Does your belief require the literal existence of a God?

Do you believe that when you die you will literally go to heaven and see and feel God and other people that have died? Do you actually believe that there is a God who has separate conscious thoughts from the people of our world? Do you believe that there are scientific, physical facts that are included in your belief (for instance people actually turning into pillars of salt)? Do you believe that the existence of God is entirely objective and separate from your belief in his existence?

 

I believe in myself, so I believe in God just like I believe in you.

 

What does that even mean?

 

Don't ya find it odd that you exist. Look at yourself. You control this fleshy mass you call a body with a mind. Each part of the mind functions with some weird part of the brain,but beyond that there is something else in you. something which functions below your radar ,but never gets put into memory so it seem as if it doesn't exist. It is not part of the brain it is not part of lower brain nor is it part of the higher brain. If you can recognize this in yourself then believing in God is very possible.

 

thew thing about that mindset is: if one uses that to confirm the existence of a "creator" or "God". where did IT come from anyway? and does it have existential doubts too? does it even think or is it an omnipotent animal? is it even contained within the dimensions we percieve? might it even be the universe itself?

too many new questions IMO

 

Well, I guess the trick to life is not to be in the known ,but the unknown. So to believe will always be an act of faith.

 

fair enough.

 

Is this a vague reference to a soul or dualism?

 

not sure

 

Nope. it's pretty much the one thing I am certain of.

Assuming the body and mind are separate entities, in the same way you might assume a computer is uninvolved with the programs on it. This statement is based on the assumption that your perception is the same as everyone else's.

Even if you do believe that mind and body are completely separate (dualism), it still does not mean by a long shot that God is possible, particularly any specific religion.

 

k

 

You can be certain of alot of things doesn't make any of them right. I don't think of the mind and the body as seperate. I merely think there is something more. As for perception I share there is no way of telling if your's is the same as mine or if they different in the end it will be an assumption. Accepting possibilities is very different then acknowledging

 

The way I see it, the mind is a sense. This idea originates from the nondual religions and philosophies such as buddhism, daoism and hinduism (especially the advaita vedanta or the school of universal interconnectedness and nonduality). The body and mind house awareness itself, nothing like a soul, but awareness. In meditation and any other activity I cultivate moment-to-moment nonjudgemental awareness. This awareness is useful in any activity that one can attend to. I think thoughts themselves can be under the scope of pure nonjudgemental awareness. This has practical applications. All creatures are aware to some extent. Let's not be concern ourself with whether or not we as humans are better or best at awareness or not. Sit down, relax and don't fall asleep, fall awake, fall into the chrystal glass of pure awareness itself (or lack thereof). No god necessary... nothing is necessary during the course of mediation, except the ability to put yourself into the present moment. Most of the time, people are outside of their brain or out of the mind or more precicely outside of the center of the mind, which might or might not cause suffering.
You are right here and right now, and during the course of meditation you are doing almost nothing. Be aware of the ground when walking and simply be aware of your breath even when you're not meditating at the moment.
This is my scripture or something like this. It's buddhism or one possible outcome of buddhism, out of a big number of possible outcomes.

 

lol nondualism. ya the idea that a realization can bring awareness. Which already was, is, and will be because you are one with everthing yet not one with everything. So now you know you are one with everything and nothing,but it loops because it is all. lol word salad
lol Awareness=Enlightenment . lol Perception is part of it. er lol word salad.

fun stuff if you cna wrap your head around it. er lol world salad

 

I posted something like this once before, but it got wiped by the BIG BLACKOUT OF 08 (in future years people will still quake at the very thought of it)...

anyway I thought I'd post it again as it seems relevant here...

I am therefore I think that "I think therefore I am." Or not...

Descartes has a lot to answer for. He turned the way people think on its head by declaring "I think, therefore I am." This deifies the concept of thought - it is a magician's argument, implying that we can simply will things into (or out of) existence and that things only exist if, or critically because, we think they do. It is actually nonsense - we do not think first and exist second - we are alive first, and that enables us to think.

So when Moses asked God who to say had sent him to speak to the Hebrew people, God replied with 4 words that translate literally from Hebrew as "I Am Who Am". In other words - "I Am What Is - I Am He Who And That Which Exists." God did not think first and therefore come into being - He first "Was" - as the only Unproduced Producer he always was and by virtue of His existence He was able to think and create.

As we are said to be made in His image, we follow the same basic principle - we have to have life in order to be able to think and be creative. The being comes first - we must "be" before we can think - the saying should really be "I am therefore I think."

A dangerous side-effect of the "I think therefore I am" culture, is the aforementioned deification of thought. "Thought" or "Argument" rather than Being is elevated to the status of God. That which is not viewed as thinking is devalued. So consequently a fetus is not really seen as alive and people consequently decide that it is morally acceptable to exterminate it if its existence is deemed as inconvenient. Many see nothing wrong in having recreational sex and then aborting any unwanted life that results from their pleasure making.

A senile elderly person is seen as having no quality of life and therefore the concept of euthanasia becomes considered acceptable. Sanctity of life is replaced with utilitarianism: "I think therefore I am" becomes "I think therefore I have a right to existence". Simply "being" is no longer valued in its own right - we are no longer valued if we are unable to be cognitive and creative and / or lack any further potential to become so, or simply if we are inconvenient within the lives of others - i.e. if we get in the way of their pursuit of pleasure: the pursuit of pleasure being another thing that has become elevated to the status of a right. Pleasure is another god of our time.

Another dangerous side-effect of the Descartes culture is that God is reduced to the status of a human concept. So even though we do not have any alternative explanation for how we or the universe came into being unless we were created, by elevating thought to be the god of our time, we declare that we do not need to know - we no longer need to exist so that we may be able to think. To think is enough, now that we can take our existence for granted. It is as if we are now declaring that we somehow managed to think ourselves into existence without first having to exist. And that makes no sense.

"To be or not to be - that is the question." If you want to think, you'd better be.

It is precisely because people love the product above the producer, the creature above the creator, that people love thought itself above the life that allows thought to happen - people love themselves more than their own parents and more than the God who made them.

Regards,
Joanna

 

define the word create versus rearrange. Do you need a brain to think?
actually a good question is how you die? If you are asleep you are alive. If you die your brain continues to produce electrical charge. Are you alive then?

 

How do you know this ?

The brain still holds a lot of mystery, but that doesn't mean we should attribute things we can't conclusively attribute to it with evidence to something "other wordly"..

 

Ya know it is a very weird thing to be honest. I guess you could say brain diving is the best method. In my opinion the only time people seem to notice this inner working is when "Déjà vu" happens.

 

I never equated enlightenment with awareness. I never defined enlightenemt, because I don't know it (if I did, then I was wrong in trying to define it). I do assume, though, that awareness leads, among other "things" to enlightenment. Nondualism is not "wronger" or "righter" from dualism. Both of them can be useful. "Dualism" or any method of quantifiability is useful for thinking and figuring out things. But nondualism is useful and arizes and helps in the arizing of moment-to-moment non-judgemental awareness. Note, that I didn't, yet again, equate enlightenment with awareness. If I yet again did, then I was blatantly wrong. Just meditate on that or something. I know I would, or atleast contemplate it, or think of it. As long as you are aware, you will be succesful. If I turn out to be inerrant, all will be well. Ok that was a little longer of a refutation than I thought I would care to write.

 

Where did god come from? no one knows, as humans we dont even know our history thousands of years back how would we know something millions/billions of years back. God always have and always will be, we are in 3d dimensions time, space and matter. God is not limited to 3d like we are and he can operate outside of time therefore his infinite, never ending. I think there is 11 dimensions and sadly we are at the bottom(for now).

Here is something from the source below
http://www.divinecosmos.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=53&Itemid=30

"
That DNA is formed in the process of planetary evolusion may sound ridiculous, but it can effectively be proven by something known as the DNA Phantom effect. Dr. Vladimir Poponin put DNA in a tube and shone a laser through it, and to his surprise he realized that it actually captured the light and caused it to spiral through the helix, as if it were a crystal. Even more amazingly, when Dr. Poponin removed the DNA, the light continued spiraling on its own.

For light to form a DNA helix on its own should of course be impossible; unless the light itself had become harmonically tuned to some naturally existing frequency in the energy of space around it. To me, this says that the spiraling light energy of DNA was there first, and the physical molecules simply formed around the spiraling energy once the planet was at the proper frequency position. The Galaxy is “tuned” to form human DNA in planetary systems wherever it gets the chance.

Darwin’s theories are being disproven

The theory of the Evolution of Species is being disproven because the DNA molecule is just too complicated to have arisen by “natural mutations.” Dr. Crick, one of the original discoverers of the DNA molecule, later proved mathematically that it is absolutely impossible for evolution to have ever even begun to produce DNA in the short amount of history that we have as a planet.4

We are “moving on up” energetically
"