-
Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!
You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!
Religion Thread: Is there a God or Not?
- Thread starter Phantom7
- Start date
- Status
IAmBlu3
Smash Champion
aye jugfingers, are you buddhist? lol 
Wrex
Smash Cadet
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2010
- Messages
- 27
no, you just have failed to understand what i'm talking about. the idea of "good vs evil" in the sense you first mentioned, about good triumping over evil, would imply the story sort of good vs evil, like in star wars or the bible or something similar. in eastern religions evil is what you do to yourself, not what you do to others (though they're linked together), and there's not evil in the sense of "good vs evil" as much as it is "knowledge vs ignorant", which is not something you can break down western concepts into. i'm aware of the concepts of buddhist evil, and i'd actually assume i'm much more aware of them then you are. those terms are just translated into "good and evil". the actual term for "good" in buddhism is sanskrit for awakened, and the term for evil is sanskrit for suffering. buddhism is not about the "triumph of good over evil", it's about people triumping over materialism and seeing things for how they are. hinduism is the same. hell, one of the main gods for hinduism is Shiva the destroyer, and in the Bhagavada-Gita the whole discourse is krishna telling arjuna that it's ok for him to murder his enemies in war, and that instead of worrying about what his actions will cause he should detach himself.
Anymore spam or joke posts(like a couple people have done) that don't add to the thread will be getting infracted from here out. Just an open warning.
jugfingers
Smash Champion
hoho your a funny guy. I failed to understand what you were talking about? no let us re-trace our steps to find the root of ignorance in this argument.
I first posted this
to which you responded
it was you who misunderstood what I was talking about, because the evil I was referring to is ignorance, is confusion,
"evil" explicitly referring to the sole cause of violence, anger, hatred
and good referring to the extinction of evil
the extinction of ignorance.
the extinction of confusion.
the cessation of suffering.
which of course is the good and evil that is refered to in this quote
"To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind yourself, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas."
Dhammapada verse 183
if you have such a fine awareness of the buddhist concept evil this argument never would have took place because you would have realized the evil I was referring to when I mentioned it in the context of buddha lol.
plus. you clearly don't understand Sanskrit because the Sanskrit word for awake is Bodhi or Buddha and the Sanskrit words for good are sundara or sattva among many others, but not bodhi. also the word for suffering is duhkka the word for evil is ahita (among many others)
Sanskrit was around a thousand years before Buddha, the terms awake and good are synonymous in Buddhist philosophy but not equivalent in the Sanskrit language.
lol....
I think the real question is: why do you care what someone else believes?
Is there a God? I think so. I don't care to explain my reasoning to whoever asks, and I rarely, if ever, even mention the fact that I believe in a God.
You'd be wise to do the same.
I swear the one thing that bugs me more than anything is having my beliefs put on the spot when they conflict with nothing.
I want to be illogical in the comfort of my own life. Please go away.
Is there a God? I think so. I don't care to explain my reasoning to whoever asks, and I rarely, if ever, even mention the fact that I believe in a God.
You'd be wise to do the same.
I swear the one thing that bugs me more than anything is having my beliefs put on the spot when they conflict with nothing.
I want to be illogical in the comfort of my own life. Please go away.
lol..........lol.
Btw I'm a Deist, I don't follow any religion.
Rappster
Smash Ace
did someone in the thread already try to disprove pascal's wager?
Wrex
Smash Cadet
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2010
- Messages
- 27
and so you prove me good. excellent job, i thought i knew what i was talking about so i didn't bother to look it up, but you did and in your little research showed me i was being dumb.
IAmBlu3
Smash Champion
"I want to be illogical in the comfort of my own life. Please go away."
I'm stealing this
I'm stealing this
I understand this is mostly a joke post but I think what the non-religious don't understand is that the good theists preach their faith not to condescend, but because they want what's best for other people. You have to remember that most of them believe there will be some from of eternal suffering for those who are sinners, so they don't want that to happen to people.
The non-religious get annoyed at when the theists try to preach, but what they don't realise is that the good theists go home and pray for those who are sinners, who pray for those who don't have their faith.
The non-religious don't care about 'enlightening' others, there just happy once they themselves are enlightened. That's not saying that the non-religious have no morality, but I think if they too believed that your actions in this life determined your eternal fate they'd want to 'enlighten' people too for their sake.
Of course there are right ways and wrong ways to go about it. The problem is theists get stereotyped as socially difficult and condescending, so they are often ignored. Maybe there are more theists like that in America, but in Australia there's an abundance of 'normal' ones, that's not to say that they are any less religious, they just go about it in a better way. We do still have the annoying ones too though.
Mota
"The snake, knowing itself, strikes swiftly"
Just watched a horribly biased report attacking Scientology.
Reminds me a lot of that Simpsons episode with the Movementarians cult.
Reminds me a lot of that Simpsons episode with the Movementarians cult.
IAmBlu3
Smash Champion
South Park's episode on Scientology > Simpsons Cult episode.
What was the Simpsons one like? I mean I'm already assuming it was horrible because Simpsons is horrible. The South Park ep is pretty brilliant however.
IAmBlu3
Smash Champion
Simpsons > South Park. That's fact -__- that particular episode was bad. made movementarianism look like an elaborate scam and way to dodge taxes and didn't really explain any beliefs. just belittled it. but that was during one of the worst seasons of the simpsons
Is the South Park episode the one where everyone in the credits is just Jack and Jane Smith so they can't get sued?
Is anyone scientologist here? I don't relaly understand the basis for the faith.
Ron Hubbard has been quoted saying "if a man wants to make millions of dollars, he should start his own religion".
Also, ex-scientologists have come out and said that you needed to pay thousands of dollars before high-level doctrine would be revealed to you.
I know the media is against it, and I'm not really attacking it, I'm just more curious to know what the basis of belief for scientology is.
Please no one make offensive comments, keep it respectfull fellas.
Is anyone scientologist here? I don't relaly understand the basis for the faith.
Ron Hubbard has been quoted saying "if a man wants to make millions of dollars, he should start his own religion".
Also, ex-scientologists have come out and said that you needed to pay thousands of dollars before high-level doctrine would be revealed to you.
I know the media is against it, and I'm not really attacking it, I'm just more curious to know what the basis of belief for scientology is.
Please no one make offensive comments, keep it respectfull fellas.
I have one thing to say that some people might find offensive, but I'm going to say it anyway. You have been warned.
No way is the Simpsons better than South Park.
Anyway.
GOD, I really don't think what I had to say about fine-tuning comes from ignorance. There are literally so many stars in the universe that it's basically guaranteed that there are trillions of places where life would exist if thing were a little different, but it doesn't. Likewise, there are almost definitely trillions of places like ours to where if things were a little different, life would not exists. And I'm sure (literally, I believe it as much as you believe in God) that whoever lives in those places have had the same conversation that we're having now. Just because we haven't found one of those places yet doesn't mean they don't exist.
Hell, for my argument to be true, all we have to find is a single planet orbiting just outside it's star's habitable zone. The odds of this are pretty much 100%.
Also, about South Park, I just remembered that the Imaginationland trilogy touches on this stuff too in a hilarious way. Stan and Butters end up going to Imaginationland, which is run by the Council of 9: Wonder Woman, Aslan, Morpheus, Glinda the Good Witch, Zeus, Luke Skywalker, Popeye, Gandalf, and Jesus. And the government is talking about bombing Imaginationland in order to kill terrorists:
"Well if it's real then we'd be bombing heaven, which would be bad."
"It's possible that heaven is imaginary."
"Ooh, you better not say that, you'll go to hell!"
"Its possible that hell is also imaginary."
"So... we'd be bombing hell. That's good, right?"
Etc. Really, regardless of your beliefs, go watch that trilogy, because it is hilarious. All episodes of SP are free to watch at southparkstudios.com.
No way is the Simpsons better than South Park.
Anyway.
GOD, I really don't think what I had to say about fine-tuning comes from ignorance. There are literally so many stars in the universe that it's basically guaranteed that there are trillions of places where life would exist if thing were a little different, but it doesn't. Likewise, there are almost definitely trillions of places like ours to where if things were a little different, life would not exists. And I'm sure (literally, I believe it as much as you believe in God) that whoever lives in those places have had the same conversation that we're having now. Just because we haven't found one of those places yet doesn't mean they don't exist.
Hell, for my argument to be true, all we have to find is a single planet orbiting just outside it's star's habitable zone. The odds of this are pretty much 100%.
Also, about South Park, I just remembered that the Imaginationland trilogy touches on this stuff too in a hilarious way. Stan and Butters end up going to Imaginationland, which is run by the Council of 9: Wonder Woman, Aslan, Morpheus, Glinda the Good Witch, Zeus, Luke Skywalker, Popeye, Gandalf, and Jesus. And the government is talking about bombing Imaginationland in order to kill terrorists:
"Well if it's real then we'd be bombing heaven, which would be bad."
"It's possible that heaven is imaginary."
"Ooh, you better not say that, you'll go to hell!"
"Its possible that hell is also imaginary."
"So... we'd be bombing hell. That's good, right?"
Etc. Really, regardless of your beliefs, go watch that trilogy, because it is hilarious. All episodes of SP are free to watch at southparkstudios.com.
1048576
Smash Master
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2006
- Messages
- 3,417
Way earlier, I showed that God cannot be wholly benevolent and omnipotent at the same time given evil exists. Someone pointed out that good is meaningless without evil, so, by that user's definition (which is just as valid as mine I suppose) God can still be benevolent by allowing evil into the world. My problem with this response is that the roles can be reversed. I can say that God is evil, and the only reason he allows good things to happen is because evil is meaningless without good. Just like we wouldn't appreciate the good things we have without first enduring hardships, we wouldn't be vexed by our suffering without knowing that something better exists.
Has anyone addressed why God won't heal amputees yet? Preferably in a straightforward manner. I don't want people trying to make every word in the dictionary mean every other word.
If I have energy, I'll try to explain why an unfalsifiable idea can never have evidence in favor of it.
Also, I care that other people believe in God because I'm gay. It hurts me directly when people draw their morals from the alleged teachings of an invisible sky-man that apparently wanted to stone children for disobedience and condoned **** and slavery. Instead I propose that people draw their moral guidelines from their ability to empathize with others. That would make the world a better place, IMO.
Has anyone addressed why God won't heal amputees yet? Preferably in a straightforward manner. I don't want people trying to make every word in the dictionary mean every other word.
If I have energy, I'll try to explain why an unfalsifiable idea can never have evidence in favor of it.
Also, I care that other people believe in God because I'm gay. It hurts me directly when people draw their morals from the alleged teachings of an invisible sky-man that apparently wanted to stone children for disobedience and condoned **** and slavery. Instead I propose that people draw their moral guidelines from their ability to empathize with others. That would make the world a better place, IMO.
That argument is a good one, but it is hotly debated and isn't irrefutable fact. It's just too much to go into on a general discussion forum.
This is a good argument too, except for the fact that it's based on a misunderstanding of good and evil.
The arguments that evil is required for free will, and that suffering brings goodness and wisdom are based on Thomas Aquians' concept of evil.
Aquinas argues that good and evil are not opposites, but rather that evil is the absence of good. Similar to Aristotle, he argues that everything moves towards goodness, and that the failure to do so is evil.
In other words, evil is a destruction of good. It requires good to exist for itself to exist. Good is the purpose, and evil is the failure to fulfil the purpose. In this sense, you cannot have an evil God who only allows good because it contradicts the essence of evil.
By saying you have an evil God, you are saying you have a God which failed to fulfil its purpose. You are saying that before God acted, there already was a concept of good which He was supposed to follow, but didn't. In the same sense, a resulting world in which evil is the necessity is a world where everything is not supposed to follow its purpsoe. In other words, the purpose would be to not follow one's purpose, which is contradictory. Plus, the fact that goodness is not a necessity in a world like that is illogical, because evil needs goodness to exist.
Again this is a problem of evil issue.
The only two things I can say here are to read Old Law vs. New Law Theory and actually look at the evidence outside of the Bible for the truth of the Church's teachings before you straw man it.
Reducing morality to victimless crimes and what is socially agreeable isn't always what's best though. I'm not talking about homosexuality specifically, but the above sentence is the general type of thinking you're advocating.
IAmBlu3
Smash Champion
there's a reason simpsons has been on longer and produces way more episodes per season-__- and they receive roughly 7 or 8 times the number of viewers than south park.....and the south park guys have already said simpsons is the greatest cartoon ever created
but lets not get into a debate here. being a major fan of both, i can say we'll just chop it up to opinion.hmmmmm i need to throw in something about religion to stay on topic. does anyone in here practice any other types of religion, aside from those that are well known? I just met a couple pagans not too long ago and still learning what they believe and what not.
The simpsons were better, but now that simpsons sucks and south park is better (found the early eps rather eh) I think they're about even overall. And this is completly off-topic. *Ahem*there's a reason simpsons has been on longer and produces way more episodes per season-__- and they receive roughly 7 or 8 times the number of viewers than south park.....and the south park guys have already said simpsons is the greatest cartoon ever created
One thing I've always wondered, are there any religions out there that don't go against another? IE, what religion A is about doesn't disprove the main focus of religion B?
Nihongo-ookami
Smash Journeyman
Ia, ia, C'htulu Ftaghn.
Ok, here's something that just came to my mind in a moment of spontaneity, and I think I like it so much I'm going to make it my new religion. I call it Calvinfaith. It's a lot like Calvinball, except with religion. That means I get to make up my own rules for what I believe on the spot, and alter everything about it based on nothing but a whim.
The only permanent rule is that you can't believe the same thing twice!
I wonder if I could start this as a real religion. It is the fastest way to make a million dollars...
The only permanent rule is that you can't believe the same thing twice!
I wonder if I could start this as a real religion. It is the fastest way to make a million dollars...
Today I'm going to believe that I personally am God, until someone looks me directly in the eyes. Then they'll be God.
This should be an interesting day.
This should be an interesting day.
In order to join the faith, today you have to walk backwards somewhere. It doesn't matter; to the supermarket, to the bus stop, or even just to your bathroom, and you're in.
Zero Beat
Cognitive Scientist
Wow, it's lasted 6 pages? Something must be wrong here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe
Its more than just the gravitational constant. I love how there's consensus in the physics and astronomy communities too. Rarely happens.
So you don't even know what you're arguing. Just read at least the intro and find out what its talking about.
Also, apparently Hindus welcome pretty much any belief system. This christian family that are friends of my family went to the hindu temple in atlanta to check out the architecture, and the leader of the temple (or tour guide, whichever) was very receptive to their views. He just embraced chrisitianity as true as well.
I guess this thread has degenerated though.. and lol at talking about science in a religion thread..
1048576
Smash Master
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2006
- Messages
- 3,417
Perfect. <3 Randall
Oop just realized this post is spam. I'd better contribute something. How about this: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347 It's a depiction of the extremes of length that exist in our universe.
Don't judge based on the site name. I'm sure it has at least tangential value ITT.
Scientology is a complete and utter scam with a ton of blood on its hands. The basis for the religion is that everyone is filled up with "thetans", which are troubled spirits from millions of years ago. Back then, an evil galactic overlord named Xenu came to Earth, captured all of the thetans, put them into volcanoes and blew the volcanoes up. This shattered the thetans up and spread them across the words, and they had to take refuge inside human bodies. Most Scientology rituals/etc. involve cleansing yourself of thetans.
Oh yeah, and nobody is supposed to know about Xenu until you're OT3, which is a level of Scientology that you need a bunch of money to get to.
Here are some reasons why Scientology is evil and the most dangerous religion today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_McPherson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout
http://www.xenu.net/archive/secret.html
Pluvia
Hates Semicolons<br>;
I'm now a Jedi. I believe in the Force and stuff.
You can mock me but i know i'm right and Jediism is is the 4th biggest religion in the U.K.
Also old Simpsons is far superior to old South Park, but new South Park is much better than new Simpsons. Family Guy can be hit or miss depending on the episode. Though the one main thing that Family Guy and maybe The Simpsons have over South Park is South Park takes itself waaaaay too seriously sometimes. Someone needs to remind them its a cartoon.
You can mock me but i know i'm right and Jediism is is the 4th biggest religion in the U.K.
Also old Simpsons is far superior to old South Park, but new South Park is much better than new Simpsons. Family Guy can be hit or miss depending on the episode. Though the one main thing that Family Guy and maybe The Simpsons have over South Park is South Park takes itself waaaaay too seriously sometimes. Someone needs to remind them its a cartoon.
Geist
Smash Master
Hell yeah, in questionnaires asking for religious beliefs, I always circle other and put Jedi.
This thread reminds me of something George Carlin once said.
"I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate."
CaptainEvilStomper9
Smash Apprentice
- Joined
- May 24, 2009
- Messages
- 86
Interesting thread
I'm only making this post so I could more easily find this thread later when I have time to read it.
I'm only making this post so I could more easily find this thread later when I have time to read it.
Blowtoes, that must be a different performance than the one I know. The one I'm familiar with, Carlin says he worships the sun, but he doesn't pray to it. He instead prays to Joe Pesci, because he's a good actor.
Regardless, per my earlier criteria, I passed my godhood onto the first person to look into my eyes today. Surprisingly (or maybe not), it actually ended up being a cat. If you would like to worship God, it's a cat at the Petco in Union Square in New York City.
Regardless, per my earlier criteria, I passed my godhood onto the first person to look into my eyes today. Surprisingly (or maybe not), it actually ended up being a cat. If you would like to worship God, it's a cat at the Petco in Union Square in New York City.
The Phazon Assassin
Smash Champion
I touched the opposite pole, so me walking forward to the bathroom counts, right?
Melomaniacal
Smash Champion
The whole good vs. evil thing is so much more simple when you're an atheist.
Some people are *******s, some people are not. The end.
Some people are *******s, some people are not. The end.
- Status