members: Five

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: i will subscribe to anybody who posts on here.
NOTE: if you don't wish to sign out of your site, just leave a comment and i will copy and paste it into the blog. thank you!

For information on this site, scroll down and read the previous post.

katy:

here is a wikipedia on philosophy click

George:

That's a long wikipedia. I guess I'll start off a conversation...I do not think there is a god. I believe everything is a circle.

katy:

i believe in God, but I also believe in the circle of life. is that what you meant by circle?

L-girl:

I think this site is a great idea! Tip: use underlining, bolding and italics to make your post more fun and entertaining to read.

anyway, i also believe in God. However, I am having my doubts about many things in the bible. For example, Jesus and God are all about forgiveness. Why, then, does a Hell exist?

Kayla:

 I do think this site is a very good idea on somebody's part, but I can't promise I'll be posting on here very often, or ever again. I've been raised Catholic and I still practice Catholicism, but I am very openminded about religious beliefs. I'm still Catholic, I guess I'm just exploring other ideas right now. I think it's a bit stupid and self centered to think that there's only one correct religion and that religion must be your own. There are so many different beliefs out there, we ( Catholics ) may not be the only ones who are right. We may be wrong. And I don't think anybody can know for sure. Although I am Catholic, there are things that I disagree with, and other beliefs that I have formed based only on my thoughts. I do fully believe in God, Jesus, Satan, Hell, etc. But I have doubts sometimes......There's no way to be sure about anything. It's all guessing and picking the story we'd like to be true, really.

Mackenzie:

I agree with Kayla. There is no way to know wthether there is a God or not...so, while I believe in Him and Hell and all that jazz, I also have respect for atheists and buddhists and every other religion. I agree that what we "like" to think is true is fine, as long as it gets us through each day happily. Maybe someday science will prove what is the actual answer, but until then, I wish all these wars over religion could just...stop...and we could live together believeing in our own seperate faiths. Thats a lot to ask, lol, but you get what I mean.

George:

With all due respect, I hope nobody minds if we can explore religion a little bit. I think this is a good place to comment on my theories about God and Jesus and the bible and the universe, but I don't want anybody to be offended if I suggest God doesn't exist. Anybody is free to contradict me, also. Just saying!

So anyway, I agree with Mackenzie and Kayla that there is by far not enough information to make a final judgement. However, I believe that with all the knowledge we have, it is more probable that nothing is more powerful than everything else in the universe. Everything is more powerful than something, and less powerful than something else. I guess that goes back to the circle idea...

katy:

i think religion is a little hard for everybody to talk about. let's turn the conversation onto science...how do you think the world began? this isn't very philosophy-ish, but im trying to find a car that works on water or magnets instead of oil/gas. ive barely started, but anybody have any ideas? anybody even know anything about magnets? (this is for my own interest)

Bartoncii
Can God's existence be known in the war we know of the existence of numbers, or of material things?

Ehalcyon

Nice try turning it to science, but it's the same thing.

Let me elaborate.  One of the major arguments against religion is that there isn't any proof and that it's all faith.  But in truth, science itself is a religion, a faith.  How did the world begin?  Most religions say that it was created by a God.  Science usually says it was the Big Bang.  Now, scientists bring up the question - if God created the world, how was God Himself created?  And because religious people can only say "God was there from the beginning", the atheists feel as though they've won the argument.  But I ask - what caused the Big Bang?  Where did all that energy come from?  What came before that?  Neither side can truly answer that question.

I agree that it is important to stay open minded, but that does not mean you should just say that "everyone can believe what they want to believe".  I'm Christian, and yes, one of the tenets of my faith says that our God is the one true God.  People who call themselves Christians or Catholics or whatever but say that they don't think it matters what others believe - those people aren't what they claim to be at all.

Kayla said that this opinion is a bit stupid and self-centered, but it isn't.  I'll explain.

No two belief systems can both be correct when they differ on big points, i.e. whether Jesus was the Son of God, whether there is a God, whether there is more than one god.  If they say different things, there can only be one answer.

I believe that Jesus was the Son of God, that we are all sinners, and that it was His death on the cross that can save us from our sins.  I want other people to be saved, so I want them to believe the same thing.  If I didn't feel that way, it would be self-centered.  Otherwise, I would just be a hypocrite.

But I'll return to my original statement and say that it is important to be open minded.

I was born into an atheist family and raised to believe that religious views were stupid.  I went to public school where I learned about evolution, the big bang, all that jazz.  When I was first brought to Church, I hated it.  But I learned stuff there as well, and then I did studies of my own on different beliefs.  In the end, I made an educated and informed decision.

This is not the case with most people.  There are many that are raised in the Church and are closed-minded to anything else.  There are also many that are raised as atheists and they reject religion without ever going to a Church or reading the Bible.  And that's just ignorant.

I believe that it's important to be open minded before learning about different belief systems.  But after you've learned - and I mean truly learned, not just from random Googling or reading on Wikipedia, because that is hardly enough - then you should stick to your faith (be it in Christianity, Budhism, Science, what have you) and not equivocate.

It is essential to have respect for others' beliefs, but that does not mean that you should just say that it's okay for them to believe whatever they want.  Because that's just hypocrisy.

I'd like to stress again that Science is not the absolute Truth.  One of the basic foundations of science, believe it or not, is that nothing in it is certain.  Once upon a time, scientists firmly believed that the world was flat.  Now, we all believe that it's round.  Perhaps in the future, when we have technology to truly comprehend the fourth dimension and up (string theory is insane, by the way), perhaps we'll find that the world isn't round at all, but some strange shape we aren't even aware of right now because of the way it screws with the dimensions.  Who knows?

Scientists scoff at religious views because it doesn't fall under their THEORY that everything that is real is observable.  They say religion is wrong because it doesn't fit with their conception of the world, but scientific views are just another belief system.  I could say that science is all wrong because some of it doesn't fit with my beliefs in the Bible - but that's ridiculous too.

So the bottom line is - keep an open mind while you learn.  Don't get locked into atheism because of what you learn in public school, and don't start thinking that your Pastor or religious leader has all the answers.  We're all human, and none of us can know everything, and we can't know anything for certain.  Instead, study DEEPLY those various religious and scientific views and then DECIDE what you believe.  And then, don't turn back without good reason.