There will be no peace on earth until the belief in a God and the creation of religions no longer exist. This is so because anytime one believes that living a fantasy is the answer to life's problems, nothing will ever be accomplished in the real world. The belief that some unknowable and undefinable thing somehow magically can solve problems and make everything better is just nonsense. Humans invented and use religion to attempt to convince themselves that this amazing and strange thing called life has some kind of meaning or reward, hoping that there is something that one will be aware of after death.

The human brain has the amazing ability to make its self believe that something that is only the product of the brain its self actually exists. For example, the placebo pill. The pill has no physical effect but the brain thinks that it does and it is this belief that can produce a physical effect in the body. Another example, and this happened to me. Many years ago I was working on a very old wooden sailing cargo ship. A couple months went by and I was having a great time with nothing unusual happening. Then one of the crew happened to mention that a man was killed in the forward crew compartment where I slept and that his ghost was still there. That night I woke up and felt smothered by a presence that would not let me out of my bunk. It was quite terrifying and I spent the rest of the night on deck. If it had not been mentioned to me that there was a ghost in the cabin, I would never have had the experience, because the event was triggered by the thought planted in the brain and the brain created the incident. It never happened again because the next day I realized what had happened and put it out of my mind. If you want to believe in something intangible or mysterious such as a God, or someone coming to life after death, [i.e. the story of Jesus] the brain will create that into a mental reality for you.

There have been so many thousands of different attempts through various cultures and religions to "prove" that a God exists and that there is life after death, that it makes the whole effort discredit its self. When you look at the totality of the explanations you can see that it all boils down to a jumbled mass of contradicting and meaningless nonsense.

I am not trying to squelch discussion. If your God has any power and if praying works for you, I ask you to ask your God to get our men and women out of Iraq and also have your God do something about that violent Arab Muslim culture. In other words, God, if believing in you is worth anything at all, FIX ALL THIS CRAP.

Are you for real? You must be one miserable soul!

Wow!  As a very devout Christian it never fails to amaze me that ignorance such as yours still exists.  Do you really suppose all the disciples and followers of Jesus were willing to die for something you say does not exist?  You make so many unfound assumptions based on what?  You do have the free-will to believe what you like, and as a Christian all I can do is pray for you.  You must be on the Darwin side of evolution which has been proved false and not on the side of Creation.  Spend some time reading the Bible before you make such false accusations.  Are you really willing to risk eternity in Hell when you could spend Paradise in Heaven?

I wanted to add a bit more to my previous comment.  Since you don't believe in God, why are you asking Christians to pray for the mess the world is now in?  Also, concerning Darwins Theory of Evolution the flaws in that theory are many:  First, and perhaps foremost is the incomplete fossil record.  There are right now about 6 billion people on the Earth, and when we die and are buried our bones leave a record that we have been here.  Now, if Darwin was right why is it so hard for the so-called scientists to explain the lack of evidence of the monkey-to-man theory?  Would not the musuems be full of fossil evidence supporting his theory?  Sure, they have found some bones from the past, but never a complete a set.  What they find are bones that are scattered and then piece them together as one would a jig-saw puzzle and then make a best guess as to how they were arranged.  A toe bone here and so on.  Should this planet last a few more thousand years scientists will have no problem finding a complete skeleton - millions upon millions.  If Darwin was right should not the same be true of his theory?  And answer me this.  How does something come from nothing?  I assume you believe the Big Bang theory too.  How could it have started if nothing was there to begin with.  God has existed for infinity and will remain infinite!  You blame God for the problems that exist, but don't realize that he gave us free-will.  God didn't make the world the way it is today - people did.  People influenced by the Evil One.  Satan has a strong-hold on the non-believers and is the reason for all the sin and evil in the world.  I firmly believe that if everyone truly accepted  Christ as their  saviour the world would not be where we are today.  There is only one God.  No  Budda,  no Mohammed etc.  It  is the people worshiping  false  God's that have created the problem .   Islamic people do not believe in the true God, but worship false idols.   Jesus Christ was the only one that ever came back from the grave, and thousands of people saw Him when he was resurrected.  There is your proof.   Can you see air?  No, but it exists.  Can you see the wind? No, but you feel the wind.  Can you see emotions?  No, but they exist.  Just a few very simple examples that just because you can't see something is no proof that it doesn't exist. 

  Yee-Hee-Hee!!  Well if nothing else, this thread is a stunning example of why it is so difficult - borderline impossible - to achieve any meaningful spiritual communication twixt wildly different perspectives. 

  But still we keep trying against all odds. 

 

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An ascendant man, living in a degenerate age, MUST, by definition, live in contradistinction to his times.

Citizensforintolerance simply doesn't understand. He said,

There have been so many thousands of different attempts through various cultures and religions to "prove" that a God exists and that there is life after death, that it makes the whole effort discredit its self. When you look at the totality of the explanations you can see that it all boils down to a jumbled mass of contradicting and meaningless nonsense.

Similar statements have been made by people unable to grasp the complexities of evolution or linear algebra.

Belief in God is perfectly rational though, like belief in carbon dating, distant galaxies or micro-evolution, the rational analysis is ultimately followed by a "leap of faith".

My educational background was in math and science, a background that breeds contempt for organized religion. I used to endorse the concept that religion required "the continuous suicide of reason". Then I had kids and I became more concerned -- concerned about not sharing my prejudices and errors -- so I started to study religion.  I read voraciously, attended services all over the place, and asked proponents of the various religions to persuade me they had the right path. It was an extraordinary journey that took several years. With few exceptions, I found ALL the religious leadership to be kind, generous, tolerant, and intellectually engaging. I developed great respect for ALL of them. They were ALL spending their time and energy on things that mattered more than the nonsense that tends to dominate our culture.

Here is another interesting factoid. The men and women of history are overwhelmingly people of faith, including most of our leaders in industry, science, philanthropy, medicine, physics, business, engineering, architecture, athletics, etc. With the possible exception of the entertainment industry, people of faith have consistently defined the outer limits of human capacity, capability and goodness. In contrast, with few exceptions, the people advocating atheism seem to be people of unremarkable capacity and accomplishment.

People who wish to honestly and intellectually test the existence of God will find no shortage of compelling reading material.

God has certainly been patient and generous with me.

Jesus Christ was the only one that ever came back from the grave, and thousands of people saw Him when he was resurrected.

This is wrong. There was one other guy resurrected from the dead. I don't remember his name exactly, but I do know that there was one more resirrected from the dead.

If your God has any power and if praying works for you, I ask you to ask your God to get our men and women out of Iraq and also have your God do something about that violent Arab Muslim culture. In other words, God, if believing in you is worth anything at all, FIX ALL THIS CRAP.

I find two things wrong with this.
1.) What faith are you? It sounds to me that you are Agnostic. Not believing in God, but stil acknowleding His presence.
2.) If you have such obvious contempt for Him, why not just stop trying to rely on Him and His followers to do the work and make an attempt for yourself? According to you, or what I have interpreted from this so far, it would accomplish just the same.

There have been so many thousands of different attempts through various cultures and religions to "prove" that a God exists and that there is life after death, that it makes the whole effort discredit its self. When you look at the totality of the explanations you can see that it all boils down to a jumbled mass of contradicting and meaningless nonsense.

He's right. The people who have done this are people who have yet to relize that until we can bring people back from the dead, we can't know if there is life beyond death. And those who give the explinations are trying hard to give the project credit and help get more funding to kill people and shock them, or inject them, or smack them around, or whatever it is that they are doing in order to 'revive' them from death. It's a complete waste of time and money that could be put to better use. Like our school systems.

coosclues, please don' hink I'm picking on you, but, why exactly are you runnign of on the Darwin tangent? I haven't seen anything in his post that says he is a Darwinist. Now, there is some evidence there, yes. But I have seen many many Agnostics that have tried to make that same point with virtually the same arguement. They have tied with Christians. One or the other decieds to give up because ti seems to be a lost cause.

There will be no peace on earth until the belief in a God and the creation of religions no longer exist.

This, also, is wrong. To say the religion is the reason why this world is in so much discord is complete and utter stupidity. As logn as there is more than one person in this world, there will be disagreement. And since we have alot more than just one person, we can afford to build things to kill each other with. It only stands to reason that since we have like, 20 thousand different governments and many more people under those, trying to run the world, there will be only chaos and discord.

There was probably another thing I was going to address but, I forgot it. Lol.

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I hope that when the world ends, the reatrds who ran it will realize that they made a mistake to make turkey bacon.

You know, I don't believe in god. As a matter of fact I can be quoted as saying "God is an invisible friend for adults" or that "God is simply a Teddy Bear". But that said, who are you and I to take away someone’s teddy bear. You mention the placebo pill. That’s a good example for this. God might simply be a placebo but if it helps people feel better, then who are you to screw with that. Now, if you want to take on organized religion or churches that try and push their views on others then I’m all on board. But you have to look at the small pictures too. People get caught up in looking at all the horrible things that the churches have done. There are churches out there, where people get together, talk about being kind to one another and even proactively do things like feed the poor or help out youth groups. These are good things.

 

I live in a house where my wife depends on her beliefs in god to help her in every single day. As much as I don’t believe in god and hate all of the indiscretions of the churches in the past, I see her beliefs in god help her. I’ve seen her without that belief and support and it’s not pretty. If there is a guy out there with a completely psychosomatic belief that he’s paralyzed I’m still going to give the guy a wheel chair. And if he’s going to use that wheel chair as a means to be good and kind to others then hell, I’ll even support him.

 

Now, to you religious fanatics: Yes, he is for real! I can also completely sympathize with him as well. You’ve got a person here who is sick and tired of seeing all of the horrible things done in the name of god. He’s sick and tired of people with conflicting views screwing with his American Freedoms. You want to believe in god, then fine. Go for it. But stop pushing your views on him. How would you feel in I came into your house and jumped in your face said you had to live your life by my ethics? How would you feel if the dollar bill had the phase “God is Poison” on it? How would you feel if you walked into a court room to deal with a government legal matter and the Judge had an upside down crucifix sitting in front of him and another sitting in the front lobby? You wouldn’t. But this guy has to put up with this every day. He has to put up with all kinds of religious stuff being shoved in his face and forced on him if just about everything he does. Why don’t you start employing some of that religious teaching and be a bit more tolerant of the people you piss off.

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Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.