ATHEIST WHO HAS SEEN GOD

I speak as an atheist who has seen God.
Why is the knowledge of good and evil sinful and worthy of death? If you can answer such a riddle, you too may see the divine Truth.

Here are a few hints to contemplate:

God is the alpha and omega. The beginning and the end.

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed only changed from.

God is eternal.

Given a long enough timeline all things that can happen, will happen.

We do not know what happened prior to the big bang, but that it all came from nothing sounds silly, maybe.

For change to exist, something must have come before as it causes, therefore, change has been rolling around eternally.

The holy spirit is in all things.

Good and evil are subjective. Knowledge of the distinctions of good and evil is the cause for its creation, a rock or a tree has no sense of good nor bad. As such it does not suffer nor die, only does it change in form.

We are all gods children and all that is is in his plan.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. We eat, we shit, we shed skin hair and nails. We die and our bodies break apart. Born of the act of creation, the big bang, born of burning hydrogen. Born of trees and of rock, once we were stars and no doubt we will be again.

Butterfly effect. Chemicals react. All is one. Those who see themselves in God and God in all things is one who knows the truth.

Contemplate, meditate and pray on these thoughts, live a life that feels as close as you can get to being worthy of having lived, seek to grow in the good and the wise constantly. Question yourselves and all else, find the truth :)

Author: Thomas Banjo Bell

Read More

UNIVERSE EXIST

Something significant has shifted for me today. My previous consideration of the first cause argument completely crumbled.

I've been so harshly indoctrinated into the epistemological approach of invisible character fillers that it really took me a while to realize that I was coming to the argument all wrong. When people argue about a first cause, it usually appears that both people are trying to provide an answer to two equally valuable questions. "How could something come from nothing?" and "Could the physical universe have an infinite regression?"

Those sound like two equally valuable mysteries, right? Totally wrong.

I don't claim to know much about physics, and that makes it kind of intimidating to talk about. But I have followed new articles about the general cosmological theories.

At this point in history, it seems like we're at a point again, where thinkers have only said: "We thought we knew, but we were wrong again, or can't be sure." At some point, professionals believed that time had a beginning, and then they refuted themselves in many cases.

We have to acknowledge that it's math. It's a thing that's attempting to mathematically project only a very approximate understanding into the motions of the observable universe, and it's not an overstepping telescope that travels back in time. So understandably the big bang is still one of the biggest mysteries out there.

So, what I've been realizing is that there is literally no reason to ever suggest that a person has to provide a theory on how something could come from nothing.

The most factual thing that we know of to be true is that the universe exists. That's it. That is the end and all of what we know for sure. There's never been a point where it's knowably not existed, to us.

The non-existence of the universe is the ONLY assumption and only seemingly anti-scientific claim that would ever have to be proved, and not the other way around. Because of the non-existence of the universe, and the existence of the universe on not on equal grounds, as far as probability goes. So far it's only and in every way 100% verifiable that the universe does exist. In light of this it's a harsh 0% probably, and 0% verifiable that the universe has ever not existed.

Asking someone how something could come from nothing is like asking someone what if you existed, even though you didn't exist also?

That's a really weird abstract thing to believe and have faith in, that something that we know exists used to not exist in magical ways we can't even imagine. That's the greater assumption if compared with the concept of infinite physical regression.

Author: Zech Gumpfer

Read More

WE'RE HERE

The odds that we're here is 1 in 700,000,000,000,000,000,000 That's one in 700 quintillion.

Talk about winning the lottery!

The odds that we'd find a place in space where a rock covered in 70% water, with air and an atmosphere, floating around a sun just perfectly never slowing down or speeding up, with a sun that has been burning just perfectly for 4.5 BILLION years so this rock can grow humans is just astronomical.

I find this just as hard to believe as it is for me to believe in a God.

In an endless universe or space, there have to be endless possibilities.

The odds that you, yes you are the President of the United States on another planet out there is not only good, they're great!

Everything we can think and everything we can't think of exist out somewhere there in space because space just never ever ends.

Every situation exists somewhere out there. Every single one.
So could there be a God out there? Of course, there can be. Everything is out there somewhere.

Life beyond earth is hard for us to find. We're just not smart enough. We only have 5 senses to learn through.

Will we see our passed loved ones again someday? Why not? Everything exists.

My new attitude. :)
AMERICA

Author: John Eichelberger

Read More

AFTER HAVING CHOSEN TO BE A DEIST

After having chosen to be a Deist, I have come to believe that we humans experience our perceived realities and react to them at different levels of understanding and pragmatism at different times.

The following levels are merely my best attempt so far to put into words the concepts I am trying to express. A second caveat is that I realize that my thinking on any of these posited levels can never be in complete isolation from the others. A third caveat is that I know that the best I can hope for is that any given thought I have has been as objectively differentiated from the others as I am capable of achieving.

So here they are. Please tear them apart... as objectively as you are capable of being.

Level 1: I need to eat and sleep almost every day if I am going to be me... today, tomorrow, and in the near future. This is arguably the level of thinking that is omnipresent, consciously and/or unconsciously.

Level 2: I need to provide for my sustenance and safety to ensure my existence...in the present, in the near future, and during my lifetime.

Level 3: I need to be social because I need my family and society to enrich my life... and theirs in turn... in all that that entails.

Level 4: I need to become as competent as I can be...socially, educationally and morally... if I am to live the best that I can while I am alive.

Level 5: I must accept and/or ponder the meanings of my cultures' teachings and the evidence provided by science in my effort to understand the meaning of all that I am able to perceive and do in my lifetime.

Level 6: I must accept that it is impossible to unerringly fulfill all of my obligations all of the time on each of the previous levels... even if (and maybe because) my perceptions of what they are may be flawed.

Level 7: I must pick and choose to the best of my ability the aspects of each of the previous levels of understanding that best comfort my understanding of what my species has labeled 'existential angst'...while knowing that I will never know for sure if I am doing 'the right thing'... and nobody else does either.

The efficacy of my having chosen to be a Deist is coming from what I perceive to be my best efforts at Levels 5, 6, and 7.

But I could be wrong...

Author: Lyman Paul Grover

Read More

AN IMMATERIAL GOD THAT EXISTS OUTSIDE OF NATURE

This is Baron D'Holbach's refutation of Samuel Clarke's assertion in an immaterial God that exists outside of nature. While I don't have the original assertion by Clarke, I think Holdbach's responses can be read without them. Thoughts on these arguments?

Thus, to resume the answers which have been given to Dr. Clarke, we shall say:

1) We can conceive that matter has existed from all eternity, seeing that we cannot conceive it to have been capable of beginning.

2) That matter is independent, seeing there is nothing exterior to itself; that it is immutable, seeing it cannot change its nature, although it is unceasingly changing its form and its combinations.

3) That matter is self-existent, since not being able to conceive it can be annihilated, we cannot possibly conceive it can have commenced existing.

4) That we do not know the essence, or the true nature of matter, although we have a knowledge of some of its properties; of some of its qualities: according to the mode in which they act upon us.

5) That matter not having had a beginning will never have an end, although its numerous combinations, its various forms, have necessarily a commencement and a period.

6) That is all that exists, or everything our mind can conceive is matter, this matter is infinite; that is to say, cannot be limited by anything; that it is omnipresent, seeing there is no place exterior to itself; indeed, if there was a place exterior to it, that would be a vacuum.

7) That nature is unique, although its elements or its parts may be varied to infinity, induced with properties extremely opposite; with qualities essentially different.

8) That matter, arranged, modified, and combined in a certain mode, produces in some beings what we call intelligence, which is one of its modes of being, not one of its essential properties.

9) That matter is not a free agent, since it cannot act otherwise than it does, in virtue of 'the laws of its nature, or of its existence ; that consequently, heavy bodies must necessarily fall; light bodies by the same necessity rise; fire must burn; man must experience good and evil, according to the quality of the beings whose action he experiences.

10) That the power or the energy of matter has no other bounds than those which are prescribed by its own existence.

11) That wisdom, justice, goodness, etc. are qualities peculiar to matter combined and modified, as it is found in some beings of the human species; that the idea of perfection is an abstract, negative, metaphysical idea, or mode of considering objects, which supposes nothing real to be exterior to itself.

12) That matter is the principle of motion, which it contains within itself: since matter alone is capable of either giving or receiving motion:

This is what cannot be conceived of immateriality or simple beings destitute of parts, devoid of extent, without mass, having no ponderosity, which consequently cannot either move itself or other.

Author: Mike Barnhouse

Read More

CLOSER TO DEISM THAN ATHEISM

While Baron D'Holbach is normally considered a staunch advocate of atheism, I've found a few passages in The System of Nature which suggest he might have had a belief closer to Deism than atheism. The following passage certainly caught my eye:

"Of whatever nature this great Cause of causes may be, it is evident to the slightest reflection that he has been sedulous to conceal himself from our view; that he has rendered it impossible for us to have the least- acquaintance with him, except through the medium of nature, which he has unquestionably rendered competent to everything. This is the rich banquet spread before man; he is invited to partake, with a welcome he has no right to dispute; to enjoy that which must make him most acceptable; to be happy himself is to make others happy; to make others happy is to be virtuous, to be virtuous he must revere truth. To know what truth is, he must examine with caution, scrutinize with severity, every opinion he adopts.
This granted, is it at all consistent with the majesty of the Divinity, is it not insulting to such a being to clothe him with our wayward passions, to ascribe to him designs similar to our narrow view of things; to give him our filthy desires; to suppose' he can be guided by our finite conceptions: to bring him on a level with frail humanity, by investing him with our qualities, however much we may exaggerate them; to indulge an opinion that he can either act or think as we do; to imagine he can in any manner resemble such a feeble play-thing, as is the greatest, the most distinguished man? No! it is to degrade him in the eye of reason; to violate every regard for truth, to set moral decency at defiance; to fall back into the depth of Cimmerian darkness. Let man, therefore, sit down cheerfully, to the feast; let him contentedly partake of what he finds; but let him not worry the Divinity with his useless prayers, with his shallow-sighted requests, to solicit at his hands that which, if granted, would in all probability be the most injurious for himself: these supplications are, in fact, at once to say, that with our limited experience, with our slender knowledge, we better understand what is suitable to our condition, what is convenient to our welfare, than the mighty Cause of all causes who has left us in the hands of nature: it is to be presumptuous in the highest degree of presumption; it is impiously to endeavour to lift up a veil which it is evidently forbidden man to touch; that even his most strenuous efforts attempt in vain."

That, to me, sounds like a man that believes in a Deistic God that he knows he could never have any true "knowledge" of, and accepts his limitations.

Read More