Again, that would come down to your defintion of the word "God". Most people think of God's as being immortal. So if there is no God and man is the highest form of life, he wouuld still only be able to consider himself a mortal God destined to die beyond his control. It would basically be a reduntant term. Why not just call him a man. Why bother calling him a God? What's to be gained by that? Other than maybe fun with words.



I think that phrase actually came from religious people simply meaning not to get lazy and expect God to do everything for you.

Thank you Abra.

If an atheist truly believes in the body as being the person and nothing at all spiritual exists outside of that realm (the physical realm) then I would think an atheist would have a lot more questions to ponder than most people.

What about all the paranormal things that have no rational explanation? What about UFO's, Crop circles, abductions, visions, miracles, documented unexplainable events, psychics, and countless documented things like sightings of ghosts strange disappearances,etc. Not to mention the question of how this reality came into being.

The holographic nature of reality can explain all of these things mentioned above. But if we live in a projected dream like holographic reality, where does the projection come from and who runs the show?

Personally I find the idea of true atheist thought very difficult to grasp.

I guess I am definitely not an atheist. I don't know that I am a believer either.

I don't believe there is an entity that can be found manifested in this universe that is the ultimate creator of everything. The more I think about that, the more I think that there are many "gods" who create worlds and govern over them as rulers, more like what is described in the Urantia book.

So once again I find myself on a middle path that points back to my own existence. I exist. That, I guess, is all I really do know.

JB

I've been kinda MIA for a couple days...When I popped in yesterday briefly I couldn't find this thread for some reason

I'm glad I did though I haven't been able to stop laughing since page 2

So it seems we've gone from the above quoted to humans being Gods.

Maybe it's me, but WOW!

Since I seem to be a rare breed of sorts, I'm just going to make a knowledgeable observation here, and it may or may not help...

Atheists - Denies the existence of God or the gods

Agnostics - Admits to having no privileged knowledge concerning whether God or Gods exist; a position of theological neutrality

Monotheism - One God

Polytheism/Pantheism/Monism - Multiple Gods/ Deities

For simplicity sake I'm not going into all of the multitudes of religions and practices.

Christianity falls under the category of monotheism (Though I personally have a difficult time swallowing that because the worship God as well as Jesus...It seems more polytheistic to me)

Paganism, Wicca, Witchcraft all fall under polytheistic though there are some slight differences, they're generally the same.

As for Humanism it encompasses all of these, and that's what we all are...Human.

I think the real question is...Do we accept being human, fallible qualities and all?





*Goes and hides in another thread until the tomatoes stop being thrown*

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

I know many people who are agnostics of different degrees, but i have only ever met one truly atheistic person in my life. From my expieriences i would have to say there are few world wide of average intelligence who are truly atheist. Though there are many infinite beings here that most likely are, in my meetings with them.

I do agree with you. I actually know quite a few true atheists and they're actually pretty nice as well as intelligent...Kinda scary now that I think about that.

A man and a woman are opposite polarities that attract like magnets. During sexual intercourse they exchange energy which climaxes into a huge exchange of energy called orgasm. Man needs the female energy and woman needs the male energy to balance each other. According to Taoist teachings (foot note: book “Taoist Secrets of Love, Cultivating Male Sexual Energy” by Mantak Chia and Michael Winn) a man has a limited amount of sexual energy and a woman has an unlimited amount of sexual energy. Woman can achieve multiple orgasms but in most cases man cannot. It means woman is far superior to man when it comes to sex. That would explain why in most cases men often fall asleep after intercourse and women seem to have enough energy to go for a jog around the block. On the other hand, women loose their sexual energy during menstruation, resulting in moodiness, and being emotional, or they may experience a change in their sexual desire at this time. It is not the act of ejaculating semen or discharging menstrual blood that makes us loose energy, but it is just the physical outcome of energy being moved out. To me this sexual imbalance is still an unsolved mystery. Since men and women are supposed to be equal opposites, which function in a perfect balance and harmony, then why the difference when it comes to sex and sexual energy?


http://www.crystalhealings.com/Light%20Being%201-3.htm

The infinite being's i was reffering to are those being's that are unable to grasp any type of concepts due to what we call learning disabilities - those who are grown but have what we deem as an inability to learn or know. "he's 40 yrs old but has the mind of a 2 yr.old" mentally handi-capped is another term used to describe infinite beings.
They are here in whatever capacity they may be in, live, and then are gone - without any concerns about life or why's or god or anything else.
Why do i consider them "true Atheist?" because to be a true atheist you cannot even percieve god let alone discuss or deny anything about god.The term god is not understood by them nor can or will they respond to any mention of god by anyone. To them - god truly does not exsist.And i'm not sure they are not the most fortunate souls on the planet.

Mirror the above is a bunch of horse hockey.

I find it odd that you call them infinite beings, but okay. It could be because they live in the present moment and that is infinite.

Animals are infinite beings to then. They don't think about God or death either. They run on programing and instinct.

Some people have called these people "unconscious" but to me that means asleep. Perhaps they are unconscious of themselves. A sleep walker is still walking around and appears to be awake but is "unconscious" of what is really happening around them.

But I think your idea of a true atheist is a good one. It is a person who never gives it a thought one way or another. Hmmmmm
for me it might be too late for that.

I was once asked if I would come to Church and meet Jesus. I went and well, Jesus was not there. When I asked where this Jesus fellow was people looked at me like I was nuts.
They showed me a picture of some guy with a beard and told me he had died.

So I decided that Christians believed in ghosts. I don't know how they expected me to meet him.

JB

I think a lot of people clearly don't understand pantheism.

Pantheism can't be about multiple Gods because the very idea of pantheism is that all is ONE.

I think the confusion comes into play because many religions that started out as pantheism ended up becoming contaminated with a misunderstood idea of multiple God.

For example, the American Indians had pantheistic views. They believed that all of nature is connected and is therefore all "One". Yet at the same time they spoke about the spirit of the forest, and the spirit of the prairie and the spirit of the bear, and the spirit of the eagle and so one endlessly. Form outside of their belief system this might look like they have a different "God" for everything, But that's not how they thought of it. All of these 'spirits' arise from the One Great Spirit. The One Great Spirit is manifesting all others. Including the Human Spirit. I think the key thing to realize is that with most pantheistic religion the KEY idea is to recognize that the Human Spirit is merely one of many "manifestations" of the single underlying entity that we often refer to as "God".

Compare this with a non-pantheistic religion such as the Mediterranean area religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Those religions think of God as being a Separate egotistical entity in his own right. The Christians have divided that God up into a trinity, the Father, the Son, and The Holy Spirit. However, humans and animals are Separate from this God. Them just "Go to God", or risk eternal separation from God.

For me these Mediterranean religions make no sense at all. If humans aren't God, then what they hell are they? How can a human exist separate from God? That implies that a human is a stand-alone entity in it's own right (i.e. a miniature god in a way). People who believe in this religion claim that it's monotheism, and they laugh at the pantheistic idea of God being multiple things at one, yet they have Their Godhead, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit being a trinity of ONE that is yet Divided into distinct parts. So they already have pantheism to a point, they just fail to include humans in as part of it. And who knows what non-human animals are? According to the biblical picture animals are nothing but spiritless biological robots. They have no 'true self, or soul, or spirit'. And while individual Christians may claim otherwise, I think they would be very hard pressed to back up their claims using the actual doctrine of the religion.

Now some Easter Pantheistic religions also have a trinity, and it is simply to the idea of The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. However it's actually thought of quite differently than Christianity. The Father, is the "Great Spirit" (the essence of all life, and in particular it is the spirit of all sentient life), however, in this trinity the "Son" represents all living things. Not just man, but all animals as well. And the Son is not separate from the father, but rather a manifestation of the father (it's pantheism). In this context, the Holy Spirit is nature herself. All of the forces, the wind, the fire, the earth, and the water. In other words, the Holy Spirit is the physical world (or the hologram as Jeannie likes to think of it). So even though it may appear that they have more than one "God" they really don't. It's all-in-one. And mankind is included in that picture.

So I think it's incorrect to think of Pantheism as being polytheistic even though some "religions" that have pantheistic underpinnings may appear to be polytheistic at first glance. The bottom line to pathenism is that everything arises from a single source and ultimately is that single source taking different forms.

However, if you view the idea of a God as an egotistical "Deity" then pantheism has none. At least not during the incarnation stage. There is more to pantheism than what meets the eye. The entire universe as we know it is merely an "incarnation-stage" of this pantheistic entity. When the universe is over (when the incarnation stage is over, the spirit returned to it's rest state of being complete "oneness". That may seem a bit confusing because it's always one. But during an incarnation stage it's many-in-one, or one-as-many. In the rest stage it returns to a compete state of oneness. This is a state of rest where there is no incarnation going on. This is a state of pure bliss with no physical form whatsoever. In this state all is spirit. There is nothing to 'bump up against" as they say. It's pure rest. Pure bliss. And after that, there's another Big Bang, and a whole knew incarnation is born. And that cycle just goes on indefinitely. It's eternal.

This is, of course, just one view of pantheism. No one really knows, but this view has been claimed by sages who have claimed to have had 'visions' no different form the claims of biblical stories. If you can believe one, why not the other?

i didnot include animals or any other life forms only becuse we were talking about humankind- but in that sense you are correct.

My son's name is "joshua" Yeshua - the same as "jesus" - yeshua -- if you would like to meet him just let me know where and at what church you'd prefer

Hmmmm???? - i thought you beleived in ghost and the paranormal?? must have misread your post somewhere???

I don't care what anyone says Abra...You're the bestest

The thing is that they believe that there are multiple Gods, but one Supreme Being that encompasses them all.

I do believe in the paranormal. I personally can't see ghosts. I have a friend who can talk to the deceased and to spirits. She is psychic.

But I find some Christians will laugh at the idea of ghosts or hauntings, or aliens but then believe in demons, spirits, the devil and the holy ghost. I find it a little odd to pick and choose in what strange things to believe in.

JB

That would depend upon what your definition of a god is.

Maybe its just a job description.

Read the Urantia book for ideas on how the Universe might be run. It is a little too religion oriented for my taste and they do have creator Gods and rulers all over the place.

I think there is a government of sorts, on all plains and levels. I think some of these beings actually call themselves gods and rule over their domains like gods.

JB

Absolutely. I think it take much greater faith to be an atheist than anything else. In fact, I can't even go there at all. There are too many factors in my mind that suggest that it isn't likely. I couldn't believe in atheism and more than I can believe in Christianity. They are both absurd as far as I'm concerned. For me, pantheism is the only things that makes any sense at all. And I simply must believe that makes the most sense because that's what I tend to believe in. I tend to believe in what is most sensible.



First off, I would disagree that most of them don't have rational explanations. I'll take the one's you've listed one at a time. Not meant to disprove them, but to simply share my personal things.

What about UFO's

UFO's are exactly that, unidentified flying objects. If they haven't been identified then we don't know what they were. To claim to they are aliens from outer space or another dimension is unwarranted. There's simply no evidence for any such conclusion. While we can't rule those possibilities, we certainly can't that's what they are either. Moreover you say that there is no rational explanation. However, in most cases there are. Those conclusions were decisive and therefore we can't say that those rational explanations are the answer, but we can't rule them out either.

Crop circles - as far as I'm concerned rational explanations have already been given for these. I actually saw a video where people when out and created crop circles in the night and they created perfect ones and very elaborate ones using very primitive home-make "tools" just wooden sticks and rope. And it only required a group of 4 people to make extremely complex Crop circles in about an hour's time in the middle of the night using nothing but ambient light.

So as far as I'm concerned there already is a rational explanation for Crop circles.

abductions - personally don't believe that anyone has ever been abducted by aliens. So for me there's nothing to debunk here. I have read stories about people who have claimed to have been abducted. But rational explanations have been offered, including that the person was simply hallucinating. We know that people do hallucinate, that's been known for a very long time.

visions - again, visions are just what people imagine or dream. I'm sure those visions and dreams are real for them. But is it even rational to believe that they were anything other than their own imagination? You even said yourself once in a post that there are people who have claimed to have had visions of Jesus, but when they describe him they described the American image of a white Jesus with a thin nose, etc. It is highly unlikely that Jesus looked anything like that. Jesus most likely looked more like a Jew.

miracles - this can cover a huge area. I haven't seen or heard of an actual miracle yet. These ideas of people getting well after having what we believe to be incurable disease certainly don't represent miracles for many reason. One is to simply say, "Who are we to say what's incurable?". Just because we claim that something is incurable doesn't make it so. The human body has been know to do wonders on it's own.

The second thing I would say about medical miracles is that doctors and technicians are human and they make mistakes! If someone is diagnosed with cancer during one examination and then goes back and the doctor says that the cancer is completely gone in with the next test. Quite frankly I'd get a new doctor before I'd run around screaming that a miracle had occurred. I think it's extremely odd that religious people give scientists absolutely no credit at all in matter such as the discover of evolution, etc. But they won't hesitate to claim that the doctors couldn't possible have made a mistake when they want to claim that a miracle has occurred.

Moreover, as I said before, even if the doctors were semi-right it still could have been simply do to the human body healing itself. Maybe a what a doctor thought was cancer was actually quite benign. That's a rational explanation and that's what you're looking for right? Rational explanations? Once you find one you need to at least acknowledge that there is a rational explanation.

Like Reverend Rabbit always says, when we see someone grow a limb back we'll start believing in "miracles". Everything else can be explained away rationally.

(keep in mind here that I'm just addressing your questions. I'm not an atheist and I do believe that supernatural things are possible. That fits in with my pantheistic view of life. No need for a separate egotistical godhead. So as a pantheist I would say that if someone believes they are healed then they will be. It's just a matter of faith. It doesn't matter whether they believed that an egotistical godhead did it, or they believe that they did it themselves. All that matter is that they believe it is possible)

But we're talking about atheism in this post. So I'm trying to stick with the atheistic answers.

documented unexplainable events - well again, if they are unexplained then that's what they are. Why claim that they are supernatural when you don't yet know what caused them? Science is far from done. We don't know everything there is to know. At one time people thought the wind was an unexplained events. As were hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. Just because we don't have an rational explanation for something doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. There are many things that we take for granted today that cavemen would view as extreme supernatural events.

psychics, and countless documented things like sightings of ghosts strange disappearances,etc.

Again just because we can't explain them doesn't mean that they can't be explained.

Not to mention the question of how this reality came into being.

I'm reading a book about that right now. It's a scientific book at the cutting edge of science. Even as a scientists I'm standing in awe at what I'm reading. Scientists are actually tackling these questions more than you might realize. They have a much better picture of how the universe came to be than most people realize.

First off, the general public is still truly living in the 18th century scientifically speaking. The vast majority of people are still viewing the world as a Newtonian universe. Most people truly do not understand Einstein's relativity and the significance of that discovery. There truly is no such thing as time. That's a fact. Einstein prooved this beyond any shadow of a doubt. And it's been experimentally verified. There is no such thing as time!. What exists is spacetime. It's not just a fancy catchword. What it means is that time and space are in inseparable single entity. They cannot exist separately and one can be changed into the other just like matter and energy can be transformed one into the other.

People don't think like this! They still think of time as being time, and space as being space. They don't understand that one gives rise to the other. They are like two faces on the same coin.

Well, this may seem irrelevant, but it's not! When you go to asks "How did this reality come to be?", this knowledge that space and time are a single integrated thing is an extremely useful piece of information.

The other thing that people don't fully understand is Quantum Mechanics. Well no one truly understands if fully, but the most misunderstood part of it is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Most people have no clue what this really means. Some people think it just means that we can't be certain about things. Other people think it means that we just don't have good enough equipment yet to measure things precisely enough.

But it doesn't mean either of these things. It's describing the very nature of the world. It basically says that nothing cannot exist! (just as you have always proclaimed). Nothing is an extremely unstable condition! This is what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle state. Moreover there is a very precisely mathematical equations the describes precisely how unstable 'nothing' is.

It's true!

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Equations demand that 'something' pop out of 'nothing'. It's an absolute necessity. This is the observed property of 'nothing'.

This may sound strange to a lot of people, but this is where science is. Science has actually observed and mathematically described how 'nothing' must behave. Of course, I keep putting 'nothing' in quotes because this thing we call 'nothing' obviously has behavioral properties if not physical properties.

Using these observations their mathematical descriptions modern sciences are coming up with an explanation of how reality came to be. And it's all based on the property of 'nothing'. I supposed you could call 'nothing' God, but it would seem ironic then to say that God is 'nothing'.

Clearly, if 'nothing' has properties then it must be 'something'. However, it has no physical properties. It only has behavioral properties that cannot be measured until something pops into existence from the nothingness. Then whatever pops into existence can be physically measured and has physical properties.

So scientists are working on explaining how reality came to be.



Well, this is the same as asking, "What is the nothing from whence reality springs?"

My personal pantheistic answer is that we are the projector, and the screen, and we are running the show. I have deep reasons why I believe that this must be the case. But I'm tired of typing already.



Me too, I feel that at the very least pantheism makes more sense. Also the idea that there is a separate being "out there" running the projector only serves to complicate the picture. Then that being would need to have its reality explained, and so on, ad infinitum. I just see no reason to go beyond the conclusion that we are it.



I confess that I'm not a 'believer' in a religious sense. I'm agnostic. I have no clue what they hell is going on. That's my honest rational answer. I'm agnostic. However, I also feel that pantheism makes the most sense from everything I've heard thus far. Atheism could be true, but I personally feel that it makes much less sense than pantheism actually. And religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that have human beings being created pets to serve and worship an external egotistical godhead, are not only absurd to me, but seem outright creepy if you stop and think about it. That would mean that all humans are, are pets of some external egotistical being that has some purpose in mind that we aren't even aware of. An of course, the ideas that these Gods are always threatening to cast humans into a hellfire of eternal damnation doesn't make them appears to be very attractive either.



I agree. In fact, if there is a spiritual world underneath all of this I believe it is made up of egalitarian spirits or God if you want to call them that. But certainly not jealous Gods who have ambitions to become the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Why the big ego? There's just no need for having Gods that lust to rule over other beings. If there truly are many spirits, or Gods, they are totally egalitarian and have no need to want anything from each other. No need to lust to rule over anyone.



I think you can know that I exist too. If you really stop and think about it long enough. I've given solipsism much thought. I agree that it can't be proved or disproved. But does it make intuitive sense? Not to me it doesn't. You may not know that I exist, but I know that you exist.

No apologies for posting a book!

I hope only those who wish to read it did. I would hate to think that someone actually sat there and involuntarily read this post.

Investigators of crop circles have found a significant difference between the crop circles that were made by two or four pranksters and the many others that were unexplainable found all over the world. This is not a "rational explanation."

I find the idea that pranksters are doing it with primitive homemade tools to be extremely absurd, but it does give people an excuse to dismiss this strange phenomena so they can go back to their work knowing that there is no mystery here.

There are simply too many of these crop circles all over the world to be explained in that manner. Some of them go unreported, so what would be the point of these pranksters wasting their time doing such things. None whatever.

We even find them in our wheat fields and sod farms here in Colorado. Nobody reports them.

I think they are done with extremely advanced laser technology and by an advanced race of other dimensional beings. (NOT unnecessarily aliens from some other planet.)

I guess you could call them aliens if you want. But we are all aliens.

JB

Oh I think there is evidence. I think there is proof positive. I just think that it is not being made available to people by the powers that be. I have read many testimonies about such proof. I guess it is all about who you chose to believe in the long run. I don't trust the powers that be. They LIE.



The existence of aliens and other dimensional beings is a rational explanation to me. Not to most people. Anything else leaves too many unanswered questions. (Even the Pope has stated that it is alright to believe in aliens. ~~being sarcastic here) )

Thousands upon thousands of people have reported abductions by something that appears to be other worldly creatures. Now either this is true or else all these people are delusional and being the subjects of a massive mind control experiment by some shadow organization. That to me is even more terrifying, but it could be an alternate explanation.

In my search for truth, for the longest time I avoided the subject of aliens and UFO's. I said, no, these things are illusion or hallucinations. But as my investigations took me down many paths, I kept running into the alien problem.

I could no longer ignore it and call myself open minded. So I pursued it. Even to the point of investigating cattle mutilations, crop circles etc.... personally.

That is why I am not so quick to dismiss any of these things and I continue to look for where they fit into my world view.

JB

i respect all religions and beliefs but what if there was more to life than religions speak about! im an athiest, but i do believe there can only be one god if any! to support this world because each religion talks similarly about one god. but what god really exists? or what?

Hmmmm???

I guess that's why i consider myself a dimensionalist among other thing's, That seems to explain more than others though i dont deem myself as knowledgeable as Abra on the subject of theories.

what i do believe as of now is that the bumping of other dimensional universes into each other may very well be the cause of all the unexplained events discussed here. But of course first you have to believe or accept that other parallel universes and dimensions really exist. Which i feel i must until there existance is disproven.

people can say im insane!, but i do believe that we could not evolve as quickly as we did without intervention from another source.