h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have yet to find a 'good' reason to believe in God, yet I do. When everything is getting too much for me, something will happen then slowly everything becomes barable. It seems to me as if something somewhere is watching out for me and 'God' is as good a name as any.
Don't get me wrong, I was brought up as a Christian but I do not believe in Christianity - I find most religions hypocritive and a good excuse to fight.
No one can tell you believe or give you a reason to believe, you must find that yourself. But good luck, everyone needs someone to believe in and sometimes belief in God is easier than believing you are completely in control of your own fate

See, now, this is exactly why I find religious people frightening. You are responsible for your own life, no one else. You can go down any path imagineable, but you have to be responsible for which one you choose. If you relinquish control to someone (either a real person, or some otherworldly force of some kind) you run the risk of really screwing yourself up. Trust me, I know.

Sure, it's nice to believe that there is someone looking out for you, but, hey, if there is a god, don't you think she's probably pretty damn busy? She may be preoccupied on the day you decided to let her choose whether or not you go to college/decide to try heroin/race in the Indy 500/have sex without a condom. And then if it's the wrong decision, who you gonna blame? God? Nah.

I'd rather not off load responsibility for my actions, choices and subsequent events as an escuse that some higher being is looking after me no matter how comforting it could be.

We get one shot at life so make the most of it, consider other people's needs and wishes (within reason), do no harm and leave the planet's flora and fauna in a fit state for future generations to enjoy.

After all, some of the worst atrocities have been carried out by people who said that they had a god on their side and were carrying out his/her wishes......

I never claimed God was always right, in fact he/she may well be a sick and twisted entity that likes people to suffer.
We can kill ourselves without any outside influence, or so we believe. What if every action we make is decided before we are born. The illusion of free will is powerful, but the other possibility is much more frightening to accept.

You could probably argue that God, by definition the most perfect being imaginable, would have to be good should he or she exist - an imperfect God wouldn't be God. I decided a while ago that whether we have free will or not, we're never going to know for sure, because either way it's not going to affect the way our lives turn out, and so it's not worth wasting time thinking about it. (Possibly a bit too pragmatic there...)

God a perfect creature? That's not necessarily a common definition. The only thing that seems to be a truly universal definition of a god is that it is the creator of human life.

On a similar note, some religions define their god/gods as being omniscient. If so, then, by definition, you could not possibly have free will. But then again, why bother creating a world where you already knew exactly what would happen with it?

In the beginning, people had many Gods - often related to life, death and the weather - all those important things that they didn't have explanations for, and so some bright spark came up with a few names of those in charge to stop everyone going mad.

Then lots of different people tended to have one God each. This time the men in big hats used each God to stop the community tearing itself apart by coming up with various rule books of "bad things to do". Rules that tended to allow communities to prosper economically (don't nick things or kill people who annoy you) and medically (don't shag animals, family members or just too many people in general because you'll get a nasty rash). And when all the rules got a little tiresome, the be-hatted ones could conveniently point to another set of people with a different God, and say that it was ok to break the whole book of rules, just so long as you did it in their country, and not your own (a rule, incidentally, still held sacred by holiday-makers today).

Then the influence of the hat people started to wane, however big the hats became. This was generally a result of bad people getting away with and lots of good people dying rather unfairly. At some point between then and now, men with beards and white coats began to explain a few things that, in the beginning, people would tend to deify.

Now it would be very nice to have something to do after eighty-odd years of managing to stay alive but it's not that likely. If there is some big chap with a truly enormous beard up there, why keep us hanging around so long? Letting you piss yourself every night because you're too weak to get to the bog in time is hardly fair, now. And you never see people with false teeth eat pizza. Surely there should be things to look forward to, rather than things you'll miss.

And just one more thing. Dinosaurs. Flippin' great terrible lizards that stomped all over the place for several millennia. If fossils really are fakes designed as a global test of faith, then I don't want anything to do with an omnipotent being who has some deeply worrying psychological issues. Surely an all-powerful God doesn't need to screw around with our heads just to nurture his own sense of self-worth?

Oh dear. You're confusing the fundamentalist Christian idea of God with the basic concept of God. All the hip religion-bashing is cute and provocative, but God and religion are two very different things. You can believe in one without having to accept the other. If I wanted to be flippant I could say that God's a celebrity with the worst PR firms on Earth (the various organised religions). Don't diss God for the things his publicists get up to.

Surely the definition of God is that He's the supreme being, greater than which nothing can exist, and this necessarily entails perfection. Just saying that God is the creator of the human race implies that this is more significant than creating the rest of the universe, which is a rather conceited point of view.

The reason we're still having this discussion after all this time is that the question of God's existence is impossible to settle by argument. You're comfortable and satisfied with your materialist belief system, Christians are comfortable and satisifed with theirs. Your comments about old age and so on seem to imply that you think you could organise the universe better than God. I must say I have to admire your self-belief. What makes you think this isn't the best possible universe we could live in?

Hmmmmm. The basic concept of a god is not always "He's the supreme being, greater than which nothing can exist...". That's confusing the idea of a god with the Christian idea of a god. But there are probably billions of people who would disagree with that way of thinking. There are many polytheistic religions in which there are different gods governing different aspects of life. (Some of which are more or less potent than others.) And then there is Buddhism, in which anyone truly enlightened enough can become a god. And, of course, there are those who believe that our god/s are simply some other lifeform, greatly advanced, but certainly not all powerful or anything, who existed millions of years ago and planted the seeds for life on our planet for the hell of it.

So I suppose I have to scratch my "universal" definition, too, since some gods that people believe in didn't even create life here. Maybe there really is no universal definition, since people have so many completely different ideas as to how life on this planet got here.

And I disagree with your statement that people are comfortable and satisfied with their belief systems. If people were, they wouldn't be posting questions like this one. Confusion and dissatisfaction are why we are having this discussion. People are actually trying to think for themselves, instead of just believing the party line, for a change. People want to believe in a god, since that is what they've been taught all their lives, and the idea is a comforting one. But they also know that a lot of what they've been taught was meant to fool them. So they aren't sure what to believe.

Oh, and I could certainly imagine a much more cool unverse than this one. It wouldn't include humans, for one thing! Heh.

Hmm. Some good points there. When I talk about God I do tend to think in terms of the omnipotent deity of the Judeo-Christian tradition simply because of my cultural background. There is a big difference between the concept of 'the' God (big G) and that of 'a' god. I take your point about Hinduism and other polytheistic religions. But to talk in terms of 'gods' who planted seeds of life on our planet... well, you can believe that that happened, but surely you can't believe in that kind of god in the same way that a Moslem believes in Allah, as an active, powerful influence in the world today? Point taken on the belief system thing too. My main point was that viewed objectively religious belief and atheism are both belief systems that define themselves in terms of their opinions about God/gods (primarily whether or not He/they exist) and how this affects (or should affect) our relationship with the universe. One isn't more moral or rational or desirable than any other. I'm all in favour of people thinking for themselves and questioning what they've been told, that can't help but improve the world. I'm comfortable with my beliefs - sort of (not that there hasn't been some soul-searching along the way). As I said earlier, I don't think anyone's ever become a believer solely because of an argument like Pascal's wager, that's not the way faith works. Do you really think that religions actively set out to deliberately 'fool' people in the way you describe? And as for imagining better universes than this one - I can imagine a moth the size of a 747, doesn't mean it could ever actually exist.

I have to admit that I don't have any sort of faith myself - but I do understand the crucial differnce between God and religion. I have great respect for anyone who will stand up and argue for their beliefs, whether I share them or not.

I just wish that religion was no longer a divisive influence on this planet. I haven't yet seen a religion show the courage to examine its roots publicly, or try to find new messages that accommodate our greater knowledge about the past and present.

As for me, I believe that we're not alone - that there is something out there more advanced and more powerful than us, which possibly had a hand in human development. Omnipotence is pushing it a bit far - I think we've come far enough to understand things that would have once appeared miraculous, even if they are beyond our own capacity. Hopefully divine retribution is not something they feel the need to exercise.

Have you ever heard of the Unitarian Universalists? You might be interested in their openmindedness as a religion. I think that it's a good place for people who are confused, yet still want to be a part of some sort of organized group. They are more of a morals and ethics based belief system than they are a god based one. They tend to be very open about letting the individual decided what they believe.

Just for the record, I'm not a member of the UU church, but I am familiar with it, and think it's a pretty good idea.

I was confused (situation normal) and rather lacking in people to share my views with, and joined the National Secular Society (for atheists). Much more fun and open than any religious organisation.

Ah, but do they have cookies and juice for the kiddies on Sundays?

Heh.

Oh, and I did check out that link before, thanks. I've read a lot of the Freethought stuff (and I've even got a link to one of their sites on one of my own), but for some reason their writing just puts me off most of the time. Maybe it's a little too serious for my tastes. I'm not exactly sure.

Actually, if there is any organization that I associate with it's the Church of Euthanasia (http://www.enviroweb.org/coe/). They're a pretty entertaining lot. (Warning: they are offensive!) Unfortunately they've been pretty quiet these past few years. But they still make some really cool buttons and bumpers stickers.

Err - that link of yours - the site doesn't exist at that address any longer...... Thanks anyway.

I don't know about the free cookies, but Barbara Smoker who recently retired as the NSS' President, is a friend of my mum-in-law and is a right laugh! She was on t.v. recently in "Living With the Enemy" and had to spend a week living with a bunch of Evangelists. There's more information about it on the BBC web site.

I do agree that a lot of their writing and letter is rather high-browed though and sort of puts me off contributing as it worrries me that I'd appear a complete "proll" in comparison... (a bit of a thickie, really!) Still, its is an enjoyable read!

The the automatic-link-making-doohickie included the parenthesis in the address, that's why it didn't work. If you put the address in sans parenthesis, it works...

http://www.enviroweb.org/coe/

What is Living With the Enemy? A tv show? Is it British, or international? It sounds cool. There's a cable show that the Bravo network, here in the states, called Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends. The host spends a copuple of days immersed in some fringe group, like WWF wrestlers, or Televangelists or somesuch. He's a (presumably) gay, liberal guy, so you can imagine the sorts of reactions he has to some of these folks! It's pretty funny.

It's a British TV show that had its first? series shown before Christmas. It had various opposite groups of people meeting - a couple of rugby-playing homophobes staying with a gay couple in London for a week, a (rather wet) animal rights guy staying on a livestock farm, etc. It was rather variable - some of the people on it were extremely irritating, but I suppose that's unavoidable, given the subject.

Weird Weekends can be rather good - the 'Angels on your Body' televangelism one was quite illuminating, if a little scary. I wouldn't say LF was '(presumably) gay' though, I'd say more reserved, in a quietly British sort of way (I couldn't say I'd seen any evidence either way, though I can't say I'd care if I did)

I couldn't agree more with the principle of taking responsibility for one's own choices and their consequences. However, there are many people who will argue that without a God, there can be no absolute definition of right and wrong. Without established religion we're left with lots of independent moral systems and no guarantee that what is desirable in mine is even acceptable in yours.

Of course, the same applies to plurality of religious doctrine, leading to all those aforementioned holy wars where both sides claim the backing of their God.

It is not the presence of god that gives us the moral basis of society today, but the idea of a god or super-human being. It is not god,but an idea of a powerfull policemen. Those who go against the rooted morals of that society will be punished by the force. It is the fear of punishment that keeps everyone in order. When people questioned why the people who had done wrong got away with it, the religous people came up with the idea of afterlefe. They came up with the concept of hell. Now the people where again in fear and in line.

So basically, religion is the biggest lie in history and all we need is someone like Robocop or a chap wearing his pants over his tights to keep us in order, hey?

I do like to lower the tone of a conversation!

*Gwennie runs for cover from incoming flak...*