How about posting it in multiple smaller parts?

I sort of tried that... it's just not working. I'll do it tomorrow. (It will work then, trust me. It does this all the time.)

Here...
@Thessalos, please stop answering questions not addressed to you ;)
@ Dutch, it is perfectly normal to struggle to believe in God and things you cannot see. I believe that Jesus definitely accepts people who are believers in what they see; however, one can't fully believe in God without taking a step of faith. That said, I would argue that other religions and even atheism requires just as much faith to believe in, and I beg someone to ask me to explain this.
What you can see only shows so much; there are limits to science and observation. But God doesn't make it impossible for some people to believe.
However, I can very much sympathise with you. I too am struggling a bit; the difference (I think) is, that I am strongly convinced God exists and it is feeling God that I am struggling with. I'm a lot of head-knowledge, but my personal relationship with God is rather distant, a situation I think is caused by my own problems, such as not spending enough time and talking with Him, and this is something I need to work on.
So, feel free to PM me regarding all this if you want a good chat about it.

>Thomas (or any of the disciples for that matter)
>practical man
>spending years of your life following around someone who tells you to disavow the material world
>practical


''but don't you think that part of the point of God''

>god
>having a ''point''

'' is that He is beyond the laws of physics, logic and philosophy?''

This denies the existence of god. All creations of personalities are necessarily reflections of that personality, only an impersonal ''god'' would be exempt from this and a ''god'' without personality isn't what any imagines as god.

''He fits within them, because He created them, but He is also beyond them and not defined by them, because He is a being beyond all else.''

>god
>beyond everything
If there is a god it is limited by default.

''If He fit the rules of being and non-being you mentioned before, don't you think that would take away the whole significance of God?''

To a simpleton maybe

''He would just be a slightly greater power than ourselves, but wouldn't be anything special.''

So you don't believe humans are special, very interesting.

''I guess what I'm saying is, you can't try to use these rules/laws to prove God doesn't exist/or is nothing better than ourselves, because if God did exist those laws would not apply to Him, otherwise he's not a god.''

To exist it must be definable, if god adheres to nothing it doesn't exist.

Edited 5/2/2018 22:08:31

>spending years of your life traveling around and seeing more of the world with someone who can heal you even if you go limp or blind, and can create food out of nowhere when you're hungry.
>practical

@Dutch Desire:
believing in God can bring a lot of psychological benefits and greatly improve your mental health. This has been proven by many studies. That's my reason for trying my best to believe in a higher power and the afterlife, but till now I haven't succeed. :(

Although I'm always happy to sell Christianity I'm kinda sceptical on that reason. I believe I have a reasonably good overview over most Christian movements and I find most of the movements which actually take their believes seriously to be mentally quite damaging up to the point of bringing people en masse into the psychiatry.

Jesus didn't seem to blame him for only believing what he saw with his own eyes. So following Jesus example, Christians should not blame people for not believing in a god that can't be seen, right?

The problem here is that believing in Jesus is exactly the point which defines a Christian.

Maybe even going as far as saying that God just made some people unable to believe in things that can not be seen?

The bible teaches faith as an act of obedience. When people talk about the quality of ones believes I always feel like they are looking in the wrong direction. Instead I recommend looking upwards towards the one who has died and rose again. As for Thomas, all of Jesus' disciples stumbled after the crucifixion and they had to see to believe. The problem with Thomas was that he wasn't present as Jesus revealed himself to the other disciples.

Dutch don't tell me you actually believe that nonsense.

''trying my best to believe''

Well you may as well give up because you never will, either you believe or you don't. Religion is for atheists anyway, only an atheist would need a logical proof for god to be conceivable. Only an atheist needs an entire mythology built up around god. Only an atheist needs to ''find'' god. For the true believers in god (or gods) there was never any doubt, never any need to look outside ones self, never was any logical or rational foundation necessary.

Edited 5/2/2018 22:42:35

If those religions turn out to be wrong, maybe join Mormonism during the afterlife. Rumor has it, if it's right, you can become a God. Then, you get to make your flat earth idea a reality :)

>if they turn out to be wrong

All blatantly false.

Interesting discussion. I will comment on main themes so far.

From my point of view, discussion of where dead babies go makes zero sense. Heaven and hell are nothing but human concepts, created by interlinked state-church system to force obedience on peers and erase true thinking. If one think within those concepts, he is just trapped inside this system.

This applies , unfortunately, to most of religious doctrines. I don't claim they are all corrupt on purpose. Just the original message was lost in translation.

I am convinced that people like Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, Bahá'u'lláh , and many many more, experienced true connection to Source (in fact, all of us can, just we forgot how). But when they attempted to translate their experience to words, it became inevitably distorted, just because language is not made to describe such things.

This is the very reason for struggles Thelegend experienced in buddhist monastery. They just used different language. It does not matter they spoke English, they perceive and use it differently, because of different cultural background. They gave you perfectly correct anwers - from their perspective.

Also, for clarification, I prefer to use word Source instead of God, because the latter one has semantic connotations linked solely to Christian culture backround. Those connotations can create barrier to true understanding what is going on.

believing in Jesus is exactly the point which defines a Christian
I personally believe Jesus existed and consider very possible he did things he did. But I don't consider myself Christian by any means.

I agree that explanation of world around us should be consistent. Here is another trouble with translation of Source experience - it tends to lose inner consistency while translated. Because , in fact, without experiencing it, it makes little sense anyways. It is similar like with sex. You can read a lot on it, hear a lot on it, but until you experience it, you just have no idea what is going on.

Thus in my opinion, ideal religion should not implant its ideas to others, but encourage people to experience own connection to Source and provide tools for it. This is why I sympathize personally- from main religions - with Buddhism and Orthodox christianity. From what I know ( and I don't claim being expert on religions by any means), those are the closest to my idea.

Edited 5/3/2018 01:50:19

>religion is just a tool of oppression goy!

commies actually believe this.

psykkoman's comment is a pleasure to read :). He clearly has a good degree of intellectual maturity.

90

Thanks! Liked your comments, too.

Edited 5/3/2018 01:39:43

Well you may as well give up because you never will, either you believe or you don't.

I totally agree with you Wednesday, as I experienced that myself. It's like I was just trying to become more happy by trying to become more delusional. But maybe that's not the smartest thing to do.

Edit:
Sorry wulfhere, your right, so I changed the content in the hope to reduce the damage I caused.

Edited 5/3/2018 07:07:17

O RLY

Do you know what "connotations" means, did you look it up? He is saying that DESPITE the idea of God predating Christianity he will avoid "God" because it causes confusion and the point is to make the point he's trying to make and avoid falling into semantic. You managed to turn an effort to establish convention so the argument could proceed, into a fucking point of contention. You managed to do it. Not only did you manage to invert good nature of those sentences, turning them into cancer, you cherrypicked those sentences IN A CONSCIOUS EFFORT TO DO SO, to derail, because your arguments are worthless and all wrong.

Wulfhere what are you talking about?

He used 1 word probably in the wrong way, he just meant associated.

Edited 5/3/2018 06:46:17

you're gay

WOoOOOOOOooOOOO

''to become more delusional''

It seems as if you're implying that being religious is a delusional state, which is a ridiculous assertion. Its insane to attempt to induce such a state certainly but those who feel god aren't delusional. Atheism springs from a deficit of feeling and theism (contrary to the claims of atheists) doesn't spring from a deficit of intellect or knowledge. What I've said isn't to be misconstrued as an insult to atheists, whether one attributes great value to feeling is entirely subjective and as such its fruitless for either side to attack one another over this point, but whats certain is that those who feel the touch of god experience something very real and very powerful within their own lives. I hate mentioning myself but I felt it for a couple years and now I know its absence.

Amen to that, Wednesday.

I agree with Wednesday, too. If one think of religion as delusion, maybe what can work for him is to go towards what serve him the best. I don't blame atheists for being atheists - their faith (and yes atheism is kind of faith, too) just serve them well in their lives.

I am former atheist. Just things which I experienced in my life led me to conclusion that existence of something which exceeds us is real.

I see I need to write here which connotations of word God I see as misleading.
- male sex (seeing God as patriarchal figure is psychological projection)
- desire to be worshipped (why would being which knows way more that us want something like that?)
- will to punish disobedient (from higher perspective, good and bad are mere human concepts)
- exclusivity (all faiths harbors truth in some way)
- entitledness (any conception of God is human creation and as such cannot match higher truth)

Wulfhere, I would really like to see how my arguments are wrong. I am also seeker, after all, and I don't claim I hold the truth on Source.