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My husband has more or less said to me that if there is, say, life after death and it can be proven, then it's proven that there is a God.
I don't get this viewpoint. Am I the only one? Why couldn't there be life after death without a God? Why would somebody have to be orchestrating that? Couldn't there be a physical reason for all of that, including "spirits"/ghosts or what we interpret as such, that we just don't know yet? (Along with, of course, scientific reasons some people "poof" or transform or whatever the weird belief is, whereas others hang around for a period of time.)
Or...being psychic. You'll often hear psychics saying that their gift is proof not only of a god but of The God...you know, Yaweh the Great and Terrible. Why? Why couldn't psychic occurrence be a literal additional sense...not in a foggy hippie esoteric way, but in a literal, biological way that has nothing to do with morals, a higher reason or blah blah blah?
I hear a lot of non-believers saying they're total non-believers (they not only don't believe in God, they don't believe in any occult type stuff). And I hear a lot of religious people saying they believe in a whole host (yar har! Pun! Host. Get it? Never mind...) of mysterious shyte. But I don't hear a lot of people saying, "Oh, I can believe some of this Ghost Hunters stuff is for real but I don't believe there's any type of god behind it, I think it's just today's version of medieval mythology and superstition that has actually had a scientific basis all along and had nothing to do with god, the devil or whatnot"? Because that's kind of my view, on certain things.
Am I making sense?
In other words, to wrap this whole thing up: Why would proof of occult/mysterious/psychic occurrences mean there HAS TO be a God? And why would disproof of a God mean all of the occult/mysterious/psychic occurrences are false and a figment of our collective imagination?
My husband has more or less said to me that if there is, say, life after death and it can be proven, then it's proven that there is a God.
I don't get this viewpoint. Am I the only one? Why couldn't there be life after death without a God? Why would somebody have to be orchestrating that? Couldn't there be a physical reason for all of that, including "spirits"/ghosts or what we interpret as such, that we just don't know yet? (Along with, of course, scientific reasons some people "poof" or transform or whatever the weird belief is, whereas others hang around for a period of time.)
Or...being psychic. You'll often hear psychics saying that their gift is proof not only of a god but of The God...you know, Yaweh the Great and Terrible. Why? Why couldn't psychic occurrence be a literal additional sense...not in a foggy hippie esoteric way, but in a literal, biological way that has nothing to do with morals, a higher reason or blah blah blah?
I hear a lot of non-believers saying they're total non-believers (they not only don't believe in God, they don't believe in any occult type stuff). And I hear a lot of religious people saying they believe in a whole host (yar har! Pun! Host. Get it? Never mind...) of mysterious shyte. But I don't hear a lot of people saying, "Oh, I can believe some of this Ghost Hunters stuff is for real but I don't believe there's any type of god behind it, I think it's just today's version of medieval mythology and superstition that has actually had a scientific basis all along and had nothing to do with god, the devil or whatnot"? Because that's kind of my view, on certain things.
Am I making sense?
In other words, to wrap this whole thing up: Why would proof of occult/mysterious/psychic occurrences mean there HAS TO be a God? And why would disproof of a God mean all of the occult/mysterious/psychic occurrences are false and a figment of our collective imagination?
What think ya?
My only need for a god has to do with my desire to have a life after death. I don't want my death to be the final chapter for my consciousness. I want to go on forever, in some relatively pleasant capacity. But strictly speaking, there doesn't have to be a god for there to be an afterlife. I suppose I've been thinking more in terms of a heaven, which to exist probably does need some form of god. I wish god would come by an clear this up, but he probably doesn't know about this website.
The proof of one thing is not proof of another unless you can also prove one is the causation of the other. I can probably prove that robins appear up here in ND at the same time green grass appears. But I can not use green grass as proof robins exist.
So it is with an after life. If I could show you proof of an after life I can not use that as proof of the existence of God, unless I could prove an after life is caused by God.
I think that most people would say that God is a power/force/energy outside of ourselves which we are (almost) separate from.
I mean, a lot of people would say that "god is in everything" meaning that everything is energy of some kind or another. If that is so, then yes, it would imply that if there is anything at all which exists, then it exists as energy and by definition (above) would mean that there IS an energy which is not you and which IS found in other things (ie - outside of yourself)
Either you are God by being at one with the energy source or there is an energy source outside of you. The other alternalive is that the scientists, including Einstein, who appear to have found that everything is energy, are wrong.
It all boils down to semantics and the definition of God perhaps?
It is very plausable that there is an underlying "essence" in the universe that is similar to what we would call "God" in that it encompasses and connects all living and non-living things together and leads to a number of things we would call "supernatural" such as life after death, ghosts, psychic phenomenon, etc. As our science advances, it is possible we will discover something like this that is measurable and detectable.
The personal God of most religions seems very very unlikely to me. I understand this belief is the tendency for humans to assign personalities to nearly every living thing, including nature itself. When you throw in cultural norms, the promise of everlasting life, and the illusion of supernatural control over any aspect of your life; then it is not surprising that the personal God idea is more popular than the pantheist type of God I am proposing. But I propose that if "God" exists that he is very unlike what most theists conceive "him" as, and it is more likely "he" is more of a supernatural life force who does not desire worship but is an impersonal essence that perpetuates the universe.
My husband has more or less said to me that if there is, say, life after death and it can be proven, then it's proven that there is a God.
I don't get this viewpoint. Am I the only one? Why couldn't there be life after death without a God? Why would somebody have to be orchestrating that? Couldn't there be a physical reason for all of that, including "spirits"/ghosts or what we interpret as such, that we just don't know yet? (Along with, of course, scientific reasons some people "poof" or transform or whatever the weird belief is, whereas others hang around for a period of time.)
Or...being psychic. You'll often hear psychics saying that their gift is proof not only of a god but of The God...you know, Yaweh the Great and Terrible. Why? Why couldn't psychic occurrence be a literal additional sense...not in a foggy hippie esoteric way, but in a literal, biological way that has nothing to do with morals, a higher reason or blah blah blah?
I hear a lot of non-believers saying they're total non-believers (they not only don't believe in God, they don't believe in any occult type stuff). And I hear a lot of religious people saying they believe in a whole host (yar har! Pun! Host. Get it? Never mind...) of mysterious shyte. But I don't hear a lot of people saying, "Oh, I can believe some of this Ghost Hunters stuff is for real but I don't believe there's any type of god behind it, I think it's just today's version of medieval mythology and superstition that has actually had a scientific basis all along and had nothing to do with god, the devil or whatnot"? Because that's kind of my view, on certain things.
Am I making sense?
In other words, to wrap this whole thing up: Why would proof of occult/mysterious/psychic occurrences mean there HAS TO be a God? And why would disproof of a God mean all of the occult/mysterious/psychic occurrences are false and a figment of our collective imagination?
What think ya?
Quite true. I have often come up against this idea that proving the existence of a Soul means that God, the Bible and Christianity is true. Or that and afterlife means that heaven hell, Jesus, God, the Bible and Christianity is true.
I can see why that idea gets about. And i suppose that is why Pascal's wager looks like it works - because all that is seen as related to just one religion and that carries all the claims of Christianity, Jesus, the Bible and God with it, and doctrinal differences can be sorted out later on.
Conversely, there is a perception that the skeptics (atheists to a bod, bet your last tuppence on it) also reject any supernatural, fringe -science, occult, new - age and weirdo -wacky woo-woo, stuff (single soon to be released) on principle as it is not admitted to exist by orthodox science.
I would like to fink that athiets are a bit more logical than that, but truth to tell, they ain't taught logic or critical finking any more than theists, so they may well just say that they believe anything endorsed by science and reject anything not.
In fact the argument often advanced by theists looking for an angle into to which to drive the wedge of doubt is that we can't deny that there is more in heaven and and earth than is dreamed of in our philosophy which we don't deny. In fact there is more in heaven and earth that we have been able to demonstrate that is even accepted by many theists.
And that's really it. Not believing stuff that hasn't been adequately demonstrated to be so is not blinkered skepticism but is logical, sensible and in fact intellectual honesty. Being willing to be convinced by increasing degrees of feasibility and then evidence (the Higgs -boson was considered so very feasible and probable that it was almost taken as fact before it was found) is merely what open -mindedness would require.
Opting to believe selected wodges of dogma on no better evidence than indoctrination or picking what one fancies while also rejecting anything that is considered not to fit, no matter how well backed up by evidence is, on the other hand, the epitome of closed - minded irrationality.
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