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How can we find the truth about "God"?

I am an agnostic...I am interested in finding the truth about the existing of god...
Is there really an all-round "he" who is controlling or guiding everything?
Is anyone here who can tell me some ways to know more about this?
Thanks very much.

Ann7Mignon 4 Sep 6
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3

There is no way to know for sure. Ever.

@Hercules3000 I don't think so.

Thanks for the comment...
We can know before the sure day comes.

@Hercules3000 Unfounded assumption? You're the one making the unfounded assumption. Now you're using strawmen in the argument? No, I'm not a flat Earther. Happy? Does that prove your point any better? You have the gall to accuse ME of making the unfounded assumption when you are the one claiming we will answer ALL QUESTIONS with advanced technology in the future, no matter how philosophical they are? How do you suppose we will do that when there is no technology that allows us to do it now or even lends any credence to the notion that it can even remotely be possible in the future? We're lucky we make it through the next 50-100 years as a civilization with the crap going on now including climate change.

God is unknowable and unprovable. How would you know it's just not a trick of some kind? Or a more powerful or knowledgeable being that isn't a "God" in the traditional sense of the word, but just more powerful than you? The human mind is severely flawed and tuned to perception. There is no "true" reality. Will we have a machine that can magically determine if it's God through the energy in the air that it reads? Nonsense! If a person from a civilization that was 1,000,000 years ahead of us in every aspect of our society came to the Earth and could levitate their body, give us medicine through the touch of their finger and cure all diseases, and then have food pop up around the entire world, would you call them God? Do fish in someone's fishbowl think they are God? They have no perception of anything outside of their fishbowl. Someone makes food fall from the sky and magically cleans the water with a filter. One day all the fish suffer and are dying because their God abandoned them or decided to kill them by not giving them food or clean water. Is it true that that person is "God"? We don't have nearly enough faculty to be able to determine something like that when we can't even do it for things right here on Earth in our own perceptions of TANGIBLE things in our existence.

You're so sure we will evolve into these all knowing beings, which in turn would be perceived as us being Gods ourselves. Utter nonsense!

@Hercules3000 It's nice how you also left the second part of my quote off to try and prove your point. Some of my fellow liberals really are cunts.

@Hercules3000 Make sure you take pics of your strawman costume for Halloween.

Oh and please direct me to the study in a science journal on whether or not God exists being that it's not a philosophical discussion.

@Hercules3000 yawn

@Hercules3000 Says the person that started the convo with insults. Fuck off.

@Hercules3000 Trust me, I would do it in person too. You might think everyone else is a bitch, but you are sadly mistaken. Now you want to fucking insinuate an in person meeting would turn me into jello? Lol

@Hercules3000 This motherfucker is going to insult me and then when I throw it back at him will threaten me with an in person meeting and then call me childish lol. Damn bitch, have you been diagnosed by a psychologist?

@Hercules3000 An "across the pond" BITCH making a physical threat. And I'm the coward? Lol

@Hercules3000 You don't want it bitch. You just don't know lol

@Hercules3000 Go argue with someone who will submit to your insecure macho bullshit. I'm not the one bitch. You are the weakest link, goodbye.

Oh and by the way, Flat Earth Conspiracists are mostly believers and religious. One more argument that proves you have shitty powers of deduction and understanding.

@Hercules3000 I agree, laptop warriors amuse me. You just keep repeating what I say to you and denying that you both insulted me and threatened me....and then you insult and threaten me again lol. You're not the sharpest knife in the drawer lol. Stop projecting your bullshit. Nothing gangsta about me. I'm just a fucking animal when someone attacks me. Ok, so give me an address where you want me to meet you and I'll whoop your ass. Is that what you want old man? Lol. Stupid cunt. Fuck off with your pseudo macho bullshit.

@Hercules3000 I'm as old as your IQ, 39 lol

@Hercules3000 Right, well I'm glad we were able to figure this out, so keep backing up and go back to letting me study how we evolved from chimps to whatever you are now.

@Hercules3000 I'm 6'2" and 287 pounds. An ex-athlete with an obvious temper. You might be in shape, but your jaw doesn't have muscle. Don't let the roids go to your head bitch. Make sure you inject yourself in your ass so only your lover sees the needle holes. Good talk. Have fun.

@Hercules3000 No shit. It was an insult genius. I highly doubt you have a PHD in theoretical physics. All throughout this thread you insult people and contradict yourself. You've also put words in people's mouths and used strawmen arguments as well as not been able to have proper grammar. I will be blocking you now loony.

@Hercules3000 You need to work on your grammar Mr. PHD.

3

Go with the evidence. Virtually everything once attributed to god has moslty been explained scientifically to happen without the intervention of a supreme being. Most old testament stopries have been proven to be false.

Humans created the concept of god to explain the unknown. We have since learned that not knowing is not "proof" of anything.

Thanks for the comment...
What you said is probably true...
But not compeletely sure,friend.

3

If you want the truth about God it's super simple. Take all of your irrefutable evidence that god is real and interacts with the universe he created.

Put that evidence on a scale and watch nothing happen. Nothing ways just as much.

Thanks for the comment.
Whatever,It sounds funny,haha.

3

U own a mirror ? Go take a look . " controlling and guiding everything ", well , congrats , u r god today . At least for the things of your immediate interest and future . I am god every day since 18 pretty much . Nobody rewards me or punishes me other than me as well . I hope u r a good god to your self and others .

Thanks for your comment.
And thank you for your wish,I will be good to others.

3

There is no such thing! Ask yourself, whatever happened to Baal, Zeus, Odin, etc etc etc....no different from today's current "gawd"!

Thanks for the comment(ฅ>ω<*ฅ)

3

there is no way; you make your own choices and decisions about this , we are all different.

Maybe.Thanks for the comment.

3

If "he" exists, he's either an asshole or incompentent. The only way you can find out is after you are dead.

Then I need to wait for several years haha...
Thanks for your comment.

2

So I had moved to the point of absolute atheism and in some ways I'm still there but...

I'm a physicist. The problem is that some of our (humanities) recent physics experiments show that we clearly live in an exceptionally strange universe that is very very different from our common sense. The kicker for me is something called "The Delayed Choice Experiment." It is a twist on an already bizarre and surprising experiment called "The Double Slit Experiment." Then there is Bell's theorem which is also truly unique and points towards a universe that is very much based on "random chance."

It isn't simple to explain these experiments to the uninitiated so I will give references for those who are interested. It is worth saying however, that not even our best minds can explain these experiments.

[en.wikipedia.org]

[en.wikipedia.org]

[en.wikipedia.org]

In the delayed choice experiment - it appears that consciousness matters. That is that physics is different if you decide to observer. This is truly strange.

One possible, and maybe at the moment the most sensible explanation of this truly surprising result, is that we live in a universe which is a simulation. If that is true, then there exists a simulator. One who is apparently simulating our universe. If you choose to call that "God" then God exists much to my surprise.

Of course this "God" creature (or whatever it is) has no "morality" nor any reason to care about human outcomes that we could know of. All that we could know, if this explanation is correct, is that this thing would be outside of our universe and intelligent beyond our ability to comprehend.

@Hercules3000 and that is a possibility. If simulations at the level of our universe are possible then the number of simulations should far out number the number of "real" universes. Obviously there would have to exist some "real" universes but the simulated ones could be nested several layers deep.

I'm not claiming that physicists have found the answer by the way. I'm just startled at some of the truths about our universe that we have discovered in the last 50 years and the simulation hypothesis is one of the explanations that is being taken seriously by theoretical physics. (Believe it or not this is really something that has moved into the mainstream of physics discussion.)

Thanks a lot for sharing.
Truths help us get closer to the answer.

2

There are lots of ways to know more about it.

The first step is ignosticism. one cannot determine if a thing exists without knowing what that thing is. If I say "does thing exist" and you ask what "thing" is and I say "it's thing", you can't know. So, to begin, you must have a definition of god, a description, which you can think about.

The next step is about evidence. one must have a way to determine what one thinks is "true" or "not true", which means there has to be a system for making that distinction. we have two. observation and reasoning. we can observes something to be true, such as "this grass is wet", or we can deduce it to be true, such as "infants have no control over their bowels, therefore this infant will poop wherever it is when the time comes". you don't have to observe that particular infant pooping to know that this is true.

Now, when you ask "is there a "he" controlling or guiding everything, the answer is "no", because "he" is a term for male members of a sexual species, and a supreme creator would be singular, ergo not sexual, ergo neither "he" nor "she". it would be an it.

now, "controlling and guiding everything". if this were the case, then we would see evidence that natural processes were being subverted. we know that water runs downhill. it takes no "god" to make a river run downhill. UNLESS you see something happening that actually defies a natural law, i.e. one of the forces we know to actually be causing things to happen, then there is not only no evidence of a god, but there is actually evidence that nothing except natural forces is guiding anything. This evidence becomes stronger the more you know about natural processes.

to date, not one single instance of a natural process being reversed by the will of any being at all has ever been recorded, anywhere, at any time. things thought to be "miraculous" at one time have been largely explained, and more and more of them are being explained as time goes on.

Thanks for the logical comment.
I feel more clear about my question now.
I guess there is "it" who has power to do things without followering natural rules.
Now....I need to collect evidence about this....
Thank you.

2

First off, get rid of ideas that are self-serving. Then start to practice critical thinking. Everything will become crystal clear. It really doesn't take a genius to see the idea of a magical deity that puts one puny life form at the center of the universe is insane.

Thanks for the comment.
That is a point...I will try others,too.

2

Research the origins of religion,for instance, Jesus himself is a combination of mythologies that came before him.horus of Egypt Mithra of Persia bore identical traits of Jesus performed miracles was crucified rose from the dead born of a virgin Etc. Many if not all for the stories in the Bible can be disproved, prophecies that never came true. Faith is a belief system that is not based on evidence if you had evidence you would not need faith. Faith is dishonest it asserts what is true which is evidently not true.

I disagree. I think humans function on faith all the time but the question is in what they place their faith. Religions want you to have faith in things you haven't ever seen or experienced before and that you don't expect to see or experience in this life. You are asked to exercise faith in a being by talking to it even though you can't see it or hear any response.

On the other hand, you can exercise faith in things that you can see and experience. For example, you likely have faith that when you put your food in a microwave and turn it on your food it will come out hot. You won't know for sure until it is finished but because you've had the experience of heating your food in a microwave over and over, you have a great deal of faith that you will get the same results.

I do agree that faith can be used in dishonest ways but I don't think that in and of itself it is a dishonest idea. I think it's more a matter of the meaning of the word having been twisted to serve religious interests. I still believe that every time you plant a seed and take care of it, you are exercising faith. It's just that your faith is much better founded in reality and honest expectations.

@Meili I was referring to religion only in particular Christianity that's what I'm most familiar.faith requires you to believe extrodinary events, and a invisible Man in the sky who knows all dispite endless amount of evidence to the contrary.in this case you actually have to deny reality,remain ignorant which the church relies on and have no rational, logical thinking at all.the more you educate yourself on this the more it makes logical sense.please don't get me wrong, I would like to go to heaven and live for eternity, unfortunately sound reasoning suggest otherwise. That's why life is so precious cause it's so short.personally I intend to make the absolute best of my time.

@RichardLeek I agree with you completely there. I think the reason why this is important to me is because it was through my new understanding that faith actually should be based on something you can confidently have faith in, that I was able to overcome the idea that I should be exercising faith in an invisible being. According to the Christian mentality, if I don't have faith in Jesus, he can't save me. My faith in him was fear based, fear of consequences I could not verify.

Now I can and do have faith. I have faith in flowers growing, I have faith in my car running well for a long time, I have faith in my child growing and learning. I even have faith that my ex will continue acting like an ass. All those things might not actually happen but I have enough confidence that they will that I can plan my life around them.

Sorry to be all preachy but my life has improved so much over these changes that I have a hard time keeping quiet about it.

@Meili I'm glad that some things are say may be of help to you and you talk about fear of not believing with that in mind I'd like to point out that that's one thing that Christianity teaches us that if you don't believe you will suffer a fate worse than death that would be hell torment torture pain agony. you know that doesn't sound like an all loving God to me. I'm not trying to sway your opinion in any way people believe what they want to believe I just like to pass on what I've learned and what I absolutely believe is the truth. Everything science says can be absolutely proven both directly and indirectly and wat it don't know it admits that it don't know and that's really where I stand on the truth. On the other hand a lie is a deliberate attempt to deceive and when people try to get you to believe things that aren't true that's exactly what's happening and I want to know when I'm being lied to the when somebody is telling me the truth. I have a personal motto, truth is what the facts are!

Thanks for the comment..
I see...I may need finish reading the bible to know more about the belief systerm.

2

Weigh up the evidence and draw a logical conclusion or go the other route and believe based on faith. Only you can decide.

Thanks for the comment...
Feel lonely by thinking this way.

2

My opinion is that there is no answer, and that the question itself is what matters. Your probing questions indicate that you are courageous and deeply aware.

The ultimate nature of reality is a deep and overwhelming mystery IMO. The question of God is bound up with other questions, such as the nature of conscious awareness, and the question of what we are ourselves. There is also a very basic question: What is existence? It’s something that we take for granted, but according to quantum gravity field theory there are no “things”—time does not exist, and space as we view it is illusion.

I like to keep an open mind to the idea of a higher intelligence—something like a universal consciousness in which we all share. The theory of conscious realism proposed by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman might be of interest to you.

Thanks for the comment and thank you.O(∩_&cap😉O

2

First of all, why do you think this deity is male, or has a gender at all? Second, there are strong hints that we simply cannot know, that is impossible for us to grasp the universe in its entirety. See Schrodinger's cat, the double slit experiment, and Godel theorem of incompleteness.

Ubik Level 4 Sep 7, 2018

Thanks for the comment.
Because the Christian usually use he to express god...
I will use 'it' after this...
Have known some about the experiments.Thanks

@Ann7Mignon to elaborate a bit: the theorem proves that formal systems can't tell anything certain about themselves. The experiments show that we are part of the system we try to formally understand. Hence... Most physicists are in fact convinced (Einstein, Hawking among them) that for those reasons a theory of everything is impossible to achieve. Good digging!

2

that's a tough one because you can't prove a negative. you could substitute any myth for "he" (which, by the way, is not a given within every religion). if you substitute the words "tooth fairy" or "spaghetti monster" (admittedly neither of whom are purported to control or guide everything) the immensity of the task becomes clearer. to make it even clearer, not every belief system that involves a supreme being involves one who controls or guides everything, or even anything. so there is a lot to prove or disprove. so let's go back to basics and call this thing god, and assume it has some active interest in what's going on in our lives. look for one thing that cannot otherwise be explained. then realize that our not individually knowing the explanation for a phenomenon doesn't automatically justify attributing it to a supernatural being. there is another element to consider as well: if there is a controlling thingie, and it refuses to reveal itself to us, why are we so concerned with it when it is so little concerned with us? i know you are interested and you have a right to be interested, but i can't help feeling otherwise. i have seen, heard, felt no evidence of any supreme beings, and have seen, heard and felt lots of evidence for natural causes of everything currently attributed to a supreme being, so i don't see any reason even to suspect, much less try to prove, the existence of such a being. (i will admit that the tooth fairy still owes me a quarter, and with interest, a settlement could solve a lot of my worldly problems, but i am not holding my breath here.)

okay, that was long. let me ask you a short question: apart from the fact that lots of people SAY there is a supreme being (and keeping in mind that some people SAY that they've been kidnapped by aliens, and others keep missing the deadline for when they SAY the world is going to end), why would you even imagine for an instant that there was a controlling/guiding being?

g

Thanks for the comments...
Because those things make me feel strange...
And I even went through some strange things which is not scientific but feel so true....

I can say....I am struggling with it....but I am sober and need to prove with true evidence.

@Ann7Mignon you cannot prove the NONexistence of anything. you can use facts and evidence to determine likelihood.

g

I have asked several ordained ministers that same exact question and got the same exact answer every single time. Faith. Again because there is no evidence so therefore it evidently isn't true and it can be dismissed without evidence just like in a court of law. Faith is actually a dishonest position to have in religion it requires you to deny reality, in particular everything that science has proven to be true, and believe in something even though there's a mountain of evidence that would suggest otherwise. In the book of fables Jesus said that he would return before all of his disciples had passed away well that's been about 1900 years ago safe to say we been stood up.

@RichardLeek lol asking a minister about it is not going to get you an objective answer, right? you got the expected, unsatisfying answer.

g

2

Just observing nature, the universe and reality around me has been my means of choice.

Thanks for the comments.
I will try when I give up

2

Research:

Linguistic Record ~ etymology term God
Latin God=Deus
Deus derives from Greek city Dion built for the worship of Zeus.

Research:

Mythogical record ~ Jesus is a solar deity
Research Astrotheologia

Research:

Historical Record ~ Sumerian Civilization
Judaism took many of the famed biblical stories from Sumerian Cosmology.

Historical Record ~ Egyptian Civilization
The Pharaoh Amenhotep IV created monotheism

Historical Record ~ Egyptian Civilization
Learn about the Hyksos rulers in Egypt. Modern Scholarship believes the Canaanite and Hebrew peoples descend from the Hyksos.

That is a good start for you.

Israel

Isis ~ Egyptian deity who gave virgin birth to Horus
Ra ~ Egyptian solar deity born of virgin birth to Isis
also known as Horus
El ~ primary deity of the Canaanite/Hebrew
peoples. First name of Yahweh or the
supreme deity known as God the father
of Jesus prounced "hey zeus". Represented
by the planet Saturn because the
Canaanite/Hebrews worshipped the planet
Saturn as the deity El.

Etre Level 7 Sep 7, 2018

Thank you( •̀∀•́ )

@Ann7Mignon

The Owl is a symbol of Great Knowledge.

2

Just beware of anyone who claims to know the answer.

Haha,I will be as you said.
Thanks for the comment.

2

First read everything you can about how to think scientifically. Then read about evolution. Then about psychology. Then folklore. The more you know about human nature, the better you will understand God's nature.
Or take this handy shortcut...
The “he” in this case is a metaphor. When metaphor is mistaken for literal fact, puppies die (metaphorically, of course).
But don't take my word for it. Study hard. Pace yourself; there’s a lot of material to cover. Best wishes.

skado Level 9 Sep 7, 2018

Puppies die?

@Meili
...or sometimes kittens.

@skado Oh, dear . . .

Thank you .Best wishes to you.

@Ann7Mignon
Thanks.

1

By all means, go in search of a personal experience of God, and become a mystic. They are genuinely interesting people, if they can manage to stay clear of extremism.

1

If God is, by definition, immaterial, he is beyond the scope of our senses and scientific instruments. So, there is no way to prove God. Besides that, God is ultimately undefinable. One cannot prove the undefinable.

1

I've yet to see or hear anything from any source that has some verifiable evidence attached to it that would make it worth the effort looking for this supposed god figure.

It could be considered suspicious the fact that there is zero verifiable evidence that would support the god idea if there were any.

The writings about the various religions I've seen look distinctly man made to me and most of the info about these religions date back to the bronze age and earlier than that and those ages weren't exactly known for having an over load of quantum physicists or anyone else of a similar caliber that would even understand what a quantum physicist was, performed for a living or any other of the people with higher levels of enquiry we now have.

When I add the above together religion becomes a thanks but no thanks to me.

By the way I'm a secular humanist, being referred to as an atheist as you probably know is akin to referring to someone as a non stamp collector.

Regards ippy

ippy Level 3 Sep 12, 2018

Thanks for sharing.

1

There's as near to zero viable evidence as you can get for the god idea so why bother with religious belief, there could be a he, she or it god out there somewhere and it's just as likely that there are leprechaurns, fairies or unicorns out there; I take it you more than likely don't believe in them, why bother with god idea?

ippy Level 3 Sep 10, 2018

Thanks for your comment...
Well....It's just that I experienced some things last year...and they changed my little world or I 'll say they changed the way I see this big world....
So....I need find an answer.

@Ann7Mignon In my opinion, if you need to find an answer, it will not be from any human, as you will only get opinions, but must come directly from the "god" that you seek.

1

All of nature can be explained by the known laws of physics there is no need for a God. The argument can be made that we don't know everything so God could be hidden there. That creates the God of the gaps problem. What it means is the more we learn the smaller the circle God could inhabit. But if you want an education on the topic I would check out Cosmos. It features Neil Degras Tyson and was produced by Seth MacFarlane. It takes you step by step and explains not only what we know, but how we came to know it. It is exceptionally well written and produced and will capture your imagination and broaden hour understanding.

Thanks for your comment.
I will learn more about what you introduced...
Thanks again.

1

No there is not and once you start digging deeper and deeper then eventually you get to a point where you realize that everything there is that we have known or will ever know could have never existed, that everything is just an illusion and the thought may get so disturbing that you may get to feel the big senseless hollow of total and utter meaningless. When you get there if you try hard enough then you discover it's not fun and we rather dive into the crazy reality called life to keep us busy instead.....until the day we die. That's all. The human need to feel that void has been filled up forever with God. In other words, WE created God out of a desperate need that as of today it is still an open question. Why are we here? What could have been if we were not? Would a huge empty universe make sense or could it be possible that not even the universe would have existed either and then the sense of nothingness completely takes over?.... thoughts and thoughts.....endless journey

@Hercules3000 there is so much ahead of us to develop and/or discover. I'll give you that much, however if you look at the trend, the more we learn the closer we get to establish God as a man invention out of necessity and not the other way around

@Hercules3000 It seems to me that you are still holding on hoping there is a God and clearly I am NOT. Just so we are clear, I don't have any intentions in the slightest possible way to prove you wrong. You can see things your way, I do hope
you can honor the same courtesy.

@Hercules3000 got it, ok

Thanks for the comment.
I am glad that we have brains to think about these crazy questions so life won't be just surviving....

@Ann7Mignon thanks for the question. There's so much to talk about and discover, but sadly only one life. We will do what we can.

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