Do you believe in God?

[magma]

Oh, and Blenky, allow me to buy you a pint if/when we make it to the same dancefloor. You remembered something I wrote on the Intertubes. This has never happened to me before.




Edit: Well, that's me done posting for the year...

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[kay]

Of course, some people take it far too seriously, but then some people take Star Trek seriously enough to learn to speak Vulcan.

I'm impressed, the last thread you likened the blind following of everything the bible says to the learning of klingon. No one can ever assume your metaphors of being repetitive

Conclusion: He's a Trekkist bastard!

[Blenky]

Oh, and Blenky, allow me to buy you a pint if/when we make it to the same dancefloor. You remembered something I wrote. This has never happened to me before.

What a long way I have come from being that tnuc wot said those kids from bradford weren't worth anything.

Pretty sure I owe you a pint for making me realise my opinion on inner city youth culture might not be fully informed enough for me to make comments on the internet with me coming from a small west yorkshire village.

[cityzen]

Cheeky addition: I'm impressed with the hundreds of Christians everyone's met. I know two vicars and a Bishop, but I'm not sure I've spoken to hundreds of people about religion in my life. I haven't even met hundreds of Arsenal fans and I've been to a stadium containing tens of thousands of them on several occasions! Most people I meet in Britain are pretty secular...

Again with the language (my fault again) - 'met' as in "Come into the presence or company of someone", not shook hands with and said how do you do.
Apart from the Christians I have met met that said the Bible is the word of God, i've also had the experience of hearing a pastor say "the Bible is the word of God" and all these people (well, a room about a third of the size)

saying "yay, we agree" or similar.

[el-tel]

Old man with a beard that lives in the sky, NO

Higher consciousness and spiritual realm, YES

[Devry_Kaneda]

In which case, yes, i do. When we allow the term to be slightly more ambiguous than the Abrahamic meaning then I don't think anyone with any degree of ''''spirituality'''' would disagree.

I hate to be the arch-Devil's Advocate, but I was created (fnar fnar) this way, so...

How about believing in the experience of spirituality as evolved in the human brain (perhaps for reasons for social cohesion or to allow our horribly complex psyches to not descend into non-functioning depression as soon as we realise we're all going to die for nothing), but not believing anything supernatural is implied by it?

I think my personal take is basically that we're fairly reliably spiritual beings, but that that doesn't necessarily imply the existence of spirits.

Currently reading this. Backs up exactly what you're talking about. Fantastic book.

[magma]

Cheeky addition: I'm impressed with the hundreds of Christians everyone's met. I know two vicars and a Bishop, but I'm not sure I've spoken to hundreds of people about religion in my life. I haven't even met hundreds of Arsenal fans and I've been to a stadium containing tens of thousands of them on several occasions! Most people I meet in Britain are pretty secular...

Again with the language (my fault again) - 'met' as in "Come into the presence or company of someone", not shook hands with and said how do you do.
Apart from the Christians I have met met that said the Bible is the word of God, i've also had the experience of hearing a pastor say "the Bible is the word of God" and all these people (well, a room about a third of the size)

saying "yay, we agree" or similar.

I think I'd better concede on this one... I have absolutely no doubt that dodgy flavours of Christianity (and all religions - it's not uncommon to meet badly-thought-through Buddhists, though they tend to be less offensive!) abound the world over and I think my rose-tinted view is a bit skewed by growing up in rural England, where, even going to a CofE Primary School, the biggest impact organised religion has on a kid's life is learning the words to The Lord's Prayer and All Things Bright And Beautiful. I was raised as an atheist (my Dad's about as open to argument as Dawkins...), but my parents somehow ended up best friends with the local vicar in our Lincolnshire village... then after moving to Somerset, my secondary school best mate was the son of the local vicar.

My mate's Dad was excellent* actually... he wasn't even sure he believed in God himself, but he "promised" when he got diagnosed with cancer and sought solace in the Church that if he survived he'd become a man of God and help people the way he'd been helped himself... he did, so he did. He used to actively encourage Stephen and I to ask him awkward questions because he figured it'd prepare him for if a parishoner ever challenged his faith - I guess he's one of the big reasons I maintain a certain respect for men of the cloth.

But you're absolutely right... there's plenty of crap religion all over the place and plenty of people accept anything a Pastor says simply because they're a Pastor. I just assume those people aren't worth talking to about their beliefs... since they're not really their beliefs to start with.

[cityzen]

badly-thought-through Buddhist

Btw, the pastor at the church i'm talking about (Hillsong) was (at least) questioned on allegations of corruption, and one of the guest pastors was non other than rent boy bumming, crystal meth toking pastor Ted (Ted Haggard).
lol

[magma]

badly-thought-through Buddhist

You're anything but badly-thought-through dude! Lifeprops.