What if there is no God?

The Viking wrote: what stops you from just going out and taking what you want and doing whatever you please, as in the long run it won't matter anyway right? What are the consequenses of your actions during your life if you just end up as dust anyway? Why not go out in a selfish blaze of glory appeasing all your worldly and physical desires? What will it hurt? When your dead you won't care and it won't matter correct?

Boy, that sounds a lot like the devil talking....

What stops me is it would be the wrong thing to do because it would negatively affect people that I share this rock in space with. That is the simple way of saying what cydl so eloquently expressed, I think.

The consequences of those actions would be maybe being arrested and put in jail or put to death on the extreme end or having a feeling of guilt on the immediate end. And if you end up as dust, isn't dust God made, under your beliefs? If you believe God made everything, then you really are a product of God no matter what physical form you take.

What I'm hearing is that there are differences on the non-religious end: people who don't believe in Jesus Christ as their savior (Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and others), people who don't believe God will send them to eternal fire and brimstone when they die, people who don't believe in a God but do believe in a higher power and those that don't believe in anything regarding a supreme being.

God could be what we call nature, for all I know... always correcting things that go wrong and resetting the balance (of nature)... and always evolving.

All I can say is for a group of beings who believe in God so much (in all the different religions), we sure do kill each other a lot. And a lot of those who have done the killing are God-fearing.

DaffyDick wrote: What if you found out that there was no God? What would you do, if you learned that everything you had been told about religion is a lie?

How would you feel if you learned that mankind is nothing more than a survival of the species, and that mankind is here by chance, and not by the grace of God?

Logic won't allow your premise Daffy. If there is no God, you will never find out that this was the case as you will simply be dead. There is no way to quantitatively prove either the existence of a Creator or His absence. One day we might indeed find out that the universe was started by a static spark, but even then science would not be able to quantitatively prove that He does not exist and that He was not the source of that spark.

That is why it is called faith Daffy, for it is something you must possess yourself, and that it precisely why it is so diverse. What is relevant, what is provable, is that from the dawn of our species there has been a belief in something larger than yourself. Regardless of where you go, how primitive or how developed, from the earliest gatherings of the species in caves, you will find that the human species has that faith. Every culture, every sect, every tribe has a creation story, a flood story, a theology. Even those of the scientific community who profess they do not believe there is a god share these in common with every other human being, and even they have a belief that there is something larger than themselves, even if it is only a belief in a society and social order. They spend billions of dollars building an LHC or a Tevatron to find out how it all started, seeking the existence of the god particle. They have their faiths, their theories, their theology if you will, about how all came to be. So even these have a god that they serve, they call it science.

If there is not a God, Daffy, you will never know it. If there is a God, you will one day have confirmation of that reality when you meet Him face to face after your time here is completed. We all have a belief in something larger than ourselves that binds us together as a people and as a species. Whether one believes in a personal God who watches over them, an impersonal God who created and then sits back and watches, or simply natural phenomena and random chance, which truly is just another way of describing the god of nature, all of us believe in some form of god and attribute to that god our very existence.

And so Daffy, during this holiday season, I want to assure you of one thing. Yes, Daffy, just as there is a Santa Claus, there is indeed a god for all of us. May your beliefs, however derived, bring into your life happiness, peace, health and a never ending presence of love.

Boy, if one Jewish way of thinking about the afterlife (Olam Ha-Ba) is correct, there are going to be a lot of forum posters in trouble....

The school of Hillel suggested a more merciful view, in which the middle group (the ones who don't believe or weren't bad) are sent directly to Gan Eden (Heaven) instead of Gehinnom after death. Rabbi Hanina added that all who go down to Gehinnom will go up again, except adulterers, those who put their fellows to shame in public, and those who call their fellows by an obnoxious name [Babylonian Talmud, tractate Baba Metzia 58b].

The last two almost sound like they were written for some Internet forum posters.

WhereDidMyVoteGo wrote:

The Viking wrote: what stops you from just going out and taking what you want and doing whatever you please, as in the long run it won't matter anyway right? What are the consequenses of your actions during your life if you just end up as dust anyway? Why not go out in a selfish blaze of glory appeasing all your worldly and physical desires? What will it hurt? When your dead you won't care and it won't matter correct?

Boy, that sounds a lot like the devil talking....

What stops me is it would be the wrong thing to do because it would negatively affect people that I share this rock in space with. That is the simple way of saying what cydl so eloquently expressed, I think.

The consequences of those actions would be maybe being arrested and put in jail or put to death on the extreme end or having a feeling of guilt on the immediate end. And if you end up as dust, isn't dust God made, under your beliefs? If you believe God made everything, then you really are a product of God no matter what physical form you take.

What I'm hearing is that there are differences on the non-religious end: people who don't believe in Jesus Christ as their savior (Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and others), people who don't believe God will send them to eternal fire and brimstone when they die, people who don't believe in a God but do believe in a higher power and those that don't believe in anything regarding a supreme being.

God could be what we call nature, for all I know... always correcting things that go wrong and resetting the balance (of nature)... and always evolving.

All I can say is for a group of beings who believe in God so much (in all the different religions), we sure do kill each other a lot. And a lot of those who have done the killing are God-fearing.

Absolutely. I do the right thing because it is the right thing. Period. I don't do it out of fear of retribution. I don't do the right thing out of hope for reward. I try to live my life being the best person I can be because anything else would be meaningless.

ckm8 wrote:

WhereDidMyVoteGo wrote:

The Viking wrote: what stops you from just going out and taking what you want and doing whatever you please, as in the long run it won't matter anyway right? What are the consequenses of your actions during your life if you just end up as dust anyway? Why not go out in a selfish blaze of glory appeasing all your worldly and physical desires? What will it hurt? When your dead you won't care and it won't matter correct?

Boy, that sounds a lot like the devil talking....

What stops me is it would be the wrong thing to do because it would negatively affect people that I share this rock in space with. That is the simple way of saying what cydl so eloquently expressed, I think.

The consequences of those actions would be maybe being arrested and put in jail or put to death on the extreme end or having a feeling of guilt on the immediate end. And if you end up as dust, isn't dust God made, under your beliefs? If you believe God made everything, then you really are a product of God no matter what physical form you take.

What I'm hearing is that there are differences on the non-religious end: people who don't believe in Jesus Christ as their savior (Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and others), people who don't believe God will send them to eternal fire and brimstone when they die, people who don't believe in a God but do believe in a higher power and those that don't believe in anything regarding a supreme being.

God could be what we call nature, for all I know... always correcting things that go wrong and resetting the balance (of nature)... and always evolving.

All I can say is for a group of beings who believe in God so much (in all the different religions), we sure do kill each other a lot. And a lot of those who have done the killing are God-fearing.

Absolutely. I do the right thing because it is the right thing. Period. I don't do it out of fear of retribution. I don't do the right thing out of hope for reward. I try to live my life being the best person I can be because anything else would be meaningless.

True Christians don't do anything out of fear. We have Faith and Grace so there is nothing to fear. We do everything out of love. Are we perfect? Of course not but it is a Christians' innate nature to love others as you would love yourself, even more so. And we don't expect anything in return.

The Viking wrote: True Christians don't do anything out of fear. We have Faith and Grace so there is nothing to fear. We do everything out of love. Are we perfect? Of course not but it is a Christians' innate nature to love others as you would love yourself, even more so. And we don't expect anything in return.

Can you explain to us why you are a Christian? From your previous posts, and the escalator picture someone posted, it would seem that Christians are afraid of going to hell.

scruffy, do you know of anybody that is excited about going to hell? Heck..I don't even like the thought of the place..maybe you can share with us, how you feel about hell..

I'm about as afraid of going to hell as I am of going to wonderland or Helheim.

...or Cleveland...

:pop