[Mr. Nobody]

Again, if you look into modern religious beliefs, G-d is not as you described Him. For example, I recently learned one opinion as to why G-d created the world: G-d is omniscient, omnipotent, etc. Out of His infinite kindness, He created the world to give humanity a chance to live, to do what is right, and basically to exist. G-d does not need worship! After all, worship is simply thanking G-d for various things. Worship and praise are ways of thanking G-d for creating the world and giving humanity a chance to live

Even If everyone saw GOD and all agreed he was real,would we not question his origin

We struggle with origins because we are trapped in finite bodies with a definite beginning and end. This realization of the end lead us to devise the mechanism of creation with a creator. The knowledge of our limited existence cries out for explanation.
God is existence for existence sake without rhyme, reason, good, evil, love nor hate. All these attributes were assigned through the human experience in order to explain life between birth and death.
Infinity, a concept which alludes a finite mind is God. Infinity needs no reason and exists as God. God does not judge, because within infinity, we as determinate creatures contribute to God. God is not a separate creature
I recommend Joseph Campbell and the "Power of Myth" for a more detailed discussion
http://www.toequest.com/forum/intelligent-design/1013-infinite-reasonless-existence-finite-existence-reason.html

[jim barlow]

Humans have an uncanny tendency to delude themselves. One questions the survival value of these delusions.
1. I think they do it for the group. The groups form these delusions.
2. When in real danger I'm sure they'd take a harder look and unlike the famous lemmings would not follow their self deception.
Church propaganda is particularly virulent because it is anti-evolutionary
or in simpler terms (which we could all understand) it BLOCKS THE VIEW!
i.e it keeps one stupid and ridiculous.

[chazzysaw]

Originally Posted by subversion God should be defined as the cause of everything we don't understand. Right now God is what created the big bang.

The Big Bang has been banging, is banging, will keep banging for eternity. In eternity there is no time, no beginning, no end, always in the now. It is hard to comprehend but it is what I believe.

[chazzysaw]

I believe science reveals the mysteries of God. The more we learn about science the better we understand how God operates our universe.These things we are all to know."God works in mysterious ways" is a primitive view. There is nothing mysterious about God just our ignorance, prejudice, competitive selfishness will keep us in the dark. We will one day understand the TOE, but not in this generation, nor the next. We complicate things in our thinking and make them confusing and hard to understand. The TOE, I believe is something so simple scientists think themselves past the answer.

[jim barlow]

I think there are at least two kinds of mysteries. One kind is when everybody is gathered in the drawing room and the detective shuffles the familiar details in such a way that it all fits into place and people say "aha".
I don't think this god business is such an "aha" thing. I think it is another kind of collection of details that are not all that familiar because we don't deal with them every day. (A neuron in the brain for example or souls on pin heads).
If the detective (and there have been many) lists all those details in a harmonious format with our experience sooner or later we'll experience a feeling of totality and continuity at which point we are satisfied.
Everyday language isn't too suited for this. It has been done in music, poetry, science (especially the last few years). Prophets (intellectuals) use words that get obsolete and you have to spend half your life studying the prophets' environment just to bring back the flavor...that is not an economical approach.
Wishful thinking is an abysmal trap too. There is really no need for it.
What you honestly see (good and bad) that's how it is up and down and sideways.The road you are standing on is the beginning and end.

[mkirkpatrick]

A thought just occured to me,so I thought that I would share it in this very thread as it concerns the title.
The thought I had concerns the idea that we have got it all the wrong way round,we are asking whether God is real,when in fact we are the ones that actually have "no" individual reality at all,and that God is and will always be the only real thing there EVER will be??When you really think about it,and i mean REALLY think about,what gall and blinded arrogance man has!To question the only actual reality there ever will be,while all the time totally
and blissfully unaware of his illusion of "selfness?There is none so blind as those who cannot see!

kindest regards michael.

[Guille]

Originally Posted by mkirkpatrick A thought just occured to me,so I thought that I would share it in this very thread as it concerns the title. The thought I had concerns the idea that we have got it all the wrong way round,we are asking whether God is real,when in fact we are the ones that actually have "no" individual reality at all,and that God is and will always be the only real thing there EVER will be??When you really think about it,and i mean REALLY think about,what gall and blinded arrogance man has!To question the only actual reality there ever will be,while all the time totally and blissfully unaware of his illusion of "selfness?There is none so blind as those who cannot see! kindest regards michael.

God doesn't have an individual reality because god is 'everything' therefore it is in all things, it is all things, but it isn't a thing. And in fact everything doesn't have a unity. Totalities don't exist. You say individuals or elements don't exist, well I say what doesn't exist is collection of things, the division 'human' is something we have invented. As all divisions which make totalities of any kind. According to level of talk, elements are the only thing there is, it's totality never reaches to be real at the level of talk in which the elements are real.

[WithoutMe]

What is, never exists!

[jim barlow]

Watching the World Cup the fans impressed me as a collection of powder kegs. I could just imagine the middle ages superimposed on these nationalistic sublimations. Adding three fiery bishops (our god will lick your god) and in a matter of days war is declared. The rest we know...

Joseph Campbell suggested that the really interesting issue is your own relationship to this "god." According to him there may be two primary relationship to the concept:

one is master/servant (creator/object) where the boss is always right and I a poor sinner always wrong even if I am right. Justice being an invention of the created, does not apply to the master, to who just about nothing applies. This is not a Greek value system (where gods can be wrong - see Prometheus) but the Mediterranean system (Arab, Xtian, Jew) approach to a male archetype.

The second approach is that I, everyman, am myself divine. You know this to be case when you have no particular urge to search for the whereabouts of this concept. The eyeball sits in the face, contently doing whatever it is doing. It does not occur to it to hypothesize an eyeball of eyeballs watching all other eyeballs. It knows it doesn't work like that.

In the meantime those living in a more or less democratic society to assume the cosmos is a monarchy (like Sumeria where they invented the Jewish book) leads to an mental imbalance of which the current government takes unholy advantage.

[harmonygirl]

Actually Jim there is a third option, that of the Earth-Mother-Goddess societies in pre-history, civilizations that worshipped Goddess through Earth and Mother, prior to the monotheistic male God dominated invaders...(and then there was war...)