The Concept Of Being "God Fearing"

[trish]

Little off topic, but I couldn't resist: The 'science' of supply side economics has convinced people that a free market has an invisible hand that carefully balances every need with just the right amount of product to fulfill that need. Moreover, like the multiplying loaves and fishes, each market interaction creates an excess of wealth in the form of profit that is drained from wage earners (who have no use for it) and into the offshore accounts of stock owners. If we just leave people, businesses and corporations to their own devices, the economy will grow and grow and grow and grow beyond the very finite boundaries of Earth and Nature herself. They will reach a heavenly and dynamically growing economic equilibrium where every need will be met and every man will be happy.

[trish]

Back on topic.

It seems to me that the question, “Does God exist?”, like the question “Do unicorns exist?” is simply incoherent.

The ontological argument goes,

God is good.
God is perfect.
Existence is a trait of good and perfect things (for a good thing that does not exist wouldn’t be perfect if it didn’t exist).
Therefore God exists.

Applied to unicorns it goes

Existential unicorns are by definition those unicorns which have the trait of existing.
By definition existential unicorns exist.
Therefore some unicorns exist.

The flaw in these arguments is that existence is not a trait; it is a logical quantifier. After all, what are unicorns doing when they’re not existing? What do gods do when they’re existing? The word “exist” is neither an adjective nor a predicate. Treating it as such can lead to paradoxes and other nonsense. “Does God exist?” is just poor grammar.

I’m sitting in a room with a laptop in front of me. “The laptop exists” is short for 
“Something in this room is a laptop.” Existential quantification is the dual of universal quantification: to say of a trait T “Something in this room has trait T” is the same as asserting “Not everything in this room doesn’t have the trait T.” Hence not everything in this room isn’t a laptop.

So the proper way to unravel the assertion “God exists” is “Not everything in the universe isn’t God.”

The trouble with quantifiers is that before you can use them you have to agree on a domain of application: quantifiers range over a domain of discourse (or using the parlance of logicians...a universe). When I say “Not everything in this room isn’t a laptop” I refer to the room I was sitting in when writing this post. When the grammatically aware preacher says, “Not everything in the universe isn’t God” he needs to make it clear to us what the universe of discourse is; i.e. what is the understood range of the universal quantifier in this assertion?

“Universe” could mean something like: every object and phenomenon found in nature taking up a region of space and having some temporal duration. Under such an understanding “Not everything in the universe isn’t God” would put God squarely in the universe. He would be an object or phenomenon of nature, explicable in natural terms. An alien life-form perhaps, certainly not a transcendent being outside the universe and responsible for its creation.

On the other hand “universe” could mean something like: every object or phenomena natural or supernatural. Then the claim “Not everything in the universe isn’t God” leaves open the possibility of God’s transcendence. The trouble here is making sense of just what sort of objects this “universe” is understood to house. Could it contain unicorns? Garuda? We need to agree on the domain of discourse before we can make specific existential and universal claims. I’m certainly not going to adopt a domain that presupposes the veracity of the claim “Gods exist.” Those who believe the claim are not going to adopt a domain of discourse that automatically closes off the veracity of the claim.

[fred41]

God's literary output is very uneven, probably due to his use of holy ghost writers.

...plus he insists on using one finger.

[fred41]

Back on topic.

It seems to me that the question, “Does God exist?”, like the question “Do unicorns exist?” is simply incoherent......

So?!!
Maybe we were all a little tipsy when we said it.
Maybe it was after someones wedding reception and we all had a little too much champagne...or maybe we like having a couple of glasses of wine for health reasons....
So we made a teensy weensy mistake Miss Polly Perfect...
I mean Christ Sakes.....






....lol..forgot where I was going with that.

[trish]

I gave you a thumbs up for remembering the Miss in the Miss Polly Perfect

[Stavros]

Back on topic.

It seems to me that the question, “Does God exist?”, like the question “Do unicorns exist?” is simply incoherent.

The ontological argument goes,

God is good.
God is perfect.
Existence is a trait of good and perfect things (for a good thing that does not exist wouldn’t be perfect if it didn’t exist).
Therefore God exists.

Applied to unicorns it goes

Existential unicorns are by definition those unicorns which have the trait of existing.
By definition existential unicorns exist.
Therefore some unicorns exist.

The flaw in these arguments is that existence is not a trait; it is a logical quantifier. After all, what are unicorns doing when they’re not existing? What do gods do when they’re existing? The word “exist” is neither an adjective nor a predicate. Treating it as such can lead to paradoxes and other nonsense. “Does God exist?” is just poor grammar.

I’m sitting in a room with a laptop in front of me. “The laptop exists” is short for 
“Something in this room is a laptop.” Existential quantification is the dual of universal quantification: to say of a trait T “Something in this room has trait T” is the same as asserting “Not everything in this room doesn’t have the trait T.” Hence not everything in this room isn’t a laptop.

So the proper way to unravel the assertion “God exists” is “Not everything in the universe isn’t God.”

The trouble with quantifiers is that before you can use them you have to agree on a domain of application: quantifiers range over a domain of discourse (or using the parlance of logicians...a universe). When I say “Not everything in this room isn’t a laptop” I refer to the room I was sitting in when writing this post. When the grammatically aware preacher says, “Not everything in the universe isn’t God” he needs to make it clear to us what the universe of discourse is; i.e. what is the understood range of the universal quantifier in this assertion?

“Universe” could mean something like: every object and phenomenon found in nature taking up a region of space and having some temporal duration. Under such an understanding “Not everything in the universe isn’t God” would put God squarely in the universe. He would be an object or phenomenon of nature, explicable in natural terms. An alien life-form perhaps, certainly not a transcendent being outside the universe and responsible for its creation.

On the other hand “universe” could mean something like: every object or phenomena natural or supernatural. Then the claim “Not everything in the universe isn’t God” leaves open the possibility of God’s transcendence. The trouble here is making sense of just what sort of objects this “universe” is understood to house. Could it contain unicorns? Garuda? We need to agree on the domain of discourse before we can make specific existential and universal claims. I’m certainly not going to adopt a domain that presupposes the veracity of the claim “Gods exist.” Those who believe the claim are not going to adopt a domain of discourse that automatically closes off the veracity of the claim.

An unusually incoherent post from you Trish and one which I would have expected to be more rational.

On Unicorns: historically they are most likely in reality the now extinct Indian Rhinoceros which may also have been found further west in ancient Persia where a visiting Greek doctor (Ctesius) referred to them as 'ugly brutes'. There is a strong likelihood that cave paintings which depict a beast with one horn seen from the side angle (eg in Lascaux) is in fact a beast with two horns but the artist has no knowledge of perspective.
More interesting perhaps is that in more modern times rather than being an 'ugly beast' the Unicorn has become a non-threatening, even enchanted animal much to be desired. A Unicorn shares a shield with a Lion sitting atop a local building in my town.
There is also the 'fact' according to the North Korean news agency that the corpse of the last living Unicorn, the mount of Dongmyeong -founder of the Korean Kingdom- is buried not from the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, the man who invented the Hamburger and once played a round of Golf scoring a hole in one 18 times.

Your attempt to apply rational thought to the existence of God is in fact irrational as it uses a secular mode of thought when the religious is required, it is rather like being presented with a bowl of soup and a fork to eat it with. From the point of view of most religions the existence of God or of gods is a rational explanation of everything that exists in this world, the previous world, and the world to come. The fundamental problem it seems to me is that most religions rest on texts that are thousands of years old (less than 2,000 in the case of the Quran) which raises the obvious question -how does one relate an ancient text to contemporary life?

Ancient religions express the views that were common at the time which made no distinction between life on earth and what was perceived to be in the sky above. What has become crucial to the history of human behaviour, was the emergence from this perspective of a 'moral cosmology' which continues to form the basis of contemporary morals because mixed in with the explanations of existence, and the rules and regulations which bound human communities through a shared moral recognition of what was right and wrong for the community to survive (and often to survive without destroying each other) are those principles and values which still exist in both natural law and jurisprudence, and not just in Western societies.

In other words, without ancient religions we would not have contemporary morals or law. Without ancient religions, we would not have modern science which emerged from the belief that some held that theology could not explain change. For the weakest element of theological explanations of life is that they tend to insist that what they proclaim ends the need for any further debate on what life is for. Everything you need to live is in 'The Bible' or the 'Quran'.

Hence the paradox: it is irrational to believe in God, and irrational not to believe in God. One discipline is based on evidence, the other on faith.

What science does not explain is the soul, if science even believes that there is such a 'thing'. But if science argues we human are machines, then why is that we have for the most part the same component parts, yet like or dislike this type of music or that, and why is that some people find science does not explain to them what love is, or beauty? What can be more irrational than love, causing people to lose their appetite, to lose sleep, to behave as if possessed by demons? Why do people describe the effect of a sunset or the climax of an opera or even a pop song as 'uplifting' or 'moving'? Lifting where? Moving towards what?

People need something 'extra' just as they often need the answers provided by science, and I think for most people it is love; but I do think Hegel had an interesting thing to say which resonates with people in our own times who have 'found religion' -just as I am sure others have travelled the other way and turned against it.

"Time was when man had a heaven, decked and fitted out with endless wealth of thoughts and pictures. The significance of all that is, lay in the thread of light by which it was attached to heaven; instead of dwelling in the present as it is here and now, the eye glanced away over the present to the Divine, away, so to say, to a present that lies beyond. The mind’s gaze had to be directed under compulsion to what is earthly, and kept fixed there; and it has needed a long time to introduce that clearness, which only celestial realities had, into the crassness and confusion shrouding the sense of things earthly, and to make attention to the immediate present as such, which was called Experience, of interest and of value. Now we have apparently the need for the opposite of all this; man’s mind and interest are so deeply rooted in the earthly that we require a like power to have them raised above that level. His spirit shows such poverty of nature that it seems to long for the mere pitiful feeling of the divine in the abstract, and to get refreshment from that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for the merest mouthful of water. By the little which can thus satisfy the needs of the human spirit we can measure the extent of its loss".

[trish]

An unusually incoherent post from you Trish and one which I would have expected to be more rational.

On Unicorns: historically they are most likely in reality the now extinct Indian Rhinoceros which may also have been found further west in ancient Persia where a visiting Greek doctor (Ctesius) referred to them as 'ugly brutes'. There is a strong likelihood that cave paintings which depict a beast with one horn seen from the side angle (eg in Lascaux) is in fact a beast with two horns but the artist has no knowledge of perspective.
More interesting perhaps is that in more modern times rather than being an 'ugly beast' the Unicorn has become a non-threatening, even enchanted animal much to be desired. A Unicorn shares a shield with a Lion sitting atop a local building in my town.
There is also the 'fact' according to the North Korean news agency that the corpse of the last living Unicorn, the mount of Dongmyeong -founder of the Korean Kingdom- is buried not from the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, the man who invented the Hamburger and once played a round of Golf scoring a hole in one 18 times.

Your attempt to apply rational thought to the existence of God is in fact irrational as it uses a secular mode of thought when the religious is required, it is rather like being presented with a bowl of soup and a fork to eat it with. From the point of view of most religions the existence of God or of gods is a rational explanation of everything that exists in this world, the previous world, and the world to come. The fundamental problem it seems to me is that most religions rest on texts that are thousands of years old (less than 2,000 in the case of the Quran) which raises the obvious question -how does one relate an ancient text to contemporary life?

Ancient religions express the views that were common at the time which made no distinction between life on earth and what was perceived to be in the sky above. What has become crucial to the history of human behaviour, was the emergence from this perspective of a 'moral cosmology' which continues to form the basis of contemporary morals because mixed in with the explanations of existence, and the rules and regulations which bound human communities through a shared moral recognition of what was right and wrong for the community to survive (and often to survive without destroying each other) are those principles and values which still exist in both natural law and jurisprudence, and not just in Western societies.

In other words, without ancient religions we would not have contemporary morals or law. Without ancient religions, we would not have modern science which emerged from the belief that some held that theology could not explain change. For the weakest element of theological explanations of life is that they tend to insist that what they proclaim ends the need for any further debate on what life is for. Everything you need to live is in 'The Bible' or the 'Quran'.

Hence the paradox: it is irrational to believe in God, and irrational not to believe in God. One discipline is based on evidence, the other on faith.

What science does not explain is the soul, if science even believes that there is such a 'thing'. But if science argues we human are machines, then why is that we have for the most part the same component parts, yet like or dislike this type of music or that, and why is that some people find science does not explain to them what love is, or beauty? What can be more irrational than love, causing people to lose their appetite, to lose sleep, to behave as if possessed by demons? Why do people describe the effect of a sunset or the climax of an opera or even a pop song as 'uplifting' or 'moving'? Lifting where? Moving towards what?

People need something 'extra' just as they often need the answers provided by science, and I think for most people it is love; but I do think Hegel had an interesting thing to say which resonates with people in our own times who have 'found religion' -just as I am sure others have travelled the other way and turned against it.

"Time was when man had a heaven, decked and fitted out with endless wealth of thoughts and pictures. The significance of all that is, lay in the thread of light by which it was attached to heaven; instead of dwelling in the present as it is here and now, the eye glanced away over the present to the Divine, away, so to say, to a present that lies beyond. The mind’s gaze had to be directed under compulsion to what is earthly, and kept fixed there; and it has needed a long time to introduce that clearness, which only celestial realities had, into the crassness and confusion shrouding the sense of things earthly, and to make attention to the immediate present as such, which was called Experience, of interest and of value. Now we have apparently the need for the opposite of all this; man’s mind and interest are so deeply rooted in the earthly that we require a like power to have them raised above that level. His spirit shows such poverty of nature that it seems to long for the mere pitiful feeling of the divine in the abstract, and to get refreshment from that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for the merest mouthful of water. By the little which can thus satisfy the needs of the human spirit we can measure the extent of its loss".

Good to know unicorns once roamed the world. I did not know that.

On the larger point, that existence is incoherent, I should’ve thought we might agree. I neither argue (in the post above) that God exists nor do I argue that he doesn’t. I maintained that attempts (like Avicenna’s, Anselm’s and others) to rationally prove His existence are doomed to fail. I think, from what you say about the inapplicability of reason to the questions of religion, that we both have come to that same conclusion. Our routes, though convergent, do not depart from the same ports. I take as my starting point the observation that “existence” is not a trait that something might or might not have. You, if I am not mistaken, start from premise that the world offers us more than can reason and science and what they fail to prove may yet be.

[Jia_westladyboy]

God is good.
God is perfect.
Existence is a trait of good and perfect things (for a good thing that does not exist wouldn’t be perfect if it didn’t exist).
Therefore God exists.
I’m sitting in a room with a laptop in front of me. “The laptop exists” is short for 
“Something in this room is a laptop.” Existential quantification is the dual of universal quantification: to say of a trait T “Something in this room has trait T” is the same as asserting “Not everything in this room doesn’t have the trait T.” Hence not everything in this room isn’t a laptop.
From the point of view of most religions the existence of God or of gods is a rational explanation of everything that exists in this world, the previous world, and the world to come.

Very interesting indeed your point.
I liked this thread and I have seen really beautiful arguments about god.. Please let me add my opinion and what I think about it thank you.

The fundamental problem it seems to me is that most religions rest on texts that are thousands of years old which raises the obvious question -how does one relate an ancient text to contemporary life?

Ancient text are somehow useful in everyday life, if taken for what they are without necessarily making a dogma out of them; They can reinforce our wisdom and common sense.

1 A typical example would be Buddha 2,500 years ago. A woman was suffering for the death of her brother, therefore she complained to Buddha and asked for an explanation about the god justice.. The Buddha replied and said to the woman to go to as many houses as she could and beg for some nuts.. but only one condition had to be followed and that was she should get the nuts from houses and families where nobody died before. At nite time the woman came back totally transformed and of course with no nuts, because in every family she found that someone had died in the past.. She recognized the trick of the Buddha to give her an understanding about death and sufferance.

2 Another example just few centuries BC about this is a decision taken by King Salomon; The story from the Hebrew Bible in which King Solomon of Israel ruled between two women both claiming to be the mother of a child by tricking the parties into revealing their true feelings. He simply replied to the ladies that if they both claim the child, then he should split it into two so everyone will be happy… the real mother replied that the other lady should keep it in that case. The king declared the first mother as the true mother. This wisdom can be used anytime someone claims things are not his or hers. The truth will always come up now or later on…

3 At that time, although Adam and his wife were both naked, neither of them felt any shame" (2:25).Interesting! What does this make me think of? That the grass looks always greener on the other side of the fence. A sexy woman will always look more appealing and sexy than the sexier wife. Anyone can have his/her own interpretation as long as it helps. The biblist will probably say that there was no sin yet at the time, and adam and eve were living in harmony with their bodies and senses. True too.

4 Jesus? He was great and I have photos of him in jeans. If I get rid of his ancient clothes and don’t think of him as standing always on that cross, and having a beautiful smile he becomes a very nice and wise man, still able to help in this modern times with his wisdom. We all know the ‘Ask and it shall be given to you” Knock and the door will be opened” , but I actually prefer the one that says, What’s the point of asking as it is already been given to you, and you just need the eyes to see it… Don’t knock as the door it is already opened, you just need the courage to pass through it.
Back to the god now…

To get an idea of what the god is… it would better to live in a monastery for a while, not to get more religious but to have a big laugh to the god’s idea created by a few men a couple of thousand years ago. After a while one who is not into it, begins to realise why theology should be learned without the real experience. Theology comes from the greek or latin of The words Theos = god and Logos = Logic … The logic about god. At times ignorance is a bliss.

The humanity is in need of a new dictionary,,, Seriously I think that in 2014 we are still using such old-fashioned words given to us by our ancestors. I am always replacing the word god by Existence or Sky, .. and like to call it anything but not god… that word has become so mischievous and harmful to many who prefer to live a guilty life, thinking about their sins all the time, in the hope to be forgiven by the projected image of the god they have created.

Using the word god, one is bound to think of a “He” as a person, and thinking of He as a person, it is like projecting our desires onto him.... It is restricting the infinity to something finite. Buddha gave the order to all his disciples not to create any image of him, and I love a famous sentence from someone who said: When you meet the Buddha, kill him. That is religion. Meaning…. The Buddha is within you and no need to follow false images.
I like to think of this universe with a presence of godliness…

Nietzsche gave the people a sense of freedom when he wrote the sentence: “God is Dead therefore man is free”, however that was a non complete and also a negative-only statement,,, He meant obviously the image of the god sitting in the sky who punishes people for their sins is dead.. is over, so relax.

In my opinion my vision of Religion is both negative and positive and neither this nor that; Not having any creed, and not following any particular belief, at the same time being aware of what we are and where we “Did Not come From” It is crucial for a balanced life, well at least mine. If the god created us, then I guess he can also un-create us, therefore we are the puppets and he is the puppeteer. Nahh the idea is so wrong. What about if we were never born and never to die? Even after physical death..

So many unanswered questions we still have about where we came from? Where are we going? What is there after death? Does god exists? Listening to the atheist that says god does not exists, makes them also in a way believers of the supernatural; Whenever we reject something a kind of pain is felt, and to get some release we need to hold onto something else, therefore embracing new ideals.
What about the one that says: We are not alone in this universe? The fact is that if we are alone or not alone both realities might be frightening.
Someone tried to put thing in a better way and stated that: “God is a symbol that constantly requires reinterpretation” I might agree to this concept but then again who will give the right interpretation of what god is? Thousands minds will have thousands explanations.
The god can also be a nice escape not to work on us and blame the He for what happened to us and for what we have not gotten yet.

It is not my intention to argue with any written philosophy or any religion being created on this earth, I can agree with the feeling of love and communion and the feeling of happiness that people feel when participating to a mass celebration or a religious gathering of any sort, however I had the same feeling when I was participating to a football game years back, or when working with fantastic and like-minded people, or even when making love.

I do not deny the perception of faith, not to be confused with devotion and find it to be an essential part of my life. Faith in not any who and what? Simply in the fact that being positive is not an option, looking at things and people that might appear boring, might and will expand the mind in the long term. Tomorrow is still a good day to feel good, and if it is not, then it’s only me who has closed the eyes. The others are us, is also a cool way of thinking positive when we don’t get right away what we want.
Feeling happy is feeling in tune with existence with all the human beings around us, even if it lasts a few secs… that is godliness too, and no religion is needed to feel happy and to have empathy with other people.

My escorting voyage has taught me a lot in my life, and I can say that I have learned more from my meeting with different type of people in the past year or so, than from my entire life. I will not obviously talk about escort stuff and will stick to the thread but please let me say that one of the interesting points I found.. It is the connection with sex and anger, sex and smoke, sex and loneliness, sex to release tension from work, also sex and love, sex and connection with religion, sex and clothes/no-clothes, and sex for the sex’s sake…

More than a year ago I had wrote a little Blog called: “Quick analysis of a sexual meeting or an act of masturbation, close to godliness” Re-proposed here: http://ladyboy-europe.blogspot.co.uk...ng-or-act.html
It has to be taken with a detached and a reasonable approach and it might be easier to understand for those gentlemen here who are into oriental religion and have grasped the meaning of it.

Many find it pointless talking about the existence of god, and everyone have their viewpoint, arguing about it will certainly not bring up the truth, but it is beneficial to know how so many people can talk about the supernatural on a shemale forum. I like to thank all of you intelligent people who started this thread and also the others who had the courage to give their opinion …. When I saw it, I stopped my work for today to write something about it..

And if I may ask, any thoughts from anyone about the afterlife, or before this life? Read about the unicorns, though I have heard about the white ones, .. what about farthing monkeys >?

Mhhwa kissex Jia

[fred41]

And if I may ask, any thoughts from anyone about the afterlife, or before this life? Read about the unicorns, though I have heard about the white ones, .. what about farthing monkeys >?

Mhhwa kissex Jia

Afterlife ?...I suppose everyone has thought about this several million times in their life.
At this moment in time I really doubt here is an afterlife...not one in which a person has a conscious awareness anyway. I realize there is no romance in that belief...and it's what makes some people fear the prospect of death so much.
but...
you do become part of a greater something when you pass. Even if it may only be in a biological sense...and there is a purpose to that...and almost everyone does leave a legacy whether they realize it or not - whether it was in remembrance of a deed or words having been spoken...hell, maybe a sentence left on this site. An individuals existence often has an impact one can barely be aware of ...and there is a purpose to that...not to mention children.
Sometimes that's enough.

[Jia_westladyboy]

you do become part of a greater something when you pass. Even if it may only be in a biological sense
I tend to be closer to the buddhist explanation about the afterlife... I am not entirely sure about turning into a cow or a rich man depending on the past action of the previous life, however it is also true that people who went trough the process of hypnosis could remember up to 3 past lives.
The less credible of the possible theories is the one that believes that people will be condemned to eternal hell or be blissful in heaven according on how religious they have been.
I find it hard to think that such a cruel god can exists ... Our life span is 70 years, minus the childhood, minus 8 hours sleep per day... and being condemned for eternal time? That must have been created by the ancient priests to keep under control and fear the god fearing ones...