Hubble shows God's handiwork?

trippd · 12-08-2006, 10:14 PM

Everyone,
Is it easier to contemplate God & determine his reality & attributes, or is it easier to have God reveal himself to us?

Custom900 · 12-08-2006, 10:53 PM

that is definitely a complicated question

seamus · 12-08-2006, 11:26 PM

I think I shall have figured out women before either of those two things could happen.

sheepofblue · 12-09-2006, 12:17 AM

He has just most of us ignore him

phobiaphobe · 12-09-2006, 12:32 AM

Do you think GOd gives a **** what you think?

steingar · 12-09-2006, 9:26 AM

Time for SCIENCE!

Spirtuality is hereditary. I'm not talking about religious observation, that's a learned behavior. Spirituality is a personality trait that combines mysticism with transpersonal identification and a few other things, and has been recognized by psycologists for 40 years. Twin studies (conducted in part in Twinsburg Ohio) have shown that it is a heritable trait, and at least one researcher claims to have isolated a gene responsible.

That engenders the question of whether the belief in spiritual beings is a crazy trick of brain chemistry, or an inbuilt mechanism to allow cognizance of the Almighty. Again, about as easily answered. Atheists can't prove a negative hypothesis (i.e. there is no God) and highly religious people can't prove there is (can't put God in a test tube, photograh him/her/it, and if you claim to be talking drectly to God most people think you're a looney).

Acutally, Hubble shows you far less of the extraordinary beauty of the Universe around us than the plants and animals that urround us. They are all far more complex than anything the Hubble will ever espy. So go enjoy yourself and keep your faith. Its good for you.

seamus · 12-09-2006, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steingar

Acutally, Hubble shows you far less of the extraordinary beauty of the Universe around us than the plants and animals that urround us. They are all far more complex than anything the Hubble will ever espy. So go enjoy yourself and keep your faith. Its good for you.

That sounds more like an opinion than scientific fact. Although I'd be interested in what about the animals you think is more complicated than the processes that form planets and stars?

Wait a second, aren't you the guy that said fusion is easy?

sheepofblue · 12-09-2006, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steingar

Time for SCIENCE!

Spirtuality is hereditary. I'm not talking about religious observation, that's a learned behavior. Spirituality is a personality trait that combines mysticism with transpersonal identification and a few other things, and has been recognized by psycologists for 40 years. Twin studies (conducted in part in Twinsburg Ohio) have shown that it is a heritable trait, and at least one researcher claims to have isolated a gene responsible.

That engenders the question of whether the belief in spiritual beings is a crazy trick of brain chemistry, or an inbuilt mechanism to allow cognizance of the Almighty. Again, about as easily answered. Atheists can't prove a negative hypothesis (i.e. there is no God) and highly religious people can't prove there is (can't put God in a test tube, photograh him/her/it, and if you claim to be talking drectly to God most people think you're a looney).

Acutally, Hubble shows you far less of the extraordinary beauty of the Universe around us than the plants and animals that urround us. They are all far more complex than anything the Hubble will ever espy. So go enjoy yourself and keep your faith. Its good for you.

all though big sylabbles gots me confused, guess I will go be superstitious since it is in my genes oh wait no it is hereditary.

leelover · 12-09-2006, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by phobiaphobe

Do you think GOd gives a **** what you think?

Phobe could you please add a pork rind tail to that lure and speed up your retreive?
I want to bite but...not quite yet...

leelover · 12-09-2006, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steingar

Time for SCIENCE!

Spirtuality is hereditary. I'm not talking about religious observation, that's a learned behavior. Spirituality is a personality trait that combines mysticism with transpersonal identification and a few other things, and has been recognized by psycologists for 40 years. Twin studies (conducted in part in Twinsburg Ohio) have shown that it is a heritable trait, and at least one researcher claims to have isolated a gene responsible.

That engenders the question of whether the belief in spiritual beings is a crazy trick of brain chemistry, or an inbuilt mechanism to allow cognizance of the Almighty. Again, about as easily answered. Atheists can't prove a negative hypothesis (i.e. there is no God) and highly religious people can't prove there is (can't put God in a test tube, photograh him/her/it, and if you claim to be talking drectly to God most people think you're a looney).

Acutally, Hubble shows you far less of the extraordinary beauty of the Universe around us than the plants and animals that urround us. They are all fer more complex than anything the Hubble will ever espy. So go enjoy yourself and keep your faith. Its good for you.

Ok, I like jerkbaits! I'll hit!
steingar, how can someone with such credentials have such limited thinking?

mathyoomay · 12-09-2006, 1:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by phobiaphobe

Do you think GOd gives a **** what you think?

Phobe , are you fishing?

Would it be funny if I named my puppy Jehovah Dog?

ihatecrashing · 12-09-2006, 1:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seamus

That sounds more like an opinion than scientific fact. Although I'd be interested in what about the animals you think is more complicated than the processes that form planets and stars?

I heard that approximately every 10 days since 1970-sumpin' scientist have discovered a new species in the ocean. Talk about the final frontier! We have, as a human race, only explored about 1 percent of the ocean floor. Those things down there are insane! We have a better understanding of the surface of the moon than we do about our own ocean. Those are the animals and plants that intrigue me more than stars, in my opinion

ihatecrashing · 12-09-2006, 2:10 PM

Trippd, I think that it is a lot easier to believe in God if he has "revealed" himself to you, than it is to contemplate and theorize about him. We could theorize about how fast you could ride around a certain corner, but until you encounter the corner on a bike, it's just theories. After the corner "reveals itself" or you experience the corner, it's much easier to believe that you could ride a certain speed around it.

I feel the same way about God, in my life I have had experiences that I could only attribute to spiritual forces. Some good, and some not good. English speaking cultures seem to put down spiritual things as crutches. If it can't be explained through science, people tend to not believe in it. But there are cultures that totally accept spirituality as a daily fact of life. I like that Einstein quote, I think it goes,"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"

Oh, sorry to bring up the ocean again, but if you ever get a chance to go surf, do it. There is something about getting pounded by a wave that puts a respect into you and makes you realize there are bigger things that we don't always understand. Ok, I'll step off my soapbox...

leelover · 12-10-2006, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mathyoomay

Phobe , are you fishing?

Would it be funny if I named my puppy Jehovah Dog?

Funny

But I think you should do it!

Mojave954 · 12-10-2006, 1:34 PM

Oh geez, the age old question here huh? One that will never be answered in our life time.

this about sums it up for me:

Faith is a belief, trust, or confidence, not based merely on logic, reason, or empirical data, but based fundamentally on volition often associated with a transpersonal relationship with God, a higher power, a person, elements of nature, and/or a perception of the human race as a whole. Faith can be placed in a person, inanimate object, state of affairs, proposition or body of propositions such as a religious credo.

Until there is cold hard proof it is just a belief and nothing more in my opinion. Good book, worth the read. Now, to follow the tenents and beliefs of this book.

Up to one in and of themself. To me, no different those that follow the SCI-FI stuff of Ron L. Hubbard and Scientology.

now that should.

a little.

leelover · 12-10-2006, 8:18 PM

The Bible (particularily the teachings of Jesus) is fill of facinating concepts that will push you farther personally than any other "prophetic" teaching.
It is only spiritual work that offers actual redemption, and the power to acheive the standards put forth.
Of course this would require studying it with the same open mind that you would when reading anything else.

asiliat · 12-23-2006, 3:23 PM

The problem with contemplating God's "realness" is that we project human qualities into God. That's like thinking a movie star is beautiful, glamourous, wonderful, etc - but w/o actually meeting him/her, you never can tell what they're like. Having said that, God will not appear and say hi. It's not something He needs to do. He already made the ultimate sacrifice by sending His Son to die for you and me. I don't know how else to show His love. I remember from Sunday school someone saying that if God was to show Himself to us, his brilliance will knock us dead on our feet. Maybe that's why He can't? Haha, that's a lot of heresay.

trippd · 01-31-2007, 8:08 PM

Maybe God gave humans some of his own positive attribues to his ultimat creation on earth rather than we project human traits on him, Also, Jesus said, backing it up with actions, that God does love & care about us, wanting to be each person's heavenly Father. that this is a warm truth. Are we paying attention to God revealing himself ? I know many peoples experiences make it hard to think there is a loving God, but peoples' sin nature needs to be examined.

analogbear · 02-02-2007, 5:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steingar

Time for SCIENCE!

Spirtuality is hereditary. I'm not talking about religious observation, that's a learned behavior. Spirituality is a personality trait that combines mysticism with transpersonal identification and a few other things, and has been recognized by psycologists for 40 years. Twin studies (conducted in part in Twinsburg Ohio) have shown that it is a heritable trait, and at least one researcher claims to have isolated a gene responsible.

I assume you read the book 6 impossible things before breakfast then.

analogbear · 02-02-2007, 5:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trippd

Maybe God gave humans some of his own positive attribues to his ultimat creation on earth rather than we project human traits on him, Also, Jesus said, backing it up with actions, that God does love & care about us, wanting to be each person's heavenly Father. that this is a warm truth. Are we paying attention to God revealing himself ? I know many peoples experiences make it hard to think there is a loving God, but peoples' sin nature needs to be examined.

So, are we like god or not?

analogbear · 02-02-2007, 5:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by leelover

The Bible (particularily the teachings of Jesus) is fill of facinating concepts that will push you farther personally than any other "prophetic" teaching.
It is only spiritual work that offers actual redemption, and the power to acheive the standards put forth.
Of course this would require studying it with the same open mind that you would when reading anything else.

I found the lessons of Jesus (and most organized religions, in my opinion) to have a potentially purely beneficial social effect, regardless of their status as divine or not. Guidelines encouraging tolerance, kindness and sacrifice in how we ought to treat others, especially the less fortunate or helpless, and how we should try to not make the same mistakes as failed persons in the past is, from a social standpoint, good sh*t.

Is it more or less good if you do or don't believe in a personal god?

analogbear · 02-02-2007, 5:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojave954

Oh geez, the age old question here huh? One that will never be answered in our life time.

this about sums it up for me:

Faith is a belief, trust, or confidence, not based merely on logic, reason, or empirical data, but based fundamentally on volition often associated with a transpersonal relationship with God, a higher power, a person, elements of nature, and/or a perception of the human race as a whole. Faith can be placed in a person, inanimate object, state of affairs, proposition or body of propositions such as a religious credo.

Until there is cold hard proof it is just a belief and nothing more in my opinion. Good book, worth the read. Now, to follow the tenents and beliefs of this book.

Up to one in and of themself. To me, no different those that follow the SCI-FI stuff of Ron L. Hubbard and Scientology.

now that should.

a little.

Interesting. However, as my daddy said, "you get what you pay for," and because the wiki-pedia is FREE, please do not assume that it is the be all/end all of definitions or explanations.

That definition of faith excludes (among several issues way too philosophically-technical and nit-picky to go into here) "justification" (sorry Lee, I will keep it short) which allows for a faith in or belief of non-scientific or unproveable, intangible things, given the application and satisfaction of an "understanding and relatability of the object's nature" test. Rational? No, faith is never rational. Emotional? Yes, all faith is "feeling," but some can be justified. Reasonable? Yes; absolutely, if it can be justified. Most people do not bother to try, out of a habit of taking things on (term purposefully misused here) "faith."

Too often, the supposedly "faithful" is not justified, but still says he is faithful...No, he just deludes himself out of fear.

However...

Unless someone can justify their individual faith, or until god, or some other corporeal-representation of the infinite comes down and says "Listen Up!!!" it is all just mythology. But, I did learn great lessons from Greek mythology, so it has great value.

There is as much proof for believing in god as a factual issue as there is believing in vampires as a factual issue...And, I ain't just talking about "goth chicks"...I believe in them...Oh, yes, I believe in them...

steingar · 02-02-2007, 6:53 PM

In each and every cell in your body there are several meters of DNA, each one with more information than the Library of Congress. There are thousands of different proteins doing a farrago of different activites to keep the whole thing afloat. Tissues interact with one another, and then organisms with each other. Earth has all the techtonic, atmospheric, and gravitaitonal functions of any Astromocial body, but it has all this stuff as well. Sorry, we win the complexity contest big time. What Hubble sees most of is hard vacuum. If you don't believe me pick up a good biology textbook sometime.

analogbear · 02-02-2007, 10:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steingar

In each and every cell in your body there are several meters of DNA, each one with more information than the Library of Congress. There are thousands of different proteins doing a farrago of different activites to keep the whole thing afloat. Tissues interact with one another, and then organisms with each other. Earth has all the techtonic, atmospheric, and gravitaitonal functions of any Astromocial body, but it has all this stuff as well. Sorry, we win the complexity contest big time. What Hubble sees most of is hard vacuum. If you don't believe me pick up a good biology textbook sometime.

Agreed. But, false color images from Hubble are cool.

AfricaWim · 02-03-2007, 3:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ihatecrashing

Trippd, I think that it is a lot easier to believe in God if he has "revealed" himself to you, than it is to contemplate and theorize about him. We could theorize about how fast you could ride around a certain corner, but until you encounter the corner on a bike, it's just theories. After the corner "reveals itself" or you experience the corner, it's much easier to believe that you could ride a certain speed around it.
...

True that....the only problem with discussing these things on the net is that using your anology, you are reasoning with someone that has never left his his house, never made the effort to actually get on a bike, but is full of this "learned" knowledge he thinks is the ultimate truth on the subject of taking corners. He will beat you up with "facts" he got from someone else that has not riddin a bike either

.
From my experience God reveals Himself to you the more you spend time with Him. No amount of theorizing can ever make you understand Him more/better. He has no reason to reveal anything to you if you have no commitment.

leelover · 02-03-2007, 9:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AfricaWim

True that....the only problem with discussing these things on the net is that using your anology, you are reasoning with someone that has never left his his house, never made the effort to actually get on a bike, but is full of this "learned" knowledge he thinks is the ultimate truth on the subject of taking corners. He will beat you up with "facts" he got from someone else that has not riddin a bike either

.
From my experience God reveals Himself to you the more you spend time with Him. No amount of theorizing can ever make you understand Him more/better. He has no reason to reveal anything to you if you have no commitment.

Well put!

analogbear · 02-03-2007, 1:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AfricaWim

True that....the only problem with discussing these things on the net is that using your anology, you are reasoning with someone that has never left his his house, never made the effort to actually get on a bike, but is full of this "learned" knowledge he thinks is the ultimate truth on the subject of taking corners. He will beat you up with "facts" he got from someone else that has not riddin a bike either

.
From my experience God reveals Himself to you the more you spend time with Him. No amount of theorizing can ever make you understand Him more/better. He has no reason to reveal anything to you if you have no commitment.

Analogy is one of the least compelling ways to make an argument, but we do it all the time. Well done, AW, in keeping with it.

But, if god has no reason to reveal anything to you if you have no commitment, how is a person who doesn't know god get to know god?

It stands to reason that in order to know a thing, you have to spend time with a thing.

To get to know a person, you have to spend time with a person.

Even you, and lauded by lee, have found that god reveals himself to you the more you spend time with him.

So, to know god you have to spend time with him so he will reveal himself to you.

But god won't reveal himself to a person who has no commitment.

And you can't get commitment in something you do not know at least a little about.

It seems that you expect people new to god to come in with a certain amount of knowledge about the nature of god, before god will reveal his nature to that person.

Here I go with an analogy, now; but, that kind of seems like the "work experience" dilemma, doesn't it? You cant get a job without experience, but you cant get experience without a job, but nobody will give you the job to let you gain your experience, so you can't get a job because you have no experience.

How do you get enough knowledge about the nature of god to develop the commitment necessary to encourage god to reveal more of himself to you?

AfricaWim · 02-03-2007, 6:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by analogbear

How do you get enough knowledge about the nature of god to develop the commitment necessary to encourage god to reveal more of himself to you?

I am not going to debate. Using another analogy, it would be like explaining to my wife why I need Keith Black pistons instead of chinese knock-offs. It wastes a lot of valuable time and in the end she still believes the cheap stuff will handle the power, whereas I know through experience my reasoning is solid based.

BUT I would like to comment on the above that it IS a catch 22, and the biggest reason people rather decide not to believe. You have to dive in at the deep end, there are no half measures in faith. (sorry there I go again analogizing

) You don't develop commitment, commitment comes from having the balls to make a descision and then to stick with it. Simple to understand, extremely hard to do.

And that is where my contribution to this thread ends...let's go ride..

analogbear · 02-03-2007, 7:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AfricaWim

You have to dive in at the deep end, there are no half measures in faith. (sorry there I go again analogizing

)

Actually, I believe that is a metaphor.

And I respect your decision not to "debate," though I was not attempting to do so. I had no real position on the issue, and was actually asking a question. I was not fishing.

I need to eat and get gas.

soupnazi · 02-03-2007, 9:33 PM

The new testament provides fine values to treat your fellow person. The problem is that it's widely pissed on by folk who are supposed to be Christian. Capital punishment in TX is a bit bizarre. A burning desire to go to war is also. And there's plenty of bad folk born into every brand of religion, Buddist, Muslim, Hindu, Christianity and the list goes on. Each religion has it's admirable traits but there's always assholes.

I agree about the beauty of our complex world, it's also not surprising that we haven't identified everything under the ocean. It's a large area to explore and poses some interesting challenges as to how to survive under such great pressure (correct me if I'm wrong but the pressure in space's vaccume isn't a pinch on the weight of such a body of water).

That said Hubble is keeping our minds open.. what if... it discovered a planet with silicon based life? You can't keep your head buried in the sand... or ocean as it were.

A couple of my favourite H.L.Mencken quotes:

Each religion believes each other religion to be wrong. They're all right.

The greatest sea in the universe is the sea of blood, shed by piety, in furthering the kingdom of the Prince of Peace.