The higher power

HIGH 5!!!!!

Well seems we are in the same position, but now I can see what you mean.

Yeah science has indeed proven that the Quran has knowledge that similar to modern knowledge today. But what can you do? Not everyone agrees.

Even though I look at porn sometimes and fap to it, still wouldn't hurt to learn a thing or two, but when the time comes, then you'll be ready to present yourself as a decent man.

Precisely! I mean, I'm not forcing our belief to anyone, I'm just stating the truth lol.

Yep, and it's not like we're like those extremist anyway, and I never particularly fond to those extremist, what they are doing is wrong, and God never told us to kill innocent people if I recall.

Hahaha lol true true, call it a guilty pleasure :P

God forgives a man for giving in to his carnal desires, but God punishes those that Sin out of pride.... Adam sinned out of a simple desire and was forgiven, where Satan was banished from the Heavens for sinning with pride ....

There is a story to that ...
Regret and you'll be forgiven, and if you are arrogant you'll burn.

......the life stream? Lol kidding.

I personally am a agnostic theist. I think, never been quite sure about the what agnostic theist means. I believe in some form there Is a god, I believe in facts and evidence. To me there is evidence, well not really evidence it just makes sense to me that there is in some sense a god. I don't like religion, but it's cool if you do as long as you don't shove in people's face. I don't like religion because there really is no evidence that said version of god it real, and there never will be any definitive evidence. Or atleast enough to convince me. although I will say I like lolikitties version of god.

I belive in no god.

But i belive that there is something out there. Something that science cannot explain.

I don't really believe in a deity per se, but I like to think that when we die we reincarnate as another living creature, whether that be another human or an animal or a plant.

I believe the soul is eternal and is constantly living on again and again even after we die.

I believe there is a god, but I do not believe in a creator: the world as we know it simply exists and God is a director, or cosmic joker if you will. I am agnostic such that I accept that anyone and everyone can be right or wrong in any number of ways. Each individual may perceive the world in a unique way (and mostly, invariably flawed and incomplete) that can not be shared with others using conventional media. I came to this conclusion from noticing the interesting relationship between events in any person's life; if I could I'd listen to/read every person's autobiography (disregarding any doubt), or put cameras every where.

P.S. - I don't believe there is a 'soul' or similar that distinguishes the living from the inanimate or is the root of any differences; I don't believe there is an after-life.
In my opinion, many stories, told in any form, try to imitate life and their 'messengers' tend to make a distinction between fate, self-determination and in between, be it prophecy or karma. How many can or have, without reasonable doubt, categorized the causality of her or his life's story?

It's hard to believe anything when the feeling of being blatantly subjugated by other people because of the misuse of the morals said to have been first suggested from fundamentalists and the superiority complex developed from fundamentalist perspectives becomes a concern, using fear as their primary tool of recruitment. It does, in effect, become increasingly difficult for one to try to stifle feelings of disinclination, distaste, mistrust, and contempt towards such things. After that, they are recognized to be the demented fantasies of poor, obtusely-minded simpletons, who have no hope of escaping their new convictions, and later pass themselves onto another host, like a disease, fogging the mind and killing off every last [potential] sense in the person's right mind.



I hope I didn't offend anyone :<.

Why would i care ? I'll live my life and die like everyone else, praising a higher power will not change anything in my life so it is a waste of time .

This is not so. In fact, recent developments in science have only reinforced my belief in a higher power.

The recent discovery of a new kind of boson, consistent in nature with the theoretical Higgs Boson, has brought us one step towards completely linking the standard model of physics with the physical world.
Once we reconcile gravity and the standard model of physics we will have a perfect, rational, mathematical explanation of existence.

Sure, this is all well and good- but what does it mean for a higher power?
Well in my (admittedly imperfect and flawed) mind, God can be logically inferred from the ordered and intelligible nature of all existence.
It requires intelligence to comprehend intelligibility, and I would propose that intelligence lies at the origin of intelligibility as well.
Cutting the word salad, what I'm saying is that the universe with its ordered nature and set laws (x leads to y, y exists because of z, etc.) is too 'neat' not too have been created.

Edit: Oops, better address the topic itself.
I believe in the idea of a deistic 'greater architect' figure which constructed all of existence and its physical laws in some vast and unknowable way.
Like a clockmaker that builds a clock, winds it, and then leaves it to tick.

I find this to be silly.

Are you saying that when we see designs in clouds, then the clouds must have had a designer? That when we see Jesus in a dog's anus, that a designer must have made it that way? That when we see anything at all that appears to be a pattern, it must have been put there by an intelligent agent?

The absurdity this leads you to is a pretty big one in my view.

Especially since if you really think that the universe requires a universe maker like a clock requires a clock maker, then you've rendered your position unfalsifiable, and therefore useless as an explanatory answer to the curiosity.

So we can break down the universe into math and logic...so what? On a quantum level, the laws of the universe don't act uniformly, they are chaotic, and logical laws are violated all the time.

Math and logic are just descriptive things we place on the universe in order to better understand it, not a prescriptive thing we simply discover.

Nobody went out and found the number 2. We invented it to better understand what it means to have a quantifiable amount of things we call 'two'.

I had imagined this argument would come up.
If a tree falls in a forest...
The argument here essentially (not that this argument particularly needs any more essentialism) breaks down into a binary; meaning is inherent in the universe or meaning is imposed onto the universe.

Either way you have intelligence behind intelligibility, we only differ in that from your position humanity takes the place of a higher being as the source of reason.
Both arguments are, as you put it, unfalsifiable.
It simply comes down to whether you believe that gravity would still warp spacetime based on the Higgs field of a given object, even if nobody was there to observe it.
Your position here gains credence from the existence, and baffling pervasiveness, of the 'observer effect'.

I will admit that if something were to interrupt my logical acceptance of a creator-being it would be the observer effect.

Edit: On clouds, do not be facetious.
The meaning inherent in the clouds is that various chemicals (mostly water), have become gaseous through heating, and in accordance with the interactions of the four universal forces have lost enough density to escape the gravitational field of the earth to a certain extent.
The shape they take is irrelevant.
It is the laws that govern the clouds that I believe are created. The clouds' existence is a result of these laws.

...No...not higher...just the average.

There's nothing special about humans. We're just animals after all that got lucky with intelligence.




No, we can trace the history of mathematics and prove that it's something WE came up with to understand the universe. That's what happened.



You bring up the Higgs field like it helps you at all. Lemme ask you, why is it that over 90% of scientists(physicists included) in the national academy of science don't believe in a god if the Higgs field makes it evident in any way? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism#Distribution



Not just that, but the fact, and this is a fact, that the logical laws we observe on the mesosphere, are on a quantum level...metaphorically ass raped. Also, your acceptance of a creator-being from my stance isn't logical.

I was saying that humanity replaces the higher power (as the wellspring of reason), not that humanity is a higher power.



I know that mathematics originated with humanity.
What I was saying was to do with either mathematics representing something that is inherent in the universe, or applying meaning to chaos, both being unfalsifiable.



It's just an example.
If a tree falls in a forest...



Can you please cite a source for this? I'm interested in reading about it.



But why?

I swear I've answered this question four or five times on this site. Hell, I could copy and paste my response if I weren't too lazy to dig though my old posts to find it.

Here's how I see it; I'm an atheist, and no, I'm not the angst filled anti-religious kind. Believe what you want, just allow me to do the same.

The best I can figure, religion was more like a crutch than anything else. Useful for when we couldn't explain a lot of questions we had regarding the universe and our place in it. It helped people feel like they were special and that they had purpose in life. Which isn't a bad thing; people need something to drive them, and if they had to think they'd be eternally rewarded after death for living a good life, that's fine.

But that doesn't work anymore. Every day we're answering more and more questions that used to only be answered by a passage from the Bible, or a vague reply involving God and his will. Personally, I think the sooner we manage to move on from this as a species, the better off we'll be.


Short answer; For me, there is no higher power. Just questions we can't answer yet.

I tend to follow the atheist views, but along with I Spy, recent experiments and studies have begun to enforce my belief in "spirituality", which to me is still scientific in every way and I believe could probably be explained through mathematics as well. I do not believe in a supernatural and omnipotent force or being that guides us through this universe, only that there are other forces in this universe we are able to control but have lost touch with our ability to do so over time.

Spirituality cannot be scientific , science and spirituality are two opposites ><



You prove it here , there is absolutly nothing scientific abouth your "spirituality" . Nothing but absolutly nothing scientific lead to think that your "faith" could be true .

You must have missed the quotes I put around spirituality.

Science: The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

The point of view that I was trying to explain was that what people believe is spirituality can be explained through scientific study. If those forces truly exist and can have an effect on ourselves and the physical world around us they must also be physical & natural and thus can be studied through, you fucking guessed it, scientific experimentation. I believe spiritual forces have been mislabeled as non-physical and separate from the forces we understand and can measure today, especially considering that label was created some two and a half thousand years ago. It needs a new definition based on what we understand today, here and now, not what we understood eons ago, before we even knew what other major forces effected everything around us (like gravity) which, going by the terminology of a few thousand years ago, would have been considered spiritual forces as well.

In other words, spirituality as it is termed right now doesn't actually exist, it's all scientific. This is why I put quotes around the term in my first reply.