[Macros]

without reading the thread (because im drbunka nd typing thhis carefulyy without abuse a dnt ypo is taking all me effort)
I feel the word "god"can be defined as:
A power higher than the definer, an entity of greater ability/power/grace/insert descriptive word here. To an amature torres is a god, etc.
"God" (withe capital and all) I feel is the entity (my beleif in such is undescided) that we are ultimately responsible to.
Its ass if the universe is an experiment and we are the reuslts, with our lives tallyed on a spreadsheet.
god tallys the results and bases what happens next on the ever chamnging results. I can't believe that no-one is inofallable, everryone make smistakes, look at satan, call it rebellion or whatever, in satan creation god made a mistake.
if we're going to go down the arguement of satan being an extenion of man ill-will, i will counterr with, what is god if not a display of our good actions. so can it.
If we're assuming god is the ultimate, there was nothing until the big man threw it out in 7 days, then he create evil along with good, look at eve eating the apple (free will my ass, if god has a "plan" that totaly negates free will) i think thaqat if there is a god its aforce so powerful; we cant comprehend, but hes not omnipresent or all knpwing.
possibly an update when i'm sober, someone reminf me i poosted here

[Adjutant Stormy~]

Truth is, I have always said, primarily revealed through (drunken) revelry and the lessons learned therein.

Therefore Macros is correct by default.

[Macros]

surprisingly coherant, I'm reasonably proud of myself, when I said can't believe no-one is infallablei meant i believe no-one is infallable

[JoJo]

Once upon a time, a long time ago, or rather, several long times ago, in various places, people started asking themselves questions like "what is that bright, hot, shiny thing in the sky and where does it go at night?" and "what makes thunder and lightning?" and "what happens to us after we die?". Since no one could come up with any reasonable answers to these questions, people did what they always do. They made up stories. These stories were about special people who could do things that ordinary people couldn't. Obviously an ordinary person couldn't make lightning hit a tree, so it had to be a very special person who did lightning. In this fashion, the gods were born.

Since the stories were made up at different times and different places by different people, they were all different. After a while, various families, clans and tribes got together and decided to combine their stories and the gods in their stories. Also, some smart people realized that they could make a soft living if their stories became the official stories of the particular group they were in and they become the official story tellers. So the stories became the basis for religion and the story tellers became priests.

After a while, the story telling priests started to believe their stories and did all they could to get everyone to believe the stories. If someone didn't believe that the gods were real and the priests were in charge of the gods, then that person was a danger to the soft life the priests were living. So the priests would tell everyone else "see that guy who doesn't believe in the gods? Well, the gods are really angry that he's still here. You don't want the gods to be angry, or else you'll be hit by lightning. Kill that guy." Thus started two other aspects of religion: (1) that gods had the maturity of spoiled five year olds and (2) unbelievers should be punished.

After a while, people started figuring out where the sun went at night and what caused lightning. So the priests latched on to the remaining question: "what happens to us after we die?" They got a whole thing going about how, if the gods liked you, you were going to a really nice place after you died, but if the gods were annoyed at you, you were going to a really nasty place forever. The priests also came up with a bunch of rules for keeping the gods happy. Some of these rules were really picky, but fortunately there were the priests around to interpret the rules for the people. This became a major priestly function. Occasionally, one priest or group of priests would disagree about various rule interpretations. There would be fights among the priests, ranging from minor squabbles to murder to war between the followers of two or more priestly groups.

If one bunch of people ran into another bunch of people, the priests might try to poach some of the followers of the other set of priests. Again, this would lead to fights or wars. It was common for priests to denounce unbelievers as non-human and urge their followers to kill them.

So the gods were invented to answer otherwise unanswerable questions. Priests and their followers perpetuated the beliefs even after most of the questions could be answered.

"Humans are the only animals with a true religion. In fact, several thousand of them." -Mark Twain

[Adjutant Stormy~]

Original work? or excerpt? I feel like I've read this before somewhere.

[Cold Iron]

Simplistic view, you completely miss the symbolism and emotional imagery associated with religion. Your mind is closed.

[Optimus Prime]

I work with a guy who is really religious, and he keeps telling me I'll find God one day. I just tell him I won't because I'm not really looking for him

I love people who say "I've Found Jesus!"

Where was he?!?!?

[Macros]

hiding at the bottom of a bottle

[Tiger_sword]

If you believe that the universe had a begining i.e. the big bang then there are two choices of what came before:

1) SOMETHING i.e. another universe our universe could be part of a cosmic cycle that has been going on for an infinate amount of time.

2) NOTHING. If there was nothing before the universe then there was no space no time, therefore nothing within the realm of physics could change that, it would remain nothing. Hence something beyond the physical had to change nothing, this 'force' is, for lack of a better word, GOD.

Now I'm not a fan of 1), something is really unsettling about infinities thats why I lean towards 2).

Basically if there was always something in existance then there is no need for a God but if there is a true beginning to existance then a God force is required. A force that once had acted would no longer need to interact with what was created.

Btw I am a physicist and an atheist!

[Macros]

I usually avoid god debates, most christians I know aoid my questions or give stupid answers, it runs normally like this
Them "were did the universe com from?"
Me " the big bang?"
Them "what cused it, where did all the stuff come from?"
Me "I dunno, a kinder egg?"
Them "well I KNOW god created it all"
Me "No you don't, you THINK he did, now answer me this, if my theory of the big bang is so silly because I dont KNOW where all the stuff came from, where did God come from? How'd he make the universe?"
Them "....god was ALWAYS there"
Me "Always? Thats a long time, he had to come from somewhere surely, clearly as ridiculous a suggestion as my belive in the big bang theory, the stuff came from somewhere, maybe it was ALWAYS there"
Them "................~insert christian rhetoric and damnation to hell here~"

[Cold Iron]

The more you talk/think about it, the closer to the truth you get

[Macros]

You can't handle the truth

[Thelomen Toblerone]

Truth is subjective.

There IS NO TRUTH!!!

[SiriusL]

Thelomen Toblerone;306626 said:

Truth is subjective.

There IS NO TRUTH!!!

Well, except for that one, right?

[Cause]

Tiger_sword;306569 said:

If you believe that the universe had a begining i.e. the big bang then there are two choices of what came before:

1) SOMETHING i.e. another universe our universe could be part of a cosmic cycle that has been going on for an infinate amount of time.

2) NOTHING. If there was nothing before the universe then there was no space no time, therefore nothing within the realm of physics could change that, it would remain nothing. Hence something beyond the physical had to change nothing, this 'force' is, for lack of a better word, GOD.

Now I'm not a fan of 1), something is really unsettling about infinities thats why I lean towards 2).

Basically if there was always something in existance then there is no need for a God but if there is a true beginning to existance then a God force is required. A force that once had acted would no longer need to interact with what was created.

Btw I am a physicist and an atheist!

Before the big bang their was no space and no time. When you accept that the human mind built to function in a world with space and time and even than only to a point. A human cant really understand the size of an atom or light year. Its just really small or really big with no actual comprehension. So questioning what came before the big bang is impossible. No space time, no rules as we know or could understand them. No experiments, hypothesis or guessing can even be contemplated.

Saying GOD did it is well like saying nothing about it at all really. Its meaningless. The GOD force as you call it could be anything.

I personally often flippantly tell people that enough nothing might add up to something.

[Terez]

I don't get the magnitude thing, Muttley. Does it have something to do with your winning personality?

[Tiger_sword]

I agree that we can't possibly imagine what came before but logically there are only those two choices, something or nothing, there is no other posibility, and there is no way in the realm of physics to go from nothing to something. NOTHING literally means no thing, no space no time no forces no quantum fluctations no speed of light nothing! Hence something outside of physics must act to change that state now I'm not saying that this is "god" with his bolt of lightning, but simply a change that occured NOTHING -> SOMETHING via a process referred to as the God Force.

Indeed the god force could be anything, except the laws of nature that we know. Since anything outside nature is refered to as supernatural the God force is by definition a supernatural force

[SiriusL]

As I recall from my limited reading on the subject, the laws of physics as we understand them don't really apply inside of a singularity (which was the state of the universe immediately prior to the big bang).

In an object of infinite density, space is infinitely curved, who know what's going on with time. Stephen Hawking said something like, "asking what happened before the big bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole." The question can't really be answered.

I think whether you're looking for a empirical/scientific answer, or a supernatural answer, either way you're going to get something that the human brain can't comprehend.



@Terez--look up "apparent magnitude" and see what you find. I know science is hard for you music majors.

[Dolorous Menhir]

Tiger_sword;307236 said:

I agree that we can't possibly imagine what came before but logically there are only those two choices, something or nothing, there is no other posibility,

Wrong. Third possibility: it is not possible to know what came "before" (note this term has no meaning if there is no time as you go on to note), as it had no effect on what came after the big bang. So your only two possible choices just don't matter. It makes no difference either way. It simply isn't relevant.

Quote

and there is no way in the realm of physics to go from nothing to something.

Spot the non-physicist. This is also wrong. Try googling "quantum flux," "virtual particles" or "Casimir effect" for examples, which may or may not be relevant here.

Quote

NOTHING literally means no thing, no space no time no forces no quantum fluctations no speed of light nothing! Hence something outside of physics must act to change that state now I'm not saying that this is "god" with his bolt of lightning, but simply a change that occured NOTHING -> SOMETHING via a process referred to as the God Force.

Since this all flows from your mistaken assertions above, it doesn't really help us much. Sorry.

Quote

Indeed the god force could be anything, except the laws of nature that we know. Since anything outside nature is refered to as supernatural the God force is by definition a supernatural force

I'm curious to know where you acquired your powers of logical argument.

[Cold Iron]

SiriusL;307542 said:

"asking what happened before the big bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole."

I like it. Other possible analogous questions:

How fast is a stationary object?
How wide is a one dimensional object?

DOS would say "syntax error".

Imagine you can only go half way to a place at a time. While you always get closer, you never get there. It calls into question whether the place actually even exists in the sense that we understand existence.