i dunno,,, im like you i think as in im still not really sure,,, most of the time i think i beleive, but i think thats more me selfishly beleiving cos it brings me comfort:o its nicer than the alternative
When i lost my baby son,,, i woke in the hospital bed once and saw a nun sitting by my bed,,, i was angry and thinking, why are you here, what do you want,,, i didnt speak to her and she didnt speak to me,, i just looked at her frowning, showing my anger, then i turned my back on her shut my eyes and went back to sleep. Later i told my mam about it and said why did they let a nun come in here,,, they dont even know what religion i am if any, my mam asked about it and the nurses said they dont have nuns come to visit,, and wouldnt let her in to se me unless i had agreed. I often think about that
I dont think i have even answered your question here Jimbo. but i had a nice ramble anyway:D
FOC THREAD PART1
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
I do sorta believe but don't go to church and only because our local priest is a complete a$$hole. But I do have to drop the kids off for mass on Sunday because Quin has to sign the book up near the alter so he can make his first communion in the spring.
jimbo;1074788 wrote: for fear of jester and co throwing fire and brimstone at me on thier god squad thread ,i wanted to have an open talk about non believing and why
i was an athiest pretty much since my younger brother and daughter died as a young man hurting and angry i used to spend a lot of time at all hours of day and night sitting by their graves crying and screaming to god for him to show me a sign that there was indeed a heaven and i would see my daughter and brother again ,the grief was so bad i nearly (or may have) lost my mind
in all the hours spent day and night there at the cemetry i never saw or heard anything not of this world i figurered that there could not possibly be a god ,i there was he could not bare to see one of his loved children suffer so, it came to pass jimbo got on with life as an athiest ,there was no god to blame **** happens
then two years ago ,a really good friend asked me to go to church ,i told him i was an athiest but he kept pleading with me , i thought what harm can it do ? but in the church something happened to change all of this
but now things have gone back to a more normal train of thought questioning ,god the bible ,seeing programs on tv about evolution it makes more sense than there magically being a creator if so who created him ???
YouTube - Unholy scripture
thoughts please keep it nice people please :)
i would never throw fire and brimstone at you buddy! :-6
i've always believed that you never get anywhere beating somebody over the head with a bible, you just turn them off to the idea!
i know there are many questions to this subject, if there is a God how can he let such bad things happen to good people, but as the Bible teaches us, our faith is supposed to be like that of a little child, who doesn't question but just believes, and that everything good or bad happens for a reason. i know thats a hard thing to do though and i think we all struggle with it from time to time.
jimbo;1074788 wrote: for fear of jester and co throwing fire and brimstone at me on thier god squad thread ,i wanted to have an open talk about non believing and why
i was an athiest pretty much since my younger brother and daughter died as a young man hurting and angry i used to spend a lot of time at all hours of day and night sitting by their graves crying and screaming to god for him to show me a sign that there was indeed a heaven and i would see my daughter and brother again ,the grief was so bad i nearly (or may have) lost my mind
in all the hours spent day and night there at the cemetry i never saw or heard anything not of this world i figurered that there could not possibly be a god ,i there was he could not bare to see one of his loved children suffer so, it came to pass jimbo got on with life as an athiest ,there was no god to blame **** happens
then two years ago ,a really good friend asked me to go to church ,i told him i was an athiest but he kept pleading with me , i thought what harm can it do ? but in the church something happened to change all of this
but now things have gone back to a more normal train of thought questioning ,god the bible ,seeing programs on tv about evolution it makes more sense than there magically being a creator if so who created him ???
YouTube - Unholy scripture
thoughts please keep it nice people please :)
Seems you became an atheist initially out of anger at god (look at what the SOB has done why did he do it if he is a caring god.) If you feel lonely churches can be a friendly place if the right people are there and catch you at the right time-when you feel vulnerable. It's comfort to some people and I can understand the attraction. I've also met many so called religious people that are anything but a credit to their supposed belief system. Some of the most intolerant, spiteful people I know are religious, the worst wear their religion on their sleeve ready to pounce at the least provocation.
I've thought about this for a long time and read a lot and experienced a lot and the more I do so the more I decide I am an atheist. Curiously enough some of the religious debates on this forum have kind of crystallised my beliefs, I found myself claiming to be agnostic to avoid getting in to pointless arguments.
Martin luther
Reason is the enemy of faith.
I don't believe in god because I don't. You need blind unthinking faith to believe in one and religion is a load of cobblers. Over the centuries we've all been conditioned not to say it out loud, even now religious groups try to tell us we shouldn't be disparaging because it's offensive to their belief. I can respect their right to their belief but not the belief itself.
I am a border line atheist, I believe there is a Spirit within us that guides us, and that we are part of something bigger, but I do not believe the God and Gods that are taught by the religious orders of this world.
More people die in the name of religion than any other reason.
More people are persecuted and killed in the name of religion than any other reason.
Religion has been the cause of most wars in the world.
Most religious people believe in their absolute rules of their religion, and are closed minded to the possibility that they could be wrong, further more they are arrogant enough to believe that I ‘need to be saved’.
Most religious people are so worried about the next life, that they forget to live the life they have here and now.
Most atheists believe that as this is their one shot in life that they need to treat all people and the world with love and respect to leave it hopefully in better condition than we found it in.
Most atheists also very spiritual, just not believing in all the cr@p other religions try to shove down our thoats.
It is not so much a disbelief in something greater than ourselves as much as it is a disbelief in all the bs religious organisations try to convince us are the rules and paths to salvation and how they feel that they are 'in with God'.
The virgin Mary can someone please explain that one.Adam and eve had Kane and Able where did the others come from there was only one woman.I beleive and i dont beleive its all very confusing, man wrote the bible and down through the ages the interpritation has changed with whoever happens to be deciphering it at the time.I beleive we all have a spirit that goes on.
About the same time that I was to learn about the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy I was instructed in how to say my bedtime prayers. There were even picture books about all four things. I was about 6 when I realized there was no Easter Bunny, Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, my older sister told me as much. Bed time prayers however continued to this invisible man as well as attending Baptist Sunday School where we prayed some more to this invisible man. I found this confusing because there were older people that I knew no longer believed in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, and yet, they too prayed to this invisible man, there must be something to this I thought. Sunday school told me that I was a sinner and had to be saved or suffer damnation and hell. Accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior and getting baptized would free me of the sin I was born with. So I got baptized to make grandmother happy (I was eight years old).
I had mixed feelings about this invisible man and the stories about him that seemed very much like some of the fictional stories I had been reading like Ivanhoe, Don Quiote, etc. These mixed feelings continued into adulthood despite occasionally attending church, getting baptized again as a Methodist to please some one else, and later again as a Presbyterian.
As an adult, I really did not believe in God, but found it socially unacceptable to say so, as most friends, associates and relatives expressed belief on one kind or another. In college, I was a Science Major and found a huge conflict between science and all religions. I found that to explain away the complexity of how this earth was formed, the long complex evolution that occurred, to some mythical being, defied any sense of logic. Now, at age 74, I no longer am concerned with what is or is not socially acceptable. I tend to speak my mind and the hell with the results.
I am not a militant atheist, nor do I want to persuade anyone to my way of thinking. Believe as you wish and be happy.
No one knows if there is a God or not. Some choose to believe it because it relieves their fear about living and dying. Humans wrote the Bible...humans.....not God. It is just a book. I can see how it is comforting to believe their is some protective "father" floating around in the clouds....but I dont think so. I am practically an atheist....but I will have to call myself an agnostic because hey....nothing is impossible.
As you know I'm a scientific type person, and I'm not very religious at all, though I am a Catholic (which isn't contradictory I assure you, its a big church). I tend to take a rationalist approach to life, mostly because its the one that best fits the facts of life and the world around us that we experience, which works on completely rational lines with no exceptions.
This rules out talking snakes, walking on water, men with elephant heads, people with big hammers flying around in the sky etc (however charming those ideas are). That to me would seem to rule out the idea that there is a personal, interventionist god like the one personified in the big monotheistic religions.
Despite that, I wouldn't consider myself an Atheist; I don't think the question of whether there is a god hinges on the terrible actions of humans in their lives, whether they are religious or not; so the fact that many terrible things have happened in the name of religion doesn't mean that there isn't a divine nature to the universe, just that people tend to be very nasty to each other.
I suppose that makes me what you would call a "deist"; I believe that there is a sacred aspect to creation, which gives me a sense of comfort that its all meant to be; but I don't go in for the more conventional picture of a human god who watches us and has set the whole of the universe up just so we can live out some form of morality play for a couple of thousand years.
"We are never so happy, never so unhappy, as we imagine"
Le Rochefoucauld.
"A smack in the face settles all arguments, then you can move on kid."
Just to be different i stuggled for years with cronic deppression and searched for some thing some one to belive in, i dont make friends easly , i just feel i never fit it any were.'I just dont belong were i am' thats the only answer i can come up with, im still searching at 43to realy feel i belong and happy and content with life then i cam accross Buhhdism, I not saying 'im am a Buhhda ' or do i practice it on a daily basis but it deffinetly made me see things in a whole new light.
I no this thead was about 'being a athiEst' but just felt it was relavent as at the end of the day we are talking about a greater being that we are searching for OR NOT.
send to friend
Sweet words are easy to say, Sweet things are easy 2 buy, But sweet people are difficult to find Life ends when U stop dreaming, Hope ends when U stop believing, Love ends when U stop caring, Friendship ends when U stop sharing. So share this with whom ever U consider a friend. To love without condition, To talk without intention, To give without reason, And to care without expectation is the heart of a true friend...
Buddhism
Why Buddhism? its helped me through a dificult time in my life, now it will always be part of me. Buddhism is a path of practice and spiritual development leading to Insight into the true nature of life. Buddhist practices such as meditation are means of changing oneself in order to develop the qualities of awareness, kindness, and wisdom. The experience developed within the Buddhist tradition over thousands of years has created an incomparable resource for all those who wish to follow a path — a path which ultimately culminates in Enlightenment or Buddhahood. Because Buddhism does not include the idea of worshipping a creator god, some people do not see it as a religion in the normal, Western sense. The basic tenets of Buddhist teaching are straightforward and practical: nothing is fixed or permanent; actions have consequences; change is possible. Thus Buddhism addresses itself to all people irrespective of race, nationality, or gender. It teaches practical methods (such as meditation) which enable people to realise and utilise its teachings in order to transform their experience, to be fully responsible for their lives and to develop the qualities of Wisdom and Compassion. There are around 350 million Buddhists and a growing number of them are Westerners. They follow many different forms of Buddhism, but all traditions are characterised by non-violence, lack of dogma, tolerance of differences, and, usually, by the practice of meditation. You can find answers to some common questions about being a Buddhist on the Clear Vison website
in all the hours spent day and night there at the cemetry i never saw or heard anything not of this world i figurered that there could not possibly be a god ,i there was he could not bare to see one of his loved children suffer so, it came to pass jimbo got on with life as an athiest ,there was no god to blame **** happens
I had a small little chill chase it's self up up spine reading about you sitting for hours at the grave of your brother and daughter,, I spent 98% od the first 18 months of this 'new' life after my daughters passing at her grave side. I was not physically tiied to her stone but I might as well of been ,
As I posted in jesters thread I had tried all the things it is suppose to take to be a church going beliveing christain but it just never gelled for me, and when my daughter died I t didn't do one for me or to me about the word faith, it didn't make mine any stringer or weaker cuz I never had it befoe .. I was talking to a mother that had lost her 21 year old son just less then a year before , and 3 years after my 21 year old daughter passed, and this woman was saying that dealing with the death of her son had strengthend her fiath, and she sat there waiting for me to reply in kind because I thikk sociaty expects those words by default, and when I said that looseing my daughter had no effect on my faith cuz I didn't have any before and didn't get any after she was so surprized that I would say that out loud she actully looked around embarassed in case any one eles had heard me,,,
There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.
Even though I have two sons that I have loved dearly since the moment I seen their funny little faces at their birth , and they love me just as much in return , my heart of hearts knows this, but my mind and soul feels cheated ever since the day I stood over that hole in the ground and laid my baby to rest and said my last good bye I feel like now their is no one to love me like she did, and it's true, that their is nobody in this 'new 'life' like her so theres np love like hers , its an not improved or better life ,, its more like new and nothing life,calling it different just falls short, hell I wake up to a different day every day . I use to wake up to a new day but that was before my new life started 10-10-01.
If there were a god ,If the god that is described in that book and his 'son' by proxy' was for real and true then we wouldn't have ever had to leave that oh so better than perfect walled and protected garden, as 'his children'
When I became a parent and had the tiny little gift in my arms ,(gift from who or where ?) I personally give credit for the perfect earth we live on , and each perfect true and innocent gift that is born and every perfect sunset ,sun rise, I give credit to 'Mother Nature, any ways I'll will explain why when I'm done here,
You as a parent , is there ever been one moment of any hour or one hour in any day that you would willing let go of your child 's hand and say , well your on your own ,,I have taught you nothing and given you free will to boot ,, and put a talking snake called nasty ugly in control over your play pen,,, and then just sat back to watch? No , I didn't think so. So what kind of BS is that story and "WHO"S YOUR DADDY???"
But now on the other hand , everything that Mother Nature, Mother earth , Grandfathers , you insert your word here, everything that is gifted to every living, thing plant , animal or us is just so pure and perfect at it's start and if it isn't, it don't grow into something useable by some other living thing, a plant comes up as a sprout if that sprout grows straight towards the sun it become a seed bearing plant. If an animal is born and all it's legs work right and the swallowing mechanism works right it grows into a seed bearing adult when a baby is born and if all the fingers,, toes ,,, well you get the picture, every thing Mother Nature produces starts out pure prefect and will grow into something usable by something else.this earth is exactly what we as humans and all the other living things need to live. It has the 3 basic elements we need to survive and if only one of them elements ever ceased to exists so would everything on the earth. is the dirt/earth 2 water 3 air now you compare this perfect environment or a prefect newborn to what is decribed as god in that book, he falls so short in light of the reality of the world as we know it that he's not even a pimple on Mother Natures ,,,,, hell according to that book he would of had a talking snake escort our butts out of here long ago. and . On a more up close and personal level , every thing has an equal chance from day one to the last day , because every thing that lives on this earth grows up to be used by something else.. some will ask yeah so what are we human grown to be used by,, we were always at the top of the food chain, out here where I live if all the coyotes where to suddenly disappear the rabbits and small rodents would multiply out of reason, if the bob cats and mountain loins were to be gone the deer would be ,well just like they are back east, we cut trees for wramth and dwellings . we were gathered were hunters and gathers so we were put here for the same reason rabbits or bears or trees to consume and help keep in check And when we died we went to work as fertilizer to be used to make what ever grew in that ground,, I don't see it as a cycle or circle .
What I think is it continual recycling .
But us humans got so damn full of smarts and figured that not only are we smarted and prettier than any other living thing here we would just show Mother Nature what's really going on,, and look at the mess we have now. we are slowly smartie mouthing our selves right out of a job and place to live, after we have sh*t in our own back yards enough and ate our selves out of house and home, this rock we live on will not give a care it will just let nature take it's course again and recycle ...
It took my grandma and grandpa all my childhood to learn me this but I never understood it entirely until I was grown and nature being what it is , the ioder I get the smarter my grandma gets,
There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.
jimbo;1075423 wrote: [Curiously enough some of the religious debates on this forum have kind of crystallised my beliefs, I found myself claiming to be agnostic to avoid getting in to pointless arguments.
no you did not :yh_rotfl:yh_rotfl:yh_rotfl
spurs fan indeed :p:p
them gooners are out of the cup barman :yh_rotfl:yh_rotfl:yh_rotfl
I find you seldom can have a rational debate with someone who us religious. almost invariably they start quoting the bible as if that is all the proof they need. It's in the bible so it must be true. It's a load of cobblers seems not to sit well as a good counter argument. Some of them get quite violent.
Rabid atheists are just as bad. Try pointing out to an outspoken atheist that not believing in god is just as irrational as believing there is one. You can't prove there isn't a god all you can say is that on balance of probability based on the evidence you don't think there is one. I've never been punched by an atheist even after you call them irrational (being rational they end up agreeing you have a point) but just be careful making jokes about talking snakes.
The thing about the anti evolutionists is they insist on calling the theory of evolution a belief. They cannot seem to understand that a theory is an explanation for something based on the available evidence, of the evidence changes so does the theory. You might believe it to be true so far but it is not an immutable truth or an article of faith.
I suspect the hostility is because if they accept someone is entitled not to believe as they do it somehow means their faith is lessened. Thank god :sneaky:the UK is relatively secular in outlook.
Why do you keep mentioning obscure football teams?
:o its nicer than the alternative
:)
