Topic: Does god ,heaven-hell concepts really exist?
no photo
Tue 01/19/10 10:38 AM
The question "Who is God?" is a good one. Better still is "What is God?" Or what is the meaning of that word?


RainbowTrout's photo
Tue 01/19/10 07:31 PM
Edited by RainbowTrout on Tue 01/19/10 07:32 PM
"God" is an interesting topic in our 12 step meetings. For some it is Good Orderly Direction. For others is just doing the next right thing. The meetings help me and I go to them as much as possible. Thanks to the Athiests, Agnostics and Christians I came to the conclusion that I am not God. The Athiests strong in their perceptions that there wasn't a God helped me to helped me to hear the message that I wasn't God because for them one did not exist. The Agnostics helped me to understand that I couldn't prove I was God. The Christians helped me by believing that there was a God and I wasn't he. The message I got was that I wasn't God which really helped me because with this information I got a higher power of the group. Before the group I was a loner but because of the group I am now a dedicated groupie. I am glad the group is spiritual but not religious because at first because of my denial that I had a problem and that their literature was against my religion. I found that it was really against my denial. With that information I was able to take the first step in my recovery and am on a daily path towards a recovery to sanity. At my job I try to encourage sanity because sanity was encouraged to me by those who tried to help me.:smile:

no photo
Tue 01/19/10 09:08 PM

I had a friend who was forced by the court to go to AA meetings and he said he liked them but that he was becoming addicted to them so he quit going. He was not addicted to alcohol, he just had a DUI.

AA meetings are sort of a replacement for church for some people who would never get involved with church. It is people helping people. It works for some people, not for all.

Sorry for getting off topic. Do I believe in a higher power? Yes. I believe that I am part of that higher power or connected to it or that I am it in part or that it is me. I feel that while living in human form with human consciousness, I am unable to comprehend that higher power but I can feel it is there, what ever it is.

But I still think we should take full responsibility for our lives and our choices and that is what AA teaches. Responsibility.


CatsLoveMe's photo
Thu 01/21/10 12:30 PM
I think pop culture has ruined or grossly misinterpreted what heaven and hell are, what they are, where they are, and what they look like.

Heaven: this beautiful place in the sky where it floats in the clouds, everything is white, and the entrance is guilded in gold. Angels everywhere with bird-wings, everyone has a harp and a halo. Heaven is UP there, they say.

I don't believe heaven is like that at all, it's not even UP there, it's an entirely different dimension and existence, and nothing at all what pop culture paints it to be.

Hell: This horrible pit, with flames, heat, demons with pitchforks and bat-wings, screams of agony, suffering, lament, and gnashing of teeth. Everyone will eternally suffer and never be able to undo or atone for the sins they have comitted in their lives. Hell is DOWN there they say.

Another warped concept spread by religious monk and cleric propaganda throughout the centuries. What, are they telling us that hell is beneath our feet in the Earth's core? No, once again, it's another existence and totally unlike the morbid pictures painted in the 14th century. Until someone actually has been to hell-and-back, no human will ever know what hell is, or what it looks like.

God: what does He look like? Or Jesus? Or Muhammed? No one really knows, and we weren't meant to know, only to follow the teachings and love thy neighbor and have faith in God. We will never understand or conceptualize God, and we were never meant to.

RainbowTrout's photo
Sat 01/23/10 07:52 PM


I had a friend who was forced by the court to go to AA meetings and he said he liked them but that he was becoming addicted to them so he quit going. He was not addicted to alcohol, he just had a DUI.

AA meetings are sort of a replacement for church for some people who would never get involved with church. It is people helping people. It works for some people, not for all.

Sorry for getting off topic. Do I believe in a higher power? Yes. I believe that I am part of that higher power or connected to it or that I am it in part or that it is me. I feel that while living in human form with human consciousness, I am unable to comprehend that higher power but I can feel it is there, what ever it is.

But I still think we should take full responsibility for our lives and our choices and that is what AA teaches. Responsibility.




Oh, I am so addicted to the meetings. I just love them. Tonight, a lady got a year clean time. Amd because of that another lady made a tray of brownies. It was a NA meeting and one member asked me if I had switched from AA to NA. I answered that that I go to both. I am into recovery. I am thankful for the sign above the door where we would hold group at the halfway house that read in large letters: I AM RESPONSIBLE. For that made an impression on me. I have heard about a lot of different higher powers since I have been clean and sober. I even thought that a dog tick was a form of higher power because when one pulls it off the head can stay intact. A fellow member nicknamed me Dogtick after hearing that.laugh I agree that it doesn't work for some people.

SkyHook5652's photo
Sun 01/24/10 11:59 AM
i am in a chaos, i call myself as a budding philosopher, my greatest hinderance at the moment is GOD?? Who is god??
My own personal opinion...

We are each and every one of us gods. There is no one entity that is more "godlike" than any other, so there really is no "One True God" in that sense.

JMHO drinker

s1owhand's photo
Tue 01/26/10 08:41 AM
my view is that we are all part of a single whole which
is immortal and beyond history. this can be viewed as
the western monotheistic God or the Tao or Nirvana in eastern
religious thought.

it's uniqueness suggests a standard by which actions can
be judged. the goal of religion is to find the path and
work on ranking actions which produce the most virtue,
good or harmony to achieve more a perfect oneness.

there is nothing in this concept which contradicts any of
mainstream religious doctrine that i know of.

heaven and hell?

a reward or punishment after death? there is no real evidence
of it. there are rewards and punishments in life. so i subscribe
to the notion that you make your own heaven or hell in life and
after death...well "God knows..."

laugh

no photo
Tue 01/26/10 12:57 PM
I believe in a Higher Power. What one chooses to call their Higher Power is up to the individual.

I don't believe so much in heaven or hell. I'm sure our souls go somewhere after we pass on, but I don't know if it is to either of these places.

I always had issue with telling folks they would burn eternally if they sinned. A vengeful, "higher level of consciousness", doesn't set well with me.


I was also told not to question your higher power, which is another reason I'm not a religious person.

Spirituality works well for me.

I had to find my own path of enlightenment.
And I'm glad I did!

RoamingOrator's photo
Tue 01/26/10 01:12 PM

thanks, i am settled..


You're settled?? Aww, shoot. I was just about to start on my "God is this guy I know, who prefers it if you call him 'Steve' speech."

s1owhand's photo
Tue 01/26/10 02:42 PM


thanks, i am settled..


You're settled?? Aww, shoot. I was just about to start on my "God is this guy I know, who prefers it if you call him 'Steve' speech."


laugh

"Joe Bless You"

RKISIT's photo
Tue 01/26/10 04:06 PM

i am in a chaos, i call myself as a budding philosopher, my greatest hinderance at the moment is GOD?? Who is god??
money

RoamingOrator's photo
Tue 01/26/10 04:36 PM
When you get down to it, how can religion be right. Religion sees the world in black and white, and we all know the world is in color.

s1owhand's photo
Tue 01/26/10 06:01 PM

When you get down to it, how can religion be right. Religion sees the world in black and white, and we all know the world is in color.


except religion does not see the world in black and white! laugh

Think's photo
Wed 02/03/10 07:55 PM
Hi I think God is supposed to be a mystery. So that we look to something besides the physical realm. That we are able to discuss this inner need with each other. Exactly like we are right here right now. I believe our inner selves call us to exchange and explore ideas about God.

paul1217's photo
Thu 02/04/10 08:55 PM
Edited by paul1217 on Thu 02/04/10 09:00 PM

my view is that we are all part of a single whole which
is immortal and beyond history. this can be viewed as
the western monotheistic God or the Tao or Nirvana in eastern
religious thought.

it's uniqueness suggests a standard by which actions can
be judged. the goal of religion is to find the path and
work on ranking actions which produce the most virtue,
good or harmony to achieve more a perfect oneness.

there is nothing in this concept which contradicts any of
mainstream religious doctrine that i know of.

heaven and hell?

a reward or punishment after death? there is no real evidence
of it. there are rewards and punishments in life. so i subscribe
to the notion that you make your own heaven or hell in life and
after death...well "God knows..."


The Tao is that which can't be defined. All things come from the Tao and All things return to the Tao. Eastern philosophy accepts these concepts without trying to define them. According to basic high school chemistry all matter is made of 3 basic particles, proton, neutron and electron. The only thing that makes us different from inanimate objects is the energy that holds these 3 particles together. That would tend to imply that God or the Tao is energy.

Basic high school physics tells us that Energy can't be destroyed, only released. This would tend to enforce that theory. But as the Tao, the second most translated book in recorded history, states if you try to explain it you lose the meaning.

A side note: The Tao is second only to the bible. The Tao has been around for over 3000 yrs, The bible 1500? The Tao 8000 words. The bible ?????

laugh








HuckleberryFinn's photo
Thu 02/04/10 09:50 PM
Does god ,heaven-hell concepts really exist?

^trick question, of course the concepts exist, if only in our minds and through the rhetoric of those who wish to control the minds of the weak and fill the coffers in the name of a God of your choosing. In reality the question can also be asked, does the tooth fairy exist, after all it was just a concept.

Jennerling's photo
Thu 02/04/10 09:55 PM
Topic: Does god ,heaven-hell concepts really exist?


If people knew that they wouldn't call it "having faith."

paul1217's photo
Thu 02/04/10 10:00 PM
There is a difference between having faith and following blindly. Question what you've been told and make your own choices.

primal's photo
Tue 02/09/10 05:16 PM
it is all possible that some higher plane of existance is possible and it is just as possible that there is an all omnipitant being however the fact that this being would be all omnipitant coupled with the fact that the universe is infinate this being would not care about what would happen to us as a race or even as a planet or even galaxy

no photo
Mon 03/08/10 10:49 PM
'God' is a fig newton of your emancipation. But, on a more serious note, 'god' is a human-centric reference for an unknown which is (correctly or incorrectly) given credit for the creation of 'everything'. Dang. That kinda recognition doesn't come cheap - those giving it agree to give up their critical thinking skills and rational analytical abilities and just 'believe' in the 'creator' myth because it's so much easier than accepting we're here on our own as a result of natural processes. The old saying is still true: "If there were no God, man would need to create him." And no, that does not mean I subscribe to the belief system(-s) which credit this mysterious and semi-omnipotent 'being' with bringing about the entire universe and everything in it. We exist as the result of a long series of improbable accidents. Chemistry and physics can do a lot of things thought impossible if given enough time ...