Suppose there actually is a "God." Are you glad he exists? Do you care one way or the other?

I believe strongly that we should aim for a balance between goodness and pragmatism that makes life as happy and as comfortable for everyone as possible. God doesn't come into it.

(obv a vengeful god who told us to do stuff or suffer a smitin' would be a v diferent matter)

I think I've mentioned on other threads: I don't think the existence of God, or lack thereof, is relevant to anything that will ever happen to me. Or to anyone else. It doesn't have any effect on my beliefs, religious or otherwise.

I don't object to him existing, but I wouldn't be hurt if he didn't.

(1 million bonus points for getting this one.)

nick x-post

1. eternal
2. omniscient
3. omnipotent
4. all-loving/good
5. the only God
6. paying attention
7. still existent
8. cognizant of any creation to begin with
9. not the creator of a video-game he's playing within a console we call the universe.
10. and so on. Add your own.

i think it really only matters if I will live forever. if god doesnt solve the problem of my death he is useless to me.

I'm not sure about the thread questions. I think to have God's existence be confirmed would be pretty terrifying though.

I'm not familiar with it.

Wether there's a God or not, THE END will come. It'll probably be the sun exploding, destroying Earth in the process.

No. At least, not via prayer.

So there we go. It would just mean a change in funding availability for grad school. (And read as "no" any variants on "the Lord works in mysterious ways, and sometimes doesn't do what he can do, even though other times he does do what he can do, it's just that this time he didn't, but it isn't coincidence that he did that other time. It's just unknowable. And you can't have a Twinkie.")

As to shared consciousness: I reckon we all have a unique frequency, but sometimes we get broadband, which would account for all kinds of psychic stuff. But... what's God got to do, got to do with it? Probably nothing...

For a long time I've been telling myself that if the apocalypse does come along, and it turns out that there really has been an omnicient, omnipotent god all along, I'm going to be very, very pissed off.

multi-x-post

I don't agree at all. I see what you mean, but I think this is one of the huge fallacies that makes people bad at religion; it sounds good on paper, but it just doesn't hold up in the real world. Omniscience and omnipotence don't lead to total moment-to-moment control any more than my ability to kill a sparrow makes sparrows extinct, for one thing.

For another, do you need to be in charge of your fate, or the fate of anything else, for it to matter? Right now, I wouldn't mind a cheeseburger and a Moxie. Fries might be nice. Don't have the slightest idea what my fate is, but that wouldn't affect the food at all.

Unless you are willing to embrace the notion that you yourself are part of "God".

(For kids who didn't play Transformers, by "Constructicon" I mean, you know, everything joins together to make God.)

But it really is a separate concept, in many ways, that replaces the concepts that surround "God," rather than just one of the options you can choose to mean when you say "God." Or at least, it would be nice if the words worked that way; it gets tricky otherwise.

(But welcome to my world. You can drive yourself nuts just trying to satisfy peoples' desires for clear definitions of things in religious studies; the big conference on coming up with a consensus for the usage of the word "magic" came up with a consensus, all right: everyone agreed that no one could think of a good definition.)

Chimay.

Chimay!

CHIMAY!

No, I don't buy that universe works = creator.

Take the gravitational constant, for instance. It happens to be set at a certain point, and everything (to our knowledge) within the set parameters of the universe is subject to it. If the constant were different by the slightest of numbers, many things we take for granted within the universe and many physical properties would be extremely different.

But they would still work within themselves in a sort of internal order. ie: any sort of large system with set rules and a large number of variables and an almost infinitely long amount of time will start to develop certain patterns. The pattern itself, however, is only evidence of a system with rules - not a creator of such rules.

or God, or a god,
or any other guesses
we have had so far

sometimes, though, it's THERE
in the corner of my eye.
then it's gone again

Medicis o'erthrown
And been martyred at the stake
Then we'll talk, my son.

In the long-long-term though, everything we do is pointless but I don't find this to be
cause for sudden existentialism, even though you get to wear black and drink coffee. The small bits of enjoyment that life brings (hugs, beer, carne asada burrito, drone rock, odd creativity) are ultimately greater than the futility. What I do find pointless is the ritualism, ceremonies, and pageantry that people feel the need to put themselves through. Of course that ritualism fulfills a need for a lot of folks, but does it really matter to god? I don't believe so.

Ultimately, talking about god is similar to the two-dimensional beings in Flatland trying to comprehend a third-dimensional object. You can describe such a thing abstractly, but in the end you're not any closer to real comprehension than where you started. It's fun to kick around in a stoner-talk kind of way though.

Also, Douglas Adams to thread. If only for God's Final Message to His Creation

Stuff like "why do people try to do better?" and "how do you explain people having hope when the odds are against them?" Sophomore dorm room Boone Hill bullshit like that, frankly as insulting to the religious as it is to the non-religious.

(I don't mean the thread strikes me as the same way, just to clarify. Far from it.)

I stopped myself from replying, but Christ, was it frustrating, especially on a members-only mailing list that's supposed to be devoted to the historical, non-apologist, study of religion.

a) doesn't exist
b) is incompetent (which is to say not really God)
c) is a flaming prick

So: given that he were that "I am," yes, I would care. I would not be glad. I'd be pissed off. And then become a Satanist.

The concepts of punishment/reward, of worship, of good and evil, all seem very irrelevant to me. But I'm not scientific to the point of it all being explainable either.

[2] There's been tons of stuff done on it wrt kids, especially in a "Kids Blaspheme the Darnedest Things" sort of context.

[1] Counting down the footnote hits, #1 goes out to Jenna at Mount Holyoke -- good luck with the cold sores, Jenna! -- I vacillate between cringing at the term "Judeo-Christian" and wondering if maybe the 19th and 20th centuries actually did a lot to propagate a Judeo-Christianity, which is neither Judaism nor Christianity but is practiced by both Jews and Christians.

The possibility of someone being able to conclusively prove God's existence is as likely as a homeless person winning the lottery: a nice vision, but impossible. Besides, you'd have mucho priests out of work: "Now that we know God exists, why do we need you?"