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God: Yay or Nay ?

BigBanker

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It's a pray from me.
 

fred binneys head

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If there's a kingdom beyond it all
Is there a God who loves us all
Do we believe in love at all
I'm still pretending, I'm not a fool
 

Spoonz Red E

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Long answer

The simple early gods of nature & the elements I can understand.
Crash, bang, jump for joy, wet your pants.
Keep taking the drugs and try not to think to much about the poor beggers who are sacrified.
Marvellous fun.

The consistent thing in the reported history of later 'gods' of all types is their uncanny knack of issuing commandments via mortals which are usually remarkably in step with contemporary authoritian values.

The exception is when the 'god' or 'gods' command a rising up against such values.

That is, they are a useful mechanism to elevate and validate mortal power structures and struggles by spuriously enhanced endorsement.

The sucker punch is that the human qualities that get diverted to defend and maintain these 'gods' - faith, wonderment, discourse, the need to discover and understand - have such potential in and of themselves.

I think there is a higher plane of something or other.
The supernatural (in the sense of something above and beyond nature)
We develop language, co-operation, enquiry, learning, perseverance etc. and I would say humanity's arc is one of striving rather than surviving.

But most religions seem to have taken our mundane, national and tribal struggles and fashioned this higher plane into some sort of territorial 'reward' (the Kingdom of Heaven being one such example).

'God' seems to represent some sort of bouncer/promoter with his ticket sellers setting the price by codifying our morality.

A nay from me.

Short answer

Beards are itchy and spoil the soup.
Thus God can't help but being vengeful.
Continuously looking up to someone means you can't help but see up their noses.

A nay from me.
 
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fred binneys head

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On balance I think religion is a good thing as there are millions of people who treat others better because they’re god-fearing.

Of course there are complete tw@ts who start wars and kill others in the name of their religion - the crusades, bin laden, darth Vader, George bush, etc - but there are millions who don’t.

Personally though, I’m with Frankie Boyle when it comes to religion, although he says it a lot more harshly than I would:

“Religion's just what we thought before we understood what mental illness was.

"A bush talked to me!"

"Brilliant, what did it say? What did the bush say? Let's live our lives by what the bush said!"

You stupid f*****g c***s”
 

Hants_red

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I think I'll remain Atheist.
I find it interesting that we still need a label.

I don't have a religion and I don't need one. My backstory has led me to that conclusion.
 

Billy The Fish

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Old joke.

When I was a kid I prayed to God night after night for a bike for Christmas - but I didn't get one. So I went out and pinched one and prayed for forgiveness because I realised that's how it works.
 

les.gtfc

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Don't really believe to be honest but I must admit having a word with someone up there just before I went down for my brain tumour op! :)
 

Hants_red

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When I was quite young we used to go to chapel out at Leigh Cross. The preacher was a hellfire and brimstone type, he made sin seem very interesting!
 

Stuffy

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Don't really believe to be honest but I must admit having a word with someone up there just before I went down for my brain tumour op! :)
I think that's a normal reaction Les. The chapels of American troopships were always crammed before they disembarked to invade Japanese held Islands in WW2. Who knows how they would react under similar circumstances.
 

GrecianLez

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We had a thread like this many years ago on Exeweb.. I shared my thoughts and was greeted with huge kick back.. faith is a very interesting subject. And a very personal one.
 
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