Adding to signature.

You don't process information with your fingernail or heart.

Those are rather silly examples. Science explains the earth's rotation and history teaches us all we need to know about the evolution of art and communication. It's not like any of those things are inexplicably divine.

You can create a sunset with your mind?! dude that's awesome!

just shut your eyes and you can too!

yeah but you miss out on the pretty colours. Well, unless you're on some heavy hallucinogens.

You've had some quite clever insight in this thread friend! All kidding aside.

My two cents on the whole matter:

God is all and everything that we can and can't perceive. It is the concept of the whole. There is nothing that exists separately from God for God is everything. EVERYTHING. You are part of God. You are one of many unique expressions of God, the whole.

The afterlife is no better or worse than the metaphors presented in scripture or the scientific idea of decomposition. In my mind, decomposing into the earth is a beautiful idea. We are all made of earth, we are a part of it. Nothing is "unnatural" as we often suggest. So to decompose and return my energy back into the universe that birthed "me," sounds delightful. It is peace, it is rest. It is the sleep after a long hard, but always interesting awake. Or vice versa, who knows. As far as consciousness persisting after death, it is an unknowable question and therefore I reject it as a waste of time, along with the notion of the beginning and the end of the universe (God, everything). Although ghost stories (I've heard many believable ones) such as our friend's do raise some interesting questions.

And all that being said anticipation's quote (see above) really is insightful. The idea of heaven is often used to enslave us and distract us from the extremely beautiful, happy lives, we could all be living. Heaven is a conscious, place for the living, and so is hell. I am not an atheist or a scientist. I am a unique expression of an incomprehensible whole with ideas that I have gathered while here living. Collecting them is a hobby of mine. I define my own purpose. My God is recognizable everywhere because everything is part of it.

Agnostic, although I'm more inclined to believe that there is no afterlife.

no, you're the deluded prick!

death is an illusion; people don't die, they just disperse.

your still mass. You still exist.. Your just not aware of it. Thats the question
Is being aware life?? Very weird twists and turns in this topic. :confused:

no, life is having a heart beat. You can be in a coma and unaware of your existence, yet because your heart is still beating, technically you're still alive. I have to say I agree with wayfarer on this topic. No one knows, no one can know, and therefore everything else is just speculation and belief. Plus, why would you spend time bothering over an afterlife when there's more than enough to occupy your time with your actual life. Unless of course you're a boring person with nothing else to do or interest you.

However you twist it, something must've came out of nothing. If God created the world and nothing was before God, then God must've came out of nothing.

but then we play the God created time card so to say that "nothing was before God" makes no sense. god is eternity. of course even if god created time and space and matter and energy there's still the question of how, creatio ex nihilo is paradoxical because how could god create something out of nothing? to sidestep that paradox we must say that god created these things out of himself, and hence he is these things.

or, we can take the sun ra route: and then nothing turned itself inside out! in which case god is nothing.

If destruction is only a form of creation then nothing can cetainly be a form of something.

I 100% agree. Mentally I think I am an atheist, but my mom grew up in a 'haunted house' and she believes all these things as well. I had an experience with a medium that I will never forget,and it wasn't one of those fake ****ty scammer ones.

Thing that confuses me is that to see something, doesn't it need a photon? How do spirits (energy, whatever you call it) manifest if they are physically nothing? There has to be some connection for us to see it.

As for death - I will probably be okay it. If it is simply a cut-off from your consciousness, cool. I think there is such a liberating feeling in that, a feeling that you just cease, nothing there.

i don't think you can submerge destruction under creation but they're certainly two sides of the same coin, in the same way that every presence implies an absence and there is a constant presence of absence. so there are really two kinds of nothing, the "present" nothing which lets us define the states of things-- as in, it is monday, not tuesday, i am not sick or dead, i am not supposed to be anywhere, etc. and also a hidden nothing which can't be captured by forms or thought of as 'something' because it is completely formless and is completely absent from experience in any form. one nothing can become something, like the absence of snow could turn into a presence. the other kind is a "true" nothingness in that you can't even talk or reason about it, because as nothing it cannot be an object. as far as creation goes, the first type of nothing already implies a something which it contrasts against, and so is already a step past creation. the second type by its very nature cannot become something, because that would be a violation of its identity. if it is able to violate its own identity, however, we might be able to assign a will to it and call it god.

That's assuming the single universe theory, and the idea that the orchestration of the universe hasn't happened before.

But I find it a fascinating idea that God might be the void itself.

Did you know that if the worlds timeline was a piano then every key up to the last key would be just primevil bacteria and the lvery ast key would be spanning the first micro organism and dinorsours and human evolution?
Makes you think.
I reckon the future is the key.
Lets suppose in the future they can control or invent the past?
Like how we invented comunication through the air.
Maybe they used methods to manipulate the world and make us have souls through methods from the future meaning we are just organisms but were given this soul by a future computer to sustain us up to the point where we surpass and conquer the failings that led to the end of humaity.
In short, maybe thousands of years in the future a person or people was able to combine time and technology to re program life in order that they can exist as a person in their time.
Much like you can implant a pacemaker and control it with a radio controller. Perhaps every minute human and ant is controlled by similar control from the future in order that we fulfill what the programmer wants.
If this seems far fetched them understand that microchips in computers can do more tasks then there are ants in the whole world.
I reckon God and souls are just the future pulling us to fulfill our destiny in order that the future can be lived in a body and not as it turned out only through computer waves.
Do you get me?
God as we know it is a future computer ensuring that he can live in a human body when his life in the future actually comes around.

Did you know that if the worlds timeline was a piano then every key up to the last key would be just primevil bacteria and the lvery ast key would be spanning the first micro organism and dinorsours and human evolution?
Makes you think.
I reckon the future is the key.
Lets suppose in the future they can control or invent the past?
Like how we invented comunication through the air.
Maybe they used methods to manipulate the world and make us have souls through methods from the future meaning we are just organisms but were given this soul by a future computer to sustain us up to the point where we surpass and conquer the failings that led to the end of humaity.
In short, maybe thousands of years in the future a person or people was able to combine time and technology to re program life in order that they can exist as a person in their time.
Much like you can implant a pacemaker and control it with a radio controller. Perhaps every minute human and ant is controlled by similar control from the future in order that we fulfill what the programmer wants.
If this seems far fetched them understand that microchips in computers can do more tasks then there are ants in the whole world.
I reckon God and souls are just the future pulling us to fulfill our destiny in order that the future can be lived in a body and not as it turned out only through computer waves.
Do you get me?
God as we know it is a future computer ensuring that he can live in a human body when his life in the future actually comes around.

Some spam for your mother. :laughing:

How do you know I aint God?
I mean, how do you really honestly know?

:bowdown:

You have way more proof than Yah-weh, because I can see you!

And I will smite theee who is smitten and smites thou who doesn't accept me as MOD most high.

fantastic.

what does it cost you 2 believe in a spiritual kingdom,where their is nomore suffering, death.it doesnt cost you any money you really dont have 2 give anything up sex,drugs n rocknroll.all it costs you is your soul and whats that anyway.does any1 like 2 b told what 2 do no definatly not by your father,so jesus made a bridge 4 those who choose 2 believe so we have eternal life.we dont change god changes us so sit back n relax if u want 2 live 4 ever then believe if not then exsist in the realm of nothingness hell boring.x

I don't understand how you can claim a belief by citing the benefits of your belief. Pascal's Wager is completely useless; I've said this before. You know the belief that tomorrow I'll wake up with a perfect body and handsome face as well as loads a girlfriend I live with who does abstract painting when she's not busy being head of state of the most prosperous country in the world where she rules supreme makes me very happy doesn't mean I can believe it.

Oh and for the record I'd risk hell for sex, drugs, rock and roll.

Yeah, balances out with all the lawyers scampering around down there.

If you're going to partake in any kind of intelligent discussion here, please use proper english, it will make us all hate you less.

Secondly, no it costs nothing to believe in a "spiritual kingdom," except for the fact in that in believing in a kingdom in the afterlife open exclusively to those who choose to believe a book of stories I'd be denying my rationality and narrowing my mind considerably in accepting that anyone who didn't come to the same conclusion I came to was damned to hell.

I have no problem whatsoever with people believing in an afterlife. I DO however have a problem with people who believe in heaven and hell, that members of their religion are the only ones who will be permitted to this wonderful kingdom, and the rest of us heathens are damned to hell. It's narrow minded, conceited, and utterly self absorbed drivel left over from an outdated and obsolete time period where societies' rulers used religion as a way to keep the population under their control.

what duz it cost u 2 believe in karma and freedom from the repeating cycle of birth and deth. we have a way 2 xcape all u have 2 do is follow the path vishnu has laid out 4 u.

god loves all his children including you and every one is welcome into the kingdom who told you that your not allowed in bollox.dont blaspheme dont use the lords name in vein thats the only rule ive read in that so called out of date book of fiction believe the truth will be revealed or are u running for a clean nappy?

I sucked God's dick while Jesus was giving it to the (former) virgin known as Mary.

^ WWWOOOOOO Hahahahaha!!!! Oh man... sleepy jack: 1 political correctness: 0

No one really knows anything about the siritual world......I think its comforting thinking that this "is not" all that there is......even if its just for peace reasons.......It's positive thinking

u could tone it down a bit

Ignore Sleepy Jack, God is way out of his league anyway.

Is it really? Nietzsche would say it's deeply nihilistic thinking to say that there is more than what is, or that there should be more. Perhaps positive thinking would be to say that what is is all there needs to be.

It's only negative thinking if we live in a completely hostile universe, otherwise the common sense philosophy picks up and the truth of death becomes apparent. :laughing:

so assume that death is the end of our existance kinda doesn't much meaning to us being here......I'm definately not a preacher, but i believe there is a bigger story to us and the earth......"you cannot know one thing, without knowing its opposite"

what more do you want? is there anything you could possibly conceive of wanting that you don't already have to some degree in life? and if you can sense what it is you want, why don't you get it in this life, instead of saying it'll be granted after death. the fact of death means that you should concentrate your whole existence on getting it. it doesn't mean that your existence was pointless, it means that your existence was the point. if you expect to get the point after death you might miss it.

if you're looking for a bigger story, write it with your life.
how's that for cheese?

I couldn't disagree with that if i even tried......well said. Definately a statement that takes no side

It's easy to say that for people with the road to possible happiness laid out before them. What about an orphan in Darfur? Probably to be sold and murdered, so it's just the end for him? No chances to live out the life where he has so many possible choices.