If god is everything, doesn't that make him evil as well as good?

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Originally Posted by BienvenuJDC

Under my belief system, Jesus Christ is the Son of God...also Deity Himself. Jesus wept.

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I respect you belief .......
According to my belief Jesus is One of the Greatest Prophets of God....and commands my full and profound respect. True, he must have wept at the human sufferings and surely did his best to alleviate their problems.


But here we are discussing God...as understood by numerous religions in the world and by millions who deny His existence! :)

To mazHur, with respect.

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Originally Posted by mazHur

Why should he weep and not smile at human follies??

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From the standard of behaviour shown by many followers of organised religion, I would not be surprised at all if their god were to laugh at his children slaughtering one another, if he were not, of course, a figment of their imagination.

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Originally Posted by mazHur

'political reasons' and unfounded treatment of neo-diseases, famine and poverty.....

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...and car bombs and suicide bombers and missiles and machetes and sanctions ad infinitum. You have a point, but you seem to gloss over much.

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Originally Posted by mazHur

I think more people are being killed by people of their own religion..

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Agreed: catholics kill more catholics than protestants do; but catholics don't kill other catholics because they are catholics, but for social reasons that have nothing to do with religion.

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Originally Posted by mazHur

Apart from religion or religious sects most killings have been committed in history on ethnic, sectarian, linguistic, racial divisions and expansionist whims....why then only blame religion??

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I do agree with you, religion is not the root cause of these problems, human nature is. Our nature has evolved over millennia to wipe each other out as a method of population control, as we have no predators our equal but ourselves.
It is in human nature to want to carry out the atrocities you mention, as it is in human nature to invent justification for why they were necessary; religion being so often the fall-guy.
But the people who carry out these crimes, more often than not, do so in the name of religion. Taking that religion away would at least remove the respectability of it all.

You have not made any comment one two things, in my opinion, the two most important things:

• one, on the link I posted (http://www.socraticmethod.net/morality/page1.htm), stating that faith itself is morally bankrupt. Do you have one?

• and the other, do you think a word is really worth a human life?

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Originally Posted by mazHur

God is the master of Life and Death.
Natural calamities kill millions
Why attribute him to feeble-heartedness?
HE controls life and death
Life after death
There's nothing for him to weep on!:beatdeadhorse5:

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He wept.

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Originally Posted by BienvenuJDC

Under my belief system, Jesus Christ is the Son of God...also Deity Himself. Jesus wept.

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Yep.

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Originally Posted by mazHur

I respect you belief .......
According to my belief Jesus is One of the Greatest Prophets of God....and commands my full and profound respect. True, he must have wept at the human sufferings and surely did his best to alleviate their problems.


But here we are discussing God...as understood by numerous religions in the world and by millions who deny His existence! :)

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With all due respect, according to my knowledge, Jesus is the Son of God and also a prophet.

To BienvenuJDC, with respect.

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Originally Posted by BienvenuJDC

The foundation of your arguments may be more efficiently productive if they were narrowed to one religion at a time, and document your claims with some facts. Otherwise, you comments are just baseless rants.

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Baseless rants? All religion is baseless ranting!

If you can provide me with any physical evidence whatsoever that proves what you believe has any base to it, I will take that back and agree with you that you that religion is not baseless.

And if you cannot, it is baseless, and you are ranting by default.

And don't give me the old "the faithful require no evidence" routine.

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Originally Posted by Leonidas300

To mazHur, with respect.

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From the standard of behaviour shown by many followers of organised religion, I would not be surprised at all if their god were to laugh at his children slaughtering one another, if he were not, of course, a figment of their imagination.

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Similarly, a god would not be rightly omnipotent' if he just watched people killed and wept helplessly!

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...and car bombs and suicide bombers and missiles and machetes and sanctions ad infinitum. You have a point, but you seem to gloss over much.

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No, death is death by whatever method it comes!

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Agreed: catholics kill more catholics than protestants do; but catholics don't kill other catholics because they are catholics, but for social reasons that have nothing to do with religion.

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this is the same with others.....around! Politics and power game!

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I do agree with you, religion is not the root cause of these problems, human nature is. Our nature has evolved over millennia to wipe each other out as a method of population control, as we have no predators our equal but ourselves.
It is in human nature to want to carry out the atrocities you mention, as it is in human nature to invent justification for why they were necessary; religion being so often the fall-guy.
But the people who carry out these crimes, more often than not, do so in the name of religion. Taking that religion away would at least remove the respectability of it all.

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partly correct.... was it religion which took its toll on Red Indians and the Aboriginies and the Apartheid etc? Were the Huns and the Mongols led by religion to commit mass killings??

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You have not made any comment one two things, in my opinion, the two most important things:

• one, on the link I posted (http://www.socraticmethod.net/morality/page1.htm), stating that faith itself is morally bankrupt. Do you have one?

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Will read and revert....

• and the other, do you think a word is really worth a human life?

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any word is bad which leads to killing except in times of war, slef defense or as a legal pertinent.

Religions seem like they are different, but most religions are made by us. In truth, there is One Reality, and we are all part of the same one. Religion is simply a quest for knowledge, and it came upon the answer of God as the Source of Being, the Source of Everything. To attain peace, or union with the source, does not require religion nor is does it preclude it.

Anyway, God, worshipped as the Source of Love, the Source of Being, is the correct form of religion. External ritual doesn't matter at all, all that matters is the feeling of the heart.

The question of this thread is supposed to be a clever question, but it also leads to philosophy.

People fight over these issues and it is really absurd; to fight over it is to attempt to profane the sacred, and the only question is, does it work? Everything has some effect, and so it must be agreed that certain words have some effect...

such as "Delusional."

I have been called delusional here for merely stating that God, as the source, does exist. Merely for stating that "everything has a source"!

That surely has some effect! Just as there would be some effect for a believer calling a non-believer "delusional."

Both sides are human, and the fact that both sides are human doens't mean that for anyone to say they feel the divine exists, they should be considered irrational.

Many of the greatest minds of humanity have had a spiritual life, and asserted that there is some source of existence, some truth, or God; and there is some divinity.

Many say the ultimate goal is to be one with the universe. Many say it is to help others...

So this is my statement... the source of existence is Divine Reality. I have experienced this in different ways, sometimes directly... I cannot say anything else and remain truthful. The source of existence is that truth - indivisble and violable, with divine joy, peace, understanding... that by its existence begs to be known... and its message is just, "Be at peace, for everything is of Me."

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Religions seem like they are different, but most religions are made by us. In truth, there is One Reality, and we are all part of the same one. Religion is simply a quest for knowledge, and it came upon the answer of God as the Source of Being, the Source of Everything. To attain peace, or union with the source, does not require religion nor is does it preclude it.

Anyway, God, worshipped as the Source of Love, the Source of Being, is the correct form of religion. External ritual doesn't matter at all, all that matters is the feeling of the heart.

The question of this thread is supposed to be a clever question, but it also leads to philosophy.

People fight over these issues and it is really absurd; to fight over it is to attempt to profane the sacred, and the only question is, does it work? Everything has some effect, and so it must be agreed that certain words have some effect...

such as "Delusional."

I have been called delusional here for merely stating that God, as the source, does exist. Merely for stating that "everything has a source"!

That surely has some effect! Just as there would be some effect for a believer calling a non-believer "delusional."

Both sides are human, and the fact that both sides are human doens't mean that for anyone to say they feel the divine exists, they should be considered irrational.

Many of the greatest minds of humanity have had a spiritual life, and asserted that there is some source of existence, some truth, or God; and there is some divinity.

Many say the ultimate goal is to be one with the universe. Many say it is to help others...

So this is my statement... the source of existence is Divine Reality. I have experienced this in different ways, sometimes directly... I cannot say anything else and remain truthful. The source of existence is that truth - indivisble and violable, with divine joy, peace, understanding... that by its existence begs to be known... and its message is just, "Be at peace, for everything is of Me."

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Bravo! nice thoughts!:santasmil

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Religions seem like they are different, but most religions are made by us...Religion is simply a quest for knowledge, and it came upon the answer of God as the Source of Being, the Source of Everything.

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All religions are made by us. The religious quest for knowledge is completely unlike any other form of inquiry: it starts out with what it calls the "truth" and then affirms it repeatedly until it sinks in.

This is why the God-is-God-ain't debate is so tiresome and irrelevant: what religion is has little to do with any notion of transcendent reality. Religion involves convincing people that they know things that they can't possibly know. It involves making them believe that knowledge comes from within, rather than from a laborious, cumulative process of objective inquiry.

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The question of this thread is supposed to be a clever question, but it also leads to philosophy.

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Why are these two things mutually exclusive? It is indeed a clever question, because it merely takes the believer's definition of God to its logical conclusion. If God, as you say, is the Source of Everything, then He is the creator of not just the nice things, but also suffering, injustice, oppression, and misery.

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I have been called delusional here for merely stating that God, as the source, does exist. Merely for stating that "everything has a source"!

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Merely for that? Could it be because every post you compose is a New Age word salad?

Regards,

Istvan

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Originally Posted by mazHur

Bravo! nice thoughts!:santasmil

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Thank ya. Salaam. :p

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Originally Posted by Babbalanja

All religions are made by us. The religious quest for knowledge is completely unlike any other form of inquiry: it starts out with what it calls the "truth" and then affirms it repeatedly until it sinks in.

This is why the God-is-God-ain't debate is so tiresome and irrelevant: what religion is has little to do with any notion of transcendent reality. Religion involves convincing people that they know things that they can't possibly know. It involves making them believe that knowledge comes from within, rather than from a laborious, cumulative process of objective inquiry.

Why are these two things mutually exclusive? It is indeed a clever question, because it merely takes the believer's definition of God to its logical conclusion. If God, as you say, is the Source of Everything, then He is the creator of not just the nice things, but also suffering, injustice, oppression, and misery.

Merely for that? Could it be because every post you compose is a New Age word salad?

Regards,

Istvan

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Um... peace.

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Originally Posted by Leonidas300

To BienvenuJDC, with respect.



Baseless rants? All religion is baseless ranting!

If you can provide me with any physical evidence whatsoever that proves what you believe has any base to it, I will take that back and agree with you that you that religion is not baseless.

And if you cannot, it is baseless, and you are ranting by default.

And don't give me the old "the faithful require no evidence" routine.

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There are very well laid out evidential arguments that gives foundation to Christianity. They are divided into three areas: the existence of God, the Deity of Christ, and the inspiration of the Bible. I'm not going to recreate them in this post, but you can search it out under the keyword Christian Apologetics. There are arguments that establish the base, such as: The Teleological Argument, Cosmological Argument, etc. If you choose to reject these arguments and the evidence attached to them, that does not negate the fact that there is a base...it's just not one that you choose to accept.

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Originally Posted by BienvenuJDC

There are very well laid out evidential arguments that gives foundation to Christianity.

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The ones you mentioned are ontological arguments, not evidential proofs.

Regards,

Istvan

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Originally Posted by Babbalanja

The ones you mentioned are ontological arguments, not evidential proofs.

Regards,

Istvan

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I'm not about to try to prove whether there is, or is not, any evidential proof... all I set out to do is to show that there IS a basis for some religions. I'm not going to make this a thread of back and forth arguments.

I don't know why atheists, skeptics, and agnostics seem to be so dogmatic in stating that religious people are stupid for having faith.

While you can SAY...regards and respects...you don't really show a respectful attitude.

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Originally Posted by Leonidas300

And don't give me the old "the faithful require no evidence" routine.

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I ask, with all due respect, are you asking questions about whether or not God exists or are you just stating that people who believes in God are, for lack of better words here, fools for believing such things?

If you're truly asking about the existence of a God then you must have some doubts of whether God actually exists or not.

If you're just trying to prove or state that there is no God then you shouldn't be because no matter what it is that is said, pertaining to God, there must be faith and from the looks of it, you don't believe in faith.

I was highly amused by the ranting religious claim. I have nothing to offer you but simple faith in the claims of the Bible. May I politely point you to the Bible rather then demagogues, fire and brimstoners or avaricious pious types for enlightenment. It is easy to shoot a straw man but the real deal is well worth the knowing and experiencing. I would be more impressed with your search for the truth if oyur judgments weren't obscured by frankly bad examples of 'religious' types. Bottom line I personally am NOT religious in the LEAST BUT I am a SINNER and very acquainted with THAT and the cure.