That's good advice. I think people spend too much time wondering and pondering and searching for the meaning and/or origin of life, and not enough time living it.

As the wise guys (Italian) would say:

"Forget about it!"

Nature is but an attribute of God.

Life is our chance to enjoy it.

Heaven is our chance to relax from that enjoyment.

He lives in the Ethereal Plane as a gaseous form.He does upto 84 hitpoints of damage with his lightning bolt,him and Zeus battle it out on Mt.Olympus during the Gods Lightning Bolt challenge,it's a simple game the first one to hit a spectator at a golf game wins.Jesus was there last week signing autographs along with Mary Mag in a bikini.

lol... he's just always been here... well, what/where was he before he created the heavens and the earth? did he just sit around in a big vat of nothingness?

chance is the wrong word... i feel life can start on any planet, if the conditions are right, meaning temperature, water, and some kind of atmosphere...

never heard of it... whats that?

oh, i understand quite well that you don't think i need to be convinced that god exists. it's me who says i must first be convinced that god exists before i can be convinced that devine inpiration exists.



if i'm free to think you may be wrong about god then it must follow that I AM free to think you may be wrong about what inspired you to paint? in niether case have i said you were wrong. i simply told you that if I AM TO BE CONVINCED that you were inpired by god then by MY REASONING you need fist convince me that god exists. short of that convincing, MY LOGIC tells me that you were inpired by something other than god which i can agree does exist such as your belief in god which i've no reason to doubt. what you believe in has nothing to do with anyone else just as the logic i use in my reasoning process has nothing to do with anyone else. you very well might convince one of your fellow church members that you were inpired by god. you may be able to convince every person of faith on the planet that you were inpired by god but that would not mean that I AM CONVINCED that you were inpired by god.

i've not said anywhere that devine inspiration, god or santa does not exist or that you are wrong for believing it so. all i've said is that i've seen nothing that suggests TO ME that they do exist. though i must say that in my younger years my parents did have me convinced of santa but my reasoning methods have changed dramatically in the last half century or so.

there is nothing good about man!!! and those that are going to heaven, are not going there b'cos of their good works, but b'cos, they believe in the work of grace, through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.

were did hawking state that?

when i ponder this question, i often think about a german concentration camp guard at auschwitiz in 1944. he's a devout christian, attends church with his loving family each sunday and donates his share when the collection plate is passed. on this day he is leading jews, among whom is a family, mother, father, daughter, son, into the gas chamber. now here is where it gets confusing to me, the nazi, if he asks forgiveness for his sins after the war, will enjoy raising his children, playing with his grand children and otherwise basking in the warmth we call life. and when that ends he'll ascend to heaven where he'll meet his loved ones. the jewish family on the other hand, not believing precisely as the german that jesus is the son of god, will burn in hell for eternity. that's just sick man.

Hi folks, just popping in and breezed through this thread and just wanted to make a comment.

As an atheist I've always disagreed with those who attemt to define atheism with the term disbelief. On many levels of definition, including synonyms, the term is associated with both, "skepticism" and "doubt."

Certainly, in this vast cyberspace of information, there will be some confliting information available.

However, my reasoning in not accepting the term 'disbelief' is rather simple. I approach matters of religious 'faith' in the same manner with which I would approach reading comic books. Young children with little knowledge or understanding of our human limitations might read the X-Men and wonder about what powers lay hidden in their own bodies. I suppose when those kids grow and no longer habor such childish beliefs that one could say they now disbelieve, but I do not, because those children were working with limited expereience, knowledge and informatin in the first place.

HOWEVER, when an adult immerses himself in a science fiction book or movie they do so by suspending 'belief' (example: imagining our world in the company of vampires or being invaded by Martians). But such behavior is not akin to DISBELIEF.

Now, let's look at religious belief. In most cases in which religious doctrine guides the belief system, the individual is required to suspend and/or modify current scientifically accepted views to accommodate their religious beliefs.

In that case I would consider that faith in religious dogmas causes the faithful to DISBELIEVE rather than a suspension of belief because accepting religious dogma over other more objective inforamtin would be to disbelieve.

On the other hand, I do not accepted religious dogma at any level higher than a science fiction comic book. I may consciously suspend knowledge or current understanding of the universe in order to enjoy the science fiction of the comic book or, in some cases, as an attempt to understand what others believe, but I cannot disbelieve something I did not believe in the first place. There is no more doubt, for me, about religious dogma than there is doubt that "The Avengers" are real. I have not changed in any significant way in response to what others believe but believers often tend to trade in one belief for another, thereby causing disbelief for themselves, not for me.

Understand?

not so. the question is definately relevant. we just have no evidence to suggest what was before the big bang.

I think I mentioned on a few pages back before all this got spammed, I'm actually into Astronomy. I said I could understand why people believe the universe was created by God, as it's so vast and beautiful. But then my question would go on to ask what created God? There has to be a start somewhere. Space is governed by phyisics, gravity, neublae etc. As for what made it, if there was a big bang, what created the first 2 gases? That is a question to last forever and can't be answered, as we weren't around back then I don't look through my telescope for answers, I look through it for the beauty and detail.

If I were to say there is a God, my personal belief is that God is in each one of us. It's our own individual idea. We all have our own versions, our personal definitions. A religion is where a group of people just so happen to have the very same or similar idea of God. Some may change their mind and try a different religion, because their own personal event in life has changed that. Not because anyone is right or wrong, simply the God they have inside them has changed due to an experience of some sort.

Even non-believers pray at some point, they may think it's to themself or they may even say it's a prayer to God, asking for help. It varies on how much they really believe though. Either way, at some point we turn to somebody or something asking for help.

What do you think towards my thinking? As I said, I've not found God, I've prayed when my Mum died earlier this year. Hoping that she is OK now (after suffering with cancer/heart attack/paralyzed in the last few days). I have no idea if there is a better place, but as an individual, I rest on hope.

None what-so-ever... this is why I was asking questions about it.

The original question was for those who discovered God later in life, how did they decide one day to look for God, did they believe in him before? Those sort of questions. So this doesn't apply to those who were born and raised with the belief passed from their parents

You can argue this until the end, dragging out my thread. Or you can just accept he simply doesn't want to agree with anyone and has his own definition

once again. agnostic: regarding what is unknown and unknowable.
atheist: absent theism. you'll note that the word 'belief' or any variation thereof is not part of either description. and i never refer to wiki as a reliable source. and people come to a dating site to be educated??? hey man. good one.

ITs not that serious,,,we believe what we believe. But when you start asking about definitions in a public forum, be prepared to get more than the 'standard' explanations.

Words can evolve, that doesnt mean they dont still mean what they mean if the person means it that way,, it just means others might mean it in a different 'evolving' kind of way,,lol


When I say agnostic or atheist, I am using it as I learned it and as I read it from Webster(which has been one of my LIFELONG resources for grammar, spelling, and definitions).

But our individuality sometimes causes us to put individual twists on those definitions...no big deal

well, at least not once the speaker makes clear what context they are using,,,

no, we most certainly do not both know or agree. agnosticism is about the unknowable, not knowledge and atheism has nothing to do with belief or disbelief. the rest of your post i've no comment on as we cannot agree on the terms.