.....

It never ends.

[mauGR1]

2 minutes ago, oldhippy said:

....And next you come with your own personal interpretation.....

It never ends.

I am always happy to hear your own, surely it never ends.

It's the infinite.

Try love, it's free.

[Isaanbiker]

OP, is that a rhetorical question? 

[jimmybcool]

Well if there is a god I think I'm in trouble.  4 years ago I was temporarily dead.  I saw no white lights nor heard harps playing.  Nothing but darkness.  So either I didn't make the grade or there is nothing after life.

 

I don't belittle those who are believers.  So long as they don't constantly badger me to change I'm OK with them having comfort in something more.  It's all good.

 

[yodsak]

12 hours ago, AsianAtHeart said:

When you can explain to me why a living snail looks to be thousands of years old, then, perhaps, I will be ready to hear your explanation as to how you can know, without doubt, that those mountains are 60 million years old.

 

Are you getting your ''scientific'' information from creationist websites?

 

Science has simple explanations for the anomalies in C-14 dating of snails and mussels . Ask google. 

Also C-14 dating is only good for circa 55,000 years old so other radiometric methods are used for older objects like Everest, fossils and the age of the planet, moon rock.

 So back to the question, how old do you think Everest is?

Was it around at the time of Noah's flood? 

 

From creationtoday.org

 

 

 

[AsianAtHeart]

18 minutes ago, yodsak said:

Are you getting your ''scientific'' information from creationist websites?

 

Science has simple explanations for the anomalies in C-14 dating of snails and mussels . Ask google. 

Also C-14 dating is only good for circa 55,000 years old so other radiometric methods are used for older objects like Everest, fossils and the age of the planet, moon rock.

 So back to the question, how old do you think Everest is?

Was it around at the time of Noah's flood? 

 

From creationtoday.org

 

Actually, if the answers were so simple as you suggest, then there would be no need of in-depth research to try to find the answers, as the last paper I linked for you demonstrates.  Those researchers were still trying to find the answers.

 

Let me ask you how you would date the mountains.  By dating the rocks?  But the rocks existed before the mountains, right? 

 

Suppose I use some very old paper to make a book.  I happened to get it on a super sale, because, since it is old and yellowed, no one else wanted it.  Let's say I like the paper anyhow for its artsy effect.  So I make a book using that paper.  I forget to put the date in it when I make the book.  Now, suppose it goes to court for some reason having to do with ownership.  How would people find the date of the book?  Carbon testing?  Suppose the carbon-dating shows the book was made 200 years ago.  I tell the court that the book was made by me, less than two years earlier.  Should the court believe me?  Or would it believe the lab?

 

Scientists, in general, are rather like many Asians in their collective culture: they do not wish to lose face, either individually, or as a group.  Many will continue to publicly support the party line, whether or not they have private doubts as to its veracity.  Because many scientists say something does not make it so.  Truth will always be truth whether it is believed or not; and truth is no respecter of persons--it doesn't matter who believes it.  Neither belief nor unbelief has any power to change the facts.

 

[mauGR1]

17 minutes ago, AsianAtHeart said:

Scientists, in general, are rather like many Asians in their collective culture: they do not wish to lose face, either individually, or as a group.  Many will continue to publicly support the party line, whether or not they have private doubts as to its veracity.  Because many scientists say something does not make it so.  Truth will always be truth whether it is believed or not; and truth is no respecter of persons--it doesn't matter who believes it.  Neither belief nor unbelief has any power to change the facts.

Hear, hear.

[Tagged]

1 hour ago, mauGR1 said:

Hear, hear.

Science is not based on. one proof, one man or womans research. It is science when the proof is tested and verified by other independent researchers. 

 

 

Edited January 1, 2020 by Tagged

[mauGR1]

4 minutes ago, Tagged said:

Science is not based one proof, one man or womans research. It is science when the proof is tested and verified by other independent researchers. 

 

 

Agree, but as far as i know, the only independent researchers are those who research for free.

To confuse science with scientists, is just like to confuse spirituality with priests.

[canuckamuck]

8 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

And this is why I never bothered reading the bible...

Because for you there is no evil, only God, as you said earlier. I am very surprised that someone so focused on unity with God has manged to avoid reading the most influential book on spiritual matters in the history of mankind.

[VincentRJ]

10 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

Wars, conflict, hatred....they come from people at the lowest level, not necessarily from the religion itself.
If a religion keeps its followers at the lowest level (more or less intentionally), then not only is it doing a terrible job, but in my opinion is committing the worst sin of them all!

The point I am trying to get across is that life at all levels, from the most primitive bacteria to the most sophisticated hominoid (us), constantly battles for survival and expansion, whether through conscious decisions or not.

 

This is a fundamental and essential quality of all life, with no exceptions that I am aware of. One might think that a Buddhist monk, who refrains from all killing and won't even till the soil to grow his own food in case he accidentally kills a few worms and insects, is an exception. However, such a monk relies upon other people to do the killing so that he can survive, as do most of us who live in cities and work in offices, often working on projects to design more efficient 'killing devices' which will be used by others.

 

One might think that a plant is an exception. Surely a plant doesn't harm any other living creature! This is apparently not true.
Consider the following article.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-biology/chapter/plant-defense-mechanisms/

 

"Many plants have impenetrable barriers, such as bark and waxy cuticles, or adaptations, such as thorns and spines, to protect them from herbivores.
If herbivores breach a plant’s barriers, the plant can respond with secondary metabolites, which are often toxic compounds, such as glycol cyanide, that may harm the herbivore.
When attacked by a predator, damaged plant tissue releases jasmonate hormones that promote the release of volatile compounds, attracting parasitoids, which use, and eventually kill, the predators as host insects."

 

And from another academic article.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3493419/

 

"Plants and insects have been living together for more than 350 million years. In co- evolution, both have evolved strategies to avoid each other’s defense systems. This evolutionary arms race between plants and insects has resulted in the development of an elegant defense system in plants that has the ability to recognize the non-self molecules or signals from damaged cells, much like the animals, and activates the plant immune response against the herbivore."

 

What also interesting is that plants can communicate over a distance to warn other plants in the same family, that there are dangerous herbivore insects in the area.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405699/

 

 

[AsianAtHeart]

5 hours ago, Tagged said:

Science is not based on. one proof, one man or womans research. It is science when the proof is tested and verified by other independent researchers.

Just be careful what you think "science" is and is based on.

Quote

The problem with science is that so much of it simply isn’t. Last summer, the Open Science Collaboration announced that it had tried to replicate one hundred published psychology experiments sampled from three of the most prestigious journals in the field. Scientific claims rest on the idea that experiments repeated under nearly identical conditions ought to yield approximately the same results, but until very recently, very few had bothered to check in a systematic way whether this was actually the case. The OSC was the biggest attempt yet to check a field’s results, and the most shocking. In many cases, they had used original experimental materials, and sometimes even performed the experiments under the guidance of the original researchers. Of the studies that had originally reported positive results, an astonishing 65 percent failed to show statistical significance on replication, and many of the remainder showed greatly reduced effect sizes.

 

... There’s an unspoken rule in the pharmaceutical industry that half of all academic biomedical research will ultimately prove false, and in 2011 a group of researchers at Bayer decided to test it. Looking at sixty-seven recent drug discovery projects based on preclinical cancer biology research, they found that in more than 75 percent of cases the published data did not match up with their in-house attempts to replicate. These were not studies published in fly-by-night oncology journals, but blockbuster research featured in Science, Nature, Cell, and the like. The Bayer researchers were drowning in bad studies, and it was to this, in part, that they attributed the mysteriously declining yields of drug pipelines. Perhaps so many of these new drugs fail to have an effect because the basic research on which their development was based isn’t valid.

(That was published in 2016, by William A. Wilson in an article titled "Scientific Regress.")

[Damrongsak]

18 hours ago, mauGR1 said:

Some Escher drawings make you think.

If we consider the physical world, the "bad" is the opposite of the "good", it's hard to imagine one without the other, yet, as humans we have the chance to transcend the physical reality

Yeah.  I once talked with a Thai monk in the USA and mentioned the good and bad as a pendulum swinging back and forth.  That they would come to equilibrium.  No, he said, life is suffering and it sucks.  Don't kid yourself. Hmmm.

[mauGR1]

10 minutes ago, Damrongsak said:

Yeah.  I once talked with a Thai monk in the USA and mentioned the good and bad as a pendulum swinging back and forth.  That they would come to equilibrium.  No, he said, life is suffering and it sucks.  Don't kid yourself. Hmmm.

I try to look at the good and the bad in a detached way, as i am told that it's an easy route to a higher understanding of "reality".

It's not easy, but not impossible.

I believe that what we choose to think is important, as while living this life in this body, we are creating our next life and our next body.

If a monk appears to be sad and pessimistic, i won't listen to him.

[Sunmaster]

8 hours ago, jimmybcool said:

Well if there is a god I think I'm in trouble.  4 years ago I was temporarily dead.  I saw no white lights nor heard harps playing.  Nothing but darkness.  So either I didn't make the grade or there is nothing after life.

 

I don't belittle those who are believers.  So long as they don't constantly badger me to change I'm OK with them having comfort in something more.  It's all good.

 

What makes you think there are only 2 options...either/or....?

[geronimo]

My god!!! Is this thread still going?

 

In an effort to put it to bed once and for all ...

 

THERE IS NO GOD    WHY?  BECAUSE I SAID SO !!!!

[VincentRJ]

49 minutes ago, AsianAtHeart said:

Just be careful what you think "science" is and is based on.

(That was published in 2016, by William A. Wilson in an article titled "Scientific Regress.")

The problem with science is that so much of it simply isn’t. Last summer, the Open Science Collaboration announced that it had tried to replicate one hundred published psychology experiments sampled from three of the most prestigious journals in the field. Scientific claims rest on the idea that experiments repeated under nearly identical conditions ought to yield approximately the same results, but until very recently, very few had bothered to check in a systematic way whether this was actually the case. The OSC was the biggest attempt yet to check a field’s results, and the most shocking. In many cases, they had used original experimental materials, and sometimes even performed the experiments under the guidance of the original researchers. Of the studies that had originally reported positive results, an astonishing 65 percent failed to show statistical significance on replication, and many of the remainder showed greatly reduced effect sizes.

 

I don't see any conflict regarding the 'methodology of science', in the above quote. Scientists are human like the rest of us, and subject to bias, and influenced by fame and greed, or simply the emotional need to keep their job to support their family, which sometimes involves keeping quiet about certain doubts about certain research results.

 

The flaws mentioned in the above quote were not flaws in the 'Methodology of Science' but flaws in the application of that methodology. The flaws were revealed by applying the true methodology of science. When the subject is very complex with a multitude of interacting forces, such as Psychology, certain aspects of Biology, Economics, and so on, it's more difficult to achieve a degree of certainty, and the repeated experimentation required to achieve certainty are often too expensive, cannot be funded, and/or take too long.

 

The true causes of Climate Change is an excellent example of such complexity which makes certainty impossible. We know that climate is always changing due to natural causes. It's reasonable to deduce that mankind's activities in total are having some effect on climate, but it's impossible to accurately quantify the proportion which is due to natural causes, the proportion which is due to deforestation, the proportion which is due to significant urbanization and the building of massive cities and black-tar roads, and the proportion which is due to CO2 emissions, and so on.

[Skeptic7]

6 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

What makes you think there are only 2 options...either/or....?

Right. As far as we know, there is only one. ☠️ 

[thaibeachlovers]

17 hours ago, mauGR1 said:

Well, i used "experiment" as a synonym of "experience", i wonder how it may sound to you.

I had visions of human scientists experimenting on an alien they had captured.

[mauGR1]

1 minute ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I had visions of human scientists experimenting on an alien they had captured.

Thanks for clarifying, in fact i am against experimenting on animals too.

[thaibeachlovers]

20 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

When the subject is very complex with a multitude of interacting forces, such as Psychology, certain aspects of Biology, Economics, and so on, it's more difficult to achieve a degree of certainty, and the repeated experimentation required to achieve certainty are often too expensive, cannot be funded, and/or take too long.

When someone says that "science" has "proven" that God does not exist, they are speaking BS. The tools required to confirm or deny the existence of God do not even exist, and probably never will. It is foolish to think that humanity is advanced enough to even attempt such a task. Humans in cosmic terms are only just out of the cave- can't cure cancer, can't cure hatred, can't stop pollution, can't make people content, can't even restrict birth rate to the ability of the environment to sustain. A primitive species indeed.

[Sunmaster]

3 hours ago, canuckamuck said:

Because for you there is no evil, only God, as you said earlier. I am very surprised that someone so focused on unity with God has manged to avoid reading the most influential book on spiritual matters in the history of mankind.

That's a good question and I will answer truthfully.

 

I grew up Catholic, but during my teenage years I started to question everything I've been taught and ultimately rejected it altogether. I admit, I was quite biased against it from the start.

At 23 I had this 'awakening' episode with the kundalini energy I've already described. Having no idea what just happened, I needed clear answers, and fast. It's important to integrate such an experience and make sense of it. 
Put yourself in my shoes.... Does the bible have any reference to this energy? I believe it does, but it's so vague and buried under tons of other allegorical stuff, that it would take ages to find it and decipher it.

The logical thing to do was to find information that is to the point in books that talk specifically about kundalini, Eastern philosophies, yoga, meditation and the likes. Those were books that have waded through the older sacred scriptures already, distilling out the important bits and pieces, so that the readers won't have to go through it themselves.
Those years of learning were very important and laid the foundations of my present belief system.

After the 'schooling' had finished, why would I find it necessary to go back and read the bible? To read about Adam and Eve, the Arc, Satan? I had found my answers already and they made a lot more sense than the way the bible describes it. 
No offence, but when I read the way some interpret the scriptures literally, it makes me cringe.

PS: I didn't say there's no evil. For me evil is created by belief systems that are based on insufficient or corrupted data. This data creates imperfect thoughts which in turn create imperfect actions. I don't see evil as something external to us. Evil is the inability to see Truth.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Sunmaster

[Sunmaster]

1 hour ago, VincentRJ said:

The point I am trying to get across is that life at all levels, from the most primitive bacteria to the most sophisticated hominoid (us), constantly battles for survival and expansion, whether through conscious decisions or not.

 

This is a fundamental and essential quality of all life, with no exceptions that I am aware of. One might think that a Buddhist monk, who refrains from all killing and won't even till the soil to grow his own food in case he accidentally kills a few worms and insects, is an exception. However, such a monk relies upon other people to do the killing so that he can survive, as do most of us who live in cities and work in offices, often working on projects to design more efficient 'killing devices' which will be used by others.

 

Are you saying that we're all slaves of this evolutionary imperative of survival and expansion, and that only the most conscious and strict Buddhist monk can overcome these instincts and preserve life?

I do agree that these urges can be found in all of nature, including us. However, I don't think you need to become a monk to make conscious decision to preserve life. Many do already. They become vegetarians, vegans, pescetarians, fruitarians.... Even if you still like to eat meat (I do), you can make the conscious decision to eat less of it.

[Sunmaster]

1 hour ago, Damrongsak said:

Yeah.  I once talked with a Thai monk in the USA and mentioned the good and bad as a pendulum swinging back and forth.  That they would come to equilibrium.  No, he said, life is suffering and it sucks.  Don't kid yourself. Hmmm.

Hoping good and evil will balance themselves out in the world is not the same as transcending them on a personal level. The first is very unlikely, unless you believe in the biblical world of sin-less existence. The second on the other hand, is very plausible and is the point of interest of all mystical traditions.

[canuckamuck]

1 minute ago, Sunmaster said:

Hoping good and evil will balance themselves out in the world is not the same as transcending them on a personal level. The first is very unlikely, unless you believe in the biblical world of sin-less existence. The second on the other hand, is very plausible and is the point of interest of all mystical traditions.

There is no concept of sinless existence in the Bible. Not on Earth anyway. There is a duality which is to be overcome through revelation.

[Sunmaster]

1 minute ago, canuckamuck said:

There is no concept of sinless existence in the Bible. Not on Earth anyway. There is a duality which is to be overcome through revelation.

I believe @AsianAtHeart talked about a time on earth without sin where animals would not kill each other and even lions would only eat grass.