As simple as possible to summarize the best way you can, first, please. Feel free to expand after, or just say whatever you want lol. Honest question.
Man - how I hate that on almost every post that shows some vulnerability and shares their belief we have lemmys trying to convince people about it not making sense.
Be respectful guys. Thank you to all the upvoters of the actual content - I see you.
Everytime I’ve shared on Lemmy that I’m a Christian I’ve been met with nothing but huge negativity.
Everything from accusing me of being a Trump supporter, to telling me I should abandon my belief system because bad people believe the same thing as me.
I’ll have a read through this thread, but it’s very unlikely I’ll reveal anything more about how Faith has changed my life.
I used to be a hardcore atheist who mocked all believers so I understand where it’s coming from. I’m not here to fight.
Given all of my unresolved prior trauma caused almost exclusively by my upbringing around those believing? No thanks. Fuck everyone that believes this shit. It too clearly self-selects the narcissist asshole who wants excuses to not have to answer for how shitty they are. They ram it into EVERYTHING and use it as a blanket for pure judgment amd shame of others. Fuck em all.
And don’t give me this religion vs spirituality bullshit. Very clearly the vast majority are affected by religion. It ain’t my job to sort through that when 99% are clearly bad apples.
I’m speaking from actual personal traumatic experiences from childhood home, multiple churches, multiple schools, and lots of extended family and family friends. Fuck. Them. All.
Upvoting the actual answers here, as some who were not the target audience and haven’t read the question have answered.
Agree.
OP wants to hear opinions from people agreeing with statement X, not those who disagree.
I disagree with the notion of the universe being a probability game, but that’s not asked.
Thumbs up from me too. I’m always eager to hear/read from people who aren’t shy but rather open and reasonable about their beliefs, whatever those may be.
Alright, now that you mention it, the universe is ‘a big ball of yarn’. You can’t see the fabric, because we use the fabric to see. Planets and stars shrink and/or grow, all of them have solid surfaces, thunder isn’t always a local planetary phenomena, but often an exchange between two large bodies, usually between the host star and planet. ‘Neutron stars’ and ‘black holes’ are regular stars completely misinterpreted and dark matter and dark emergy are stop gaps in broken theories.
I believe in all gods, much in the same way I believe money, justice, and math exist.
Doesn’t mean I follow any or all of them, yahweh is a dick and so are a few others, but some are chill.
In some sort of greater being yes, in any kind of church or following no.
I find I have my own belief in some unknown cosmic entitys, something along the lines of energy is always in a state of flow, life and death, rocks to dust, consciousness to the sprawling reaches of the universe a bit of new age spirituality stuff,
That’s kind of where I am with it. Anything human led is suspect and I think any resemblance to “Jesus church” is long gone. I want to believe but I struggle with God being “just” but also allowing so much injustice.
If I had to put myself somewhere I believe in God but my faith for the rest of it is dwindling.
I wish I had a not so cynical view but the moment I see any human infont of any amount of others reading from a “holy text” or any interpretation of one I’m just like, your in a cult, your after power, there’s something you want, you want to judge others or some other underlying reasons.
Yer it’s hard to believe in anything when everywhere you look it’s just shit.
It’s not about belief. I don’t believe in Jah the same way I don’t believe in gravity. Gravity just is, and so is Jah. Look around. Breathe. Existence itself is the evidence. I’m not here to convince anyone or convert anybody. Jah doesn’t need followers, He just is. Whatever you call it, it’s all the same current. I walk with Jah because I recognize Him in everything.
In short, yes because you lose nothing by trying to emulate Jesus.
That said, the church be crazy af
If emulating jesus was what the christian church was about I would have less scrupules
Define “Christian Church”. This almost invariably comes from former evangelicals in my experience.
People who say they belive in jesus, would be my definition.
You have to believe in the trinity to be a Christian. Regardless you aren’t going to find any group of people who are perfect. Christianity is all about how people are sinful and must commit daily to emulating Christ even though they will continuously fail. Regardless it sounds like you are opening yourself up for massive disappointment by casting such a wide net. There are many “Christian churches” which are just jokes if not outright scams. Christians can’t control who calls themselves a Christian. I encourage you to investigate the Eastern Orthodox church which has a rich tradition and clear direction for how the Orthodox should live their lives. It is Ancient Christianity that holds in high esteem prayer, fasting and alms giving. There is real spiritual meat on the bone.
I may not believe in God, but I can definitely respect the man. ✊
Makes me feel more assured and will reduce my suffering until I die. After my death, regardless of if I am right or wrong, the net positive of having had the soothing idea of a larger meaning can’t and won’t be retroactively undone. So why the hell not?
Because religion can be and has been used to convince people to do terrible things. The fewer false beliefs people hold the fewer things can be used to manipulate them in this way.
water can and has drowned people. i fail to see your point.
Yes, and that’s why we don’t allow people to flood school, hospitals and homes with water. It is controlled and diverted.
we also don’t refuse to allow people to have small amounts of it accessible to them at all times or call it absolutely bad outright just because when used in a malicious way or left to be uncontrollable in particular situations it can be dangerous. shrug.
That’s because water is necessary to life.
When doing risk analysis something that is required to keep people alive gets a few extra points towards being accessible for, hopefully, obvious reasons.
If even something that is necessary for life is controlled due to the danger it poses, you can imagine why people would seek to restrict dangerous things that people can live without.
I think most people think like this at their core regardless of class, status, label.
Why not? Because truth matters. Look at the current united states to see what lies cause.
From my perspective they are not lies.
In the hope of civil discussion, it is not helpful for you to frame it that way IMO.
my choosing to engage with something that might not be true isn’t hurting anyone. i’m a solo practitioner of a non christian faith. :p of course the truth matters, but when staring at it makes you actively suicidal and feel like everything lacks meaning, why not make use of the circuitry our brains evolved with, and let a little bit of What If light the path forward?
What is truth and how do you know that?
There’s no way to know the truth on something like this, but you should always seek it. There are ways to know certain things aren’t true though. For example, the Judeo-Christian faith must be wrong, at least to an extent, because it’s self-contradictory. Also, most religions are mutually exclusive, so how do you go about seeking the correct one if striving for truth is valuable?
There is no way to know the truth
Is this true? Because if so it is a contradiction.
There are ways to know certain things aren’t true
This is just another way of making a truth claim even though you can’t know the truth.
…you should always seek it
How do you go about seeking the correct one if striving for truth is valuable?
Who says seeking truth is something we ought to do? Particularly if knowing the truth is an impossibility. These are all assertions as to what we should do without any justification as to why we should do them.
I’m being slightly annoying to shine your own standards on yourself. Not meant to be combative.
There is no way to know the truth
Is this true? Because if so it is a contradiction.
Knowledge and truth are two different things, although I should have written it better. There’s no way to know the truth on this particular subject. (Well, there is a way to know theoretically, if a god exists. There isn’t a way to know if one doesn’t exist though. You can’t prove that something that doesn’t exist doesn’t exist. You can only prove that something exists.)
This is just another way of making a truth claim even though you can’t know the truth.
No, you can use logic to prove certain things can’t exist. If there’s a contradiction, it can’t be correct, for example.
Who says seeking truth is something we ought to do? Particularly if knowing the truth is an impossibility. These are all assertions as to what we should do without any justification as to why we should do them.
I’m not making a universal statement. I’m making the statement that someone who values truth should seek truth. That seems self-evident.
Assuming you’re a skeptic…
There’s no way to know the truth on this particular subject. [i.e. God]
Arguments for God’s existence (such as classical theistic arguments) are not merely isolated truth claims—they function at the paradigmatic level, offering a foundation for knowledge itself.
If you deny God’s existence, you must account for the reliability of reason, logic, and abstract universals like mathematics. If these are simply “self-evident,” then you’re assuming the very thing your worldview has no means to justify.
No, you can use logic to prove certain things can’t exist. If there’s a contradiction, it can’t be correct, for example.
Only if you can justify the validity of logic in your worldview. But without a transcendent source of rationality, why assume logic is binding or that it applies universally? You’re using a tool (logic) without explaining why it ought to work or why it’s trustworthy in a purely materialistic or skeptical framework.
I’m not making a universal statement. I’m making the statement that someone who values truth should seek truth. That seems self-evident.
Okay well this is just an opinion then. My main point here is that you can’t propose any “oughts” without a justification.
Again. I’m being nit-picky but I feel like this thread is meant to invite some apologetic banter.
If you deny God’s existence, you must account for the reliability of reason, logic, and abstract universals like mathematics. If these are simply “self-evident,” then you’re assuming the very thing your worldview has no means to justify.
All of those are based on axioms. They’re true if the axioms are true, but not otherwise. They are useful, but not self-evident. The axioms seem to hold though.
Only if you can justify the validity of logic in your worldview. But without a transcendent source of rationality, why assume logic is binding or that it applies universally? You’re using a tool (logic) without explaining why it ought to work or why it’s trustworthy in a purely materialistic or skeptical framework.
Why do we need a transcendent source of rationality? We only need to build upon foundations of solid axioms.
Okay well this is just an opinion then. My main point here is that you can’t propose any “oughts” without a justification.
Do I need to spell out why someone who values truth should seek it? It’s not really an opinion, but a statement. I guess it isn’t a complete statement. I guess a more complete statement would be “someone who values truth, and wants to find what they value, should seek truth.” Is that better? I don’t think that middle portion is required to spell out, but whatever.
Why do you think truth matters so much? Don’t disagree, but why is it humans will forego a more beneficial situation if it’s proven to be “untrue” or “not real” etc?
More beneficial for whom? The truth is that pollution is bad. I can make myself feel better about how much energy I use by assuring myself that I’m chosen by God and deserve to consume resources and pollute. This harms other people though. The truth is non-opinionated, so actually useful. Believing something to make yourself feel better, and ignoring problems, is biased favoring yourself and against others.
Well I’m not that guy but I can speak from myself that every time I have been true to myself and others, I have felt more and more real and tangible myself. And it is a much better feeling than “fooling yourself” with the why not, using rational logic to just make a decision like that. I always say to my kids, nobody can know what happens when we die and if they say they do, they are making it up. But we can talk about some truths still, that are felt, and then communicated to you as just something that is comfirmed by experience, that is, you experienced something nobody else should know and then they did too, with synchronicity and other phenomenon which just makes us assume it’s true. But in the sense of scientific fact it can not be described because words and language kind of is not enough or it doesn’t kind of translate at all.
I think that’s a really healthy conversation to have with your kids, man! I totally agree with your sentiment, and being “authentic” feels right, but it’s odd when you think about it. Where does it come from? Humans self-deceive all the time, right? It’s almost a useful skill in certain situations (e.g. optimism bias), but there’s an overriding feeling that “real” is “better”. It just boggles my mind a bit tbh.
It was unlocked hugely by an insight I got long ago that is a deep truth that I always keep an eye on, which is that;
The more honest you are with others, the more honest you are with yourself.
It is one of the effects of “mirror neurons” phenomenon and the realisation that our subconscious, our “self” does not explicitly distinguish between you and other people the way your prefrontal cortex and conscious mind does. This is old research by now but to me it makes so much sense and I see the effects in people around me all the time.
In dream or deep meditation, “god experiences” (I forget the English name for it) or with psychedelics, this comes to the surface and provokes many “we are one” messages and compassionate teachings such as the golden rule and karma etc. But bottom line, most of our brain just doesn’t give exactly a fuck about who is who at any given time. Just the relationship between them.
Similarly, if you talk down on yourself, you are also more likely to feel like other people are not enough. We all mirror each other and react to subconscious signals every day. This is an cascading effect, that will become exponentially useful if you consciously choose and gradually adjust how to be towards others.
(I kind of go off on this tangent now, because I apparently like talking about it but feel free to ignore the rest if you aren’t into the specifics of my understanding of why it is like this)
Our bodies are talking to each other (subconscious to subconscious) with immense bandwidth, from smells and hormones, microexpressions, physical notes (leaving objects or others in some specific state). But most of it is discarded and not raised to system 1 (frontal lobe)
By learning other people’s predictions, our body can predict events and sometimes chains of several events between several people, and intuit how they came to be at a certain place at a certain time or why the car keys are in a new place, inferring other events, and all these predictions occurs in system 2, subconsciously and continually so that our focus can be on what’s at hand.
By being predictable we incur safety and signal affinity. Any deviation from normal will be evaluated by system 2 if it should warrant a notice to system 1 to investigate, and that will most often be a signal of discomfort, as unpredictability of any kind is an “expensive” metabolic operation.
A very dry explanation that perhaps gives a little insight into the crisscrossing neurological mechanics. It’s good to first understand that the body is continuously budgeting for any prediction error, and for instance meeting new people or interacting with someone that speaks differently than we expect, is draining from a pure metabolic standpoint. The body needs to have prepared glucose and other material and if it happens many times in a row with no rest period for the thoughts to settle, the stress can make you straight up ignore what others say and just answer your prediction to what they just said. It’s the cheapest mode of operation and most common during a day.
I digress a lot but it’s fun because I just pieced together a pretty solid understanding of the whole and previously I had just so many sporadic and isolated insights that lately has found each other into a cohesive model and it’s kind of cathartic to just share it blatantly. It’s a tiny bit probable that my ADHD medication makes me ramble a bit and I hope I didn’t overwhelm ya. Cheers!
The truth has value in decision making, while comforting lies have value in stress reduction. Choosing ‘truth’ over ‘comfort’ is a long-termist strategy. Being satisfied by a simple answer will make you feel better now, increasing survivability in the short term, but finding a better model of the world to operate by, a.k.a. learning, lets you make better decisions for the rest of your life.
deleted by creator
I went to a Romanian Holy Unction service and it was beautiful.
If there is a god or something like a god, it has to be the sun. The sun makes all life possible and has near infinite energy, I can not think of anything more deserving to be god. Will it save us or help us as individuals, i don’t think so, its a god we are insignificant in comparison and will burn when staying in its presence for two long. Also its real.
Another idea I had was from Einsteins quote: “to believe in god you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.” So by that logic you better believe in all gods for maximum gain. There are a bunch more suns aswell ;)
I do not and i believe that religions are the number 1 problem in the world. The things people do for their “Gods” are stupid and cruel af
Actually I would say that religions are just a symptom of a human flaw.
The same gets exploited by politics and other things too.
Religion is just so bad because it is based on an intangible mind construct as as lies go, this is one of the biggest ever to keep spreading and going fueled by nothing more than the sunk cost fallacy in time and energy invested of current and past believers. They need to validate themselves by pushing ot onto the next generations because otherwise it would mean their their time invested into it was pointless.
For me, God is a character stronger than me… Someone whom I call upon in times of despair. That’s it. No deeper meaning than this.
DMT
I used to believe because of how convinced other people were. I thought they had a good reason. Turned out they had not
Truth is proof - I can neither prove the number of gods is >0, nor prove it is =0.
Thus cautious agnosticism (since the evidence suggests, if there is at least one god, then they really hate us).
They may not hate us. They could be totally agnostic too. Like a rain drop that dropped in our pond, they may be passing by having no idea the ripple it left behind. That’s the wildness of all the options for GODS capacity. But hate requires human input from stimulus.
You cannot have a painting without an artist. A sculpture without a sculpture. A tool will never use itself, it takes a user.
Imagine a blank and static universe. Someone had to add or move something to start the initial reaction even if they never play a part in the events after.
In some sense there is a creator. I just don’t know in what capacity.
Why someone? Why not something? Physics say a monopole magnet is mathematically possible, something like that would absolutely cause a disturbance because it doesn’t conform to the laws of physics we have defined like every action has an equal and opposite reaction… I think you’re right, something happened but I don’t know why it would be someone and not simply probability and the natural world conforming to that probability
I can’t answer every question especially pertaining to evolving science. I wouldn’t even try… I’m not religious either. To have something, someone or something had to create it that’s all I can muster on the subject. Can you create anything without touching, moving, manipulating by some outside force?
I don’t know how it happened, why, person or thing. All I can figure is if the universe was a blank sheet of paper, something had to add, kickstart, etc a reaction for things to unfold regardless of size, time or scale. I don’t really believe the universe at its utmost basic, blank canvas form voided form, simply has energy. It doesnt make sense. Energy requires input from some outside source.
Nothing in physics say that time has a beginning or end. It says in fact that it doesn’t have that.
It does not say anything about time starting, ending, or anything. It is just a set of rules that approximately reproduce results we observe. It is not the rules of the universe. The rules we use in physics actually do not have a direction for time. It works the same in both directions, though clearly time does have a direction. It does not make predictions on if time started or if it will end, only what is the case for what we can observe right here right now.
Um, yeah the interesting part is that while physics itself indicate time as a one dimensional infinite band, (with possibly branching multiverses but I digress) we as humans attribute a beginning and end, as all we know consists of such objects and entities. Our mind is terrible at grasping infinity, it has even broken many curious minds that try to understand it and are a bit too tenacious in their search. In any case that is my proposal here, that it is an unanswerable question how the universe started. We have facts up to big bang. It (as usual with these things) gives us just more questions than actual answers to how the universe came to exist. I argue that it always did and always will.
We have facts up to big bang. It (as usual with these things) gives us just more questions than actual answers to how the universe came to exist. I argue that it always did and always will.
I think this is faulty logic. How the universe came to exist is fine, and we don’t know, but that the universe “always existed” is a bit odd. You can’t have anything before space-time exists. In a sense that means yes, it “always” existed, because that’s the start of time, but in another sense it did not exist too, just time didn’t exist, if that makes sense. It obviously doesn’t really make sense because we’re unable to hold that concept in our mind, but time did come into existence.
Unless I have missed something huge, time didn’t ever not exist. If you refer to big bang, what evidence says time started then? Sounds really fascinating but I have never heard of it
How do you have time without space-time? The big bang is actually not the exact start of the universe. It’s pretty close, but not quite. It is the expansion of the universe. Before that it’s in a very dense high energy state, but it does exist. It explains how it went from this state to the current state, but not how it came into existence at all.
I don’t think it’s believed to have sat in this dense high energy state for infinite time before the big bang, so it must have come into existence, not just existed forever. If that’s the case that means space-time came into existence. You can’t have time without space-time, so there is no time before it exists. At some point space-time exists, and as such there is no before, since there is not time.
It seems odd to consider. How do things happen without space-time? We can’t really think about this concept, because we’re space-time beings. It doesn’t even make sense to consider. However, having an intelligence start things doesn’t help. It only then begs the question where they came from. Surely the universe just starting is more likely than an intelligence appearing for some reason, then it deciding to start the universe. That’s a vastly more complex set of circumstances.
If you zoom out on the universe it’s almost pure noise. Does that resemble what you’d expect from a designer? I guess it could be designed, but there’s also no reason to indicate that if pure randomness is also expect to create the same things.
I am unsure of the capacity of a designer, constructor, what label you want to call an input. To have noise there must be an initial force to create it regardless of its structure, randomness, pattern, form. A big bang, literally anything we may never know. But if the universe was static and blank with no energy or anything just a black sand box. There would be no noise until a reaction happened.
I have never seen something come from nothing. I don’t think anyone has ever or this question wouldn’t have been asked or even be in our consciousness.
I have never seen something come from nothing. I don’t think anyone has ever or this question wouldn’t have been asked or even be in our consciousness.
Well, particle and anti-particle pairs come into existence from nothing all the time actually. They typically annihilate though.
But they don’t come into existence without an outside force. Those are first and second parties reacting. Who’s the 3rd, 4th, 5th, END/START? Edit: Who spurs them into existence? Even if these pairs form and the sum is zero once the +1 and - 1 clash and the game zero sums. Who started or what started the spark something cannot come from nothing, this just means science must not have discovered the root cause of your equation. That is/was my only point. If things in the beginning were static, no movement, no input or output, someone/something adding an object, or kick off to start all of the events after whether they were involved or not. Just speaking on the OPs creator terms and not digressing into free will vs destiny.
Who started or what started the spark something cannot come from nothing…
No, they happen in relation to other things happening, but nothing creates them, especially not a someone. They just pop into existence. Why is that so hard to believe? Is it any less believable than needing some supernatural force to cause it? What created them? That wouldn’t answer any questions anyway, so why would that be more believable.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/something-from-nothing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production
If things in the beginning were static, no movement, no input or output…
Things weren’t static. They just weren’t in general. Before the universe started and space-time came into existence, there was no space or time. There is no before, and there’s no where to be static. At some point it just existed, not at any time, since time didn’t exist. It’s hard, or rather impossible, to really hold the concept in your mind because we can’t imagine a timelessness, but that seems to be the case.
Those were wild reads, not only that but further study of the entire subject. I spent the last day combing the internet and it is very heavy stuff.
I see and understand the process from nothing to something which I didn’t previously have using matter and anti matter alongside other energy. Using quantum energy and all it entails given current science. Allowing different particles and matter to seemingly pop in and out is interesting and has came a long way since I last got educated. Its constant.
That being said nothing science offers yet, gives an answer to my/or OPs creator question. Because regardless of theory and concepts and their are a ton! Science is all based on some form of pre existing structure, law, and or potential, and never absolutely nothing. We lack the models, proof, testing capabilities. The biggest models are string theory, and loop quantum gravity. Inside of the there are many concepts zero point energy, Tegmark, Loop Bounce, Vilenkin, Holographic origin, and on and on currently being evaluated.
That leaves us currently having no truth to your view or mine, a stalemate for now. Without a new paradigm it’s possibly unknowable.
Yeah, no matter what there’s no possible way to ever know how the universe came into existence. Since there is no time before it existed, nothing we can figure out really matters. It just exists for some reason.
That said, the creator solution doesn’t make sense to me. Its supposed to solve the question of how something came from nothing, but it doesn’t. It just pushes it back further. The existence of the creator must now be explained. Where did they come from? It seems much simpler that the universe popped into existence from nothing rather than an intelligence popped into existence from nothing, then decides to create the universe.
Can anyone make sense of this post? It looks like unintelligible symbols crammed together to me.
Hmm. I think you can’t have those things without an observer. Art, beauty and utility are in the eye (or hand) of the beholder, and apt to appear anywhere.
I agree with this. Whether life is a series of evolving or constant simulation, whatever form it takes for which we cannot form answers for yet. Something cannot come from nothing. I again just don’t know, nor does anyone the answer to OPs question.
In fact, nature has some of the best art. And our art is almost as good. Does it mean we are almost god? Does beauty signify gods presence? It is very harsh to the less graceful people that have hearts of gold
Nature is the best art. Nothing a human could produce lasts a comparable scale of time, force, evolution, as nature. I think as a civilization we need to harness more of natures principles. Atleast until we can find another comparable medium that isn’t nature to process our problems. Which we have not done yet.
I agree. Except, compared to all other living beings, our art is special. Why is that? Why can Bob Ross teach how to capture it, not only on a visual level but on a visceral cathartic level, for painter and observer to intuit and interpret the signal of the majesty of nature, indeed often even framing a specific part of nature in a love letter that can riff on the concept and introduce fantastic concepts that may even refer to and provoke completely novel amalgamations of existing natural phenomenon and depict them fallably while ultimately even through text inspire a view of the majestic we couldn’t without the artist?
