For me, it is not a matter of why I believe in God. It is more why not believe in God? I just don't understand what makes a person tick who has no belief in a supreme being. If you have no creator, and you have no afterlife, why exist? If it were proved to me that there is no God, I would most definately jump off a cliff. I have no problem with atheists and such, but I would like to know what motivates them to live. If I could figure that out, it would make a great self help book. If I am just going to turn back into dust, and nothing more what is the purpose? Why care about anything? Like someone who spends there whole life trying to explain why the bible is false, and then they die....what would the purpose of that be? That can't reflect on why they wrote a thousand page book on the non-existance of god, cuz they are dead. So why write it in the first place? Just some nagging questions I have.

So then you're basically saying that you only appreciate life if there is a God, but if there is no God, then you have no appreciation for life?

Is that a fair assessment of your position?

I agree.. if you don't believe in God and Heaven and such then what purpose is there in life? I guess being that I was brought up to believe in God and all his wonderful creations it sometimes astounds me that there are people out there that just do not believe. I don't judge them for this though because it is not my place to do so.

Social control for one. How better to passify massive of people without having to beat them into submission?

Play on their fears!

Now for raw science (Yes I am playing both sides of the intellectual fence here) that by pure science that since no experiment can be duplicated in proving the existence of a God ergo God automatically goes up in a poof of empirical fog.

There also is the Missouri Crowd, Ifn' I donts' be seen' it. It don'ts' exist.

BUT ONE MAJOR FLAW in scientific thinking is utterly attempting to disprove something our current technology cannot detect. There is a lot more in this universe than we ultimately even understand and to say there is no God based on that is personal belief over TRUE scientific thinking.

Whether there is an after life is to be seen and I think death is the ultimate insult but we are part of a greater cycle no matter how much we want to try and elevate ourselves above it.

Life itself is a great experimenter. Life itself can be construed as God in its own metaphorical way. We are born, and die all the same as everything else on this world. It seems like a waste to me that life would let our experience go just like that in death. It is possible that life itself does recycle things we do not detect and can not see in ways we do not understand yet. Curiosity is genetic and some have more of the influence of the gene than others.

Really the paradox of life is it has no purpose other than to exist. That is where the next step in intellectual evolution comes, man can give himself purpose. Free will is such a strange thing.

Why do some give up free will in favor of making life choices for themselves?

Think of it this way, people want to rationalize sane things and crazy things and a lot of other things in between. Some live their lives speculating on unseen things as constructs of philosophical dogma. Thomas Aquinus comes to mind.

On the other side of the fence are the ANTI whatevers who have to attack the basic premise of all religions somehow to fulfill personal vanity involving stroking their intellectual egos.

many people have something to say and they have to say it no matter what.

Part of human nature and not all of us are above acting childish and immature even as adults.


I don't wanna grow up!
I Don't wanna!
I don't wanna!
I DON'T WANNA!





Ha ha

It could be that they care about humanity. Maybe they see the Bible as being deterimental to mankind. After all, it has been the excuse for many atrocities and continues to be used as an excuse for bigotry to this very day.

Yea, your right. That is a fair assessment.

Yea but who then would care about humanity? Why would I care if people kill each other over god, if they are just here today and gone tomorrow, just like a mouse, or tadpole or whatever.

The only problem I have with religion is when people tell me what is right and wrong based on their way of believing. When it comes down to it, no one knows who is correct. But I refuse to live my life in fear of displeasing some invisible guy living in the clouds.

I'm in Missouri. We're the "Show Me State". It means "prove it to me".

I ask this question a bit differently.

If there is a supreme creator who do you think he or she would be more pleased with, someone who only cares about other people if they think there's something in it for them (i.e. eternal life), or someone who cares about others even in the face of beliving that life will just end when they die?

I can't help but believe that a supreme creator would be far more pleased with the latter person.

Also, why should a supreme creator be so hung up on being recognized and worshiped 'on pure faith'. Especially when that faith is based entirely one just one of many books of mythology?

I mean surely it's a guess as to which mythology might be true. So faith in any particular mythology is nothing more than a guess.

Why would a supreme being be so hung up on what people decide to guess might be true?

That has never made any sense to me. The whole idea of a God that requires pure faith is truly a nonsensical idea as far as I can see. A God who just disappears completely and asks nothing from anyone to see what people might do seems to me to be a far wiser picture of a God.

If I were God I might set things to make sure that no one believes I exist, and then see if they have any mettle of their own.

Now that would be a good test don't you think?

Well, just for the record, I'm not an atheist either. I believe that I'm eternal spirit and have always been eternal spirit. But then I also believe that mice and tabpoles are eternal spirit too.

Why would you single out humans as the only living things that have spirit?

Also, if you believe that you can exist as spirit after your body dies, then why they one-way thinking? Why not also accept that you probably existed as spirit before you were born.

After all, if you can exist as spirit without a body why would you think that this is the first body you've ever possessed?

Yea that is a good way to look at it too but...arn't you kind of half-way implying that there might be a god if you even question what a god a logical thinking god would do? If you live life helping others and being a good person, it can't possibly be for your own self satisfaction. At, least not for me anyway. For me, there would have to be some sort of reason behind it.

Yea that is a good way to look at it too but...arn't you kind of half-way implying that there might be a god if you even question what a god a logical thinking god would do? If you live life helping others and being a good person, it can't possibly be for your own self satisfaction. At, least not for me anyway. For me, there would have to be some sort of reason behind it.

There in lies one strand of some kind of God that many people do not see in front of them is that ALL life is interconnected somehow. If all other life died leaving man behind we would follow very quickly.

What if stars think and have a consciousness? Would that not challenge even more ideals of the universe around us and our thinking on who and what god is and our place in all of this mess?

damn, my computer is screwing up!

My, you open up a plethora of philosophical wonderings and prejudications with such a topic...

First off, at least from my prospective, Atheism does not necessarily mean the practitioner does not believe we have purpose in life. An atheist may simply believe that we live on in the memories and legacy we leave behind, and if we are practicing positive principles the memories of our existence will be fond, long lasting, and maybe even life changing for some. Other athiests may very well believe that all we have is here and now and we disolve into nothingness upon dying. Some may see that by the mere fact that our bodies become a part of the earth's life cycle once again a part of us is living in say, the tree that it fertilizes or the insects that it may nurture in the decomposition process and that is all we are meant to be. But to jump to a conclusion that Atheists have no purpose but to live and then suddenly not exist is to say that all Christians believe that we are born of sin and must repent our very existence before we can be saved. There simply is no basis for such reasoning.

I try to accept and learn about a variety of spiritual teachings. Some literatures I read are from the Buddhist faith, some from the Christian faith, some from the Native American spiritual teachings, etc..etc.. What I see as a common ground in all of these teachings is that we all as human beings have a desire to lead a happy life. And each teaches us ways in which we may achieve that goal. The principals taught in each are invariably the same principals. If put into the proper perspective a Christian is not a Christian unless he is willing to and strives to walk as Christ himself walked. So many get caught up in "religion" and it's ceremonious practices that they forget to act as if they were Christians. The same goes for Buddhists, if they are to call themselves Buddhist they need to be practitioners of the Buddhist teachings and not intellectalizers only. And so on and so on.

Now that point being made, it is important that we, as spiritual students, have the utmost compassion for all sentient beings, for all of God's children, no matter their beliefs or social class. For if not for being born into a different human form in a different locality with different teachings we would likely be that same person that we wish not to understand or have difficulty comprehending.

Okay, now if that is not too confusing, I guess the bottom line is just live and let live, and be at peace with YOUR inner being.

Well that should only bother you if there's a God.

If there's no God then you don't care.

I guess

You've left out the third possibility. That we are all equal spiritual beings and there is no one being that is any more "superior" than any other. In that scenario, each individual spiritual being decides their own purpose, afterlife, etc. To me, that seems much more reasonable all round and avoids all the major problems of both atheism and monotheism.