Once I left mormonism, believing in a God didn't make sense for me. But I understand that many leave mormon beliefs, but not God beliefs.

When people ask me questions like, "But what if you are wrong, and there is a God?"

I tell them that if there is a God, I'll tell God that it was unreasonable for me to believe in him.

I'll say, "You did such a crappy job, how could I believe?" Your plan was stupid. Boinking your daughter Mary to make Jesus? And then have him killed. What kind of plan is that from a master of the universe?

Not helping people in need, but have the preachers all tell them that you will help. What kind of planning is that?

Child starvation, when you could just make nutritious food grow in their area? For a master of the universe, you just do a really bad job.

The holocaust?

It seems that an all powerful master of the universe would come up with better plans for sure. So it would be unreasonable for me to believe you existed.

I'm sure that if he/she/it is a reasonable being, he'll see my logic and perhaps let me in.

That's what I tell people when they worry about what will happen to me for not believing in God.

So far it hasn't allayed their fears much. But I think that it is really what I would say if there was a God, and he/she/it brought me before them to be judged.

Then I'll be damned. Ha.

Only if the god is their god.

It doesn't matter. If there is a God, the Being is such an obviously and observably hands-off parent that said Being might as well not be here at all. I've asked the Being many times to tell me who It is and what It wants in a way that I am sure the message came from outside of my imagination, yet no such telegram has ever arrived. I've asked The Being to warn me not to do or say anything that would absolutely lead to eternal punishment after my death and yet, for all my faults including mouthy atheist statements, no warning has been given. I know personally dozens of people who have telepathically beamed out the same request and none of them have gotten a nastygram from Top Management to stop doing dumb stuff or quit saying It doesn't exist.

Scriptures don't count, they were written by people and have gone through extensive editing, some have been lost to history and others are complete fiction, like the BoM. One's conscience doesn't count, either, as the message must be provably external in origin.

So either my and my friends' sins are no skin off God's Nose, at least not bad enough to bother with warnings of fiery reprimands, or God exists and doesn't feel like sharing who It is, and doesn't actually want anything from us aside from what we're already doing, or there isn't a God at all.

In any of these circumstances, how does absolute knowledge of God's existence change my life or my decisions? Not at all.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2019 03:50AM by ptbarnum.

Then I’ll get a lump of coal in my stocking.

Your friends don’t believe in God either. Ask them if they believe in Shiva. No? How about Odin? Brahma? Zeus? Oshun? Yemoja?

If disbelieving in a cosmic psycho is wrong, I don’t want to be right. Fortunately, since the Mormon (ooh I love using that word) religion has turned out to be wrong about everything else, they are certain to have God completely wrong.

We’re playing those mind games forever. I pray because it works. It’s a mind hack. Nobody knows why it works, so people make up explanations. That’s why Mormons say don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. The God invention is something uniquely human.

It’s what sets us apart from animals. There’s something divine in us that is beyond the animus. We imagine, we create, we intuit. Intention and belief are in our toolset. We make up stories. The old stories are getting stale. We will make up new stories because that’s what humans do. The problem with the modern world is that it has lost its connection to spirit. The ugliness of Mormonism would make anyone want to unplug, but being human carries a responsibility to strive toward bringing out the divine self. Call it the Christ, Nietzsche's Übermensch, whatever.

Are religious people happy? It kinda seems not. Mormons like to pretend they’re happy, and some of them are. For them, ignorance is bliss. That didn’t work for me, so I had to go through this huge readjustment to get my head straight. Now I’m happier than I ever was as a Mormon. I think that’s fine with God.

Well, I don't know about the rest of it but since I was small there is one thing I knew.

God doesn't care about your underwear.

If there is a god, he/she/it isn’t represented by any religion I’ve ever encountered.

DNA and ptbarnum have echoed my thoughts exactly, so I don't need to repeat them.

But I figure that wherever I'm going, if anywhere, at least I'll get there honestly and not because I've lied about a belief that I don't have.

They say that God is no respecter of persons, but for lack of a better word, I'd say that God would respect me much more for my honesty, than if I lied. "They" say that he also hates liars.

I have no fear whatsoever of being sent down to some firey hell because I don't believe in some invisible sky daddy.

I would need to see DNA evidence before I believe in a God.

I still won't care.

There are many gods. What if you pick the wrong god ?

Always pick the God with the biggest dick. The God of Abraham seems like a safe bet.

But what if the correct god is a female god ?

What if God is non-binary?

ptbarnum Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What if God is non-binary?

What if you are duodecimal?

Well, I suppose it's six of one and half a dozen of the other. ;-)

Statistician husband says hex is better though.

But what about Osiris? He was so potent he was able to impregnate Isis after being killed and, um, dismembered. Sounds like some P-hood right there.

Wait a minute! Yemoja, orixá goddess of the waters, is getting short shrift here.

I am more familiar with the Portuguese spelling, Iemanjá. She's hot, and goddess of water, so I named a sailboat I owned after her.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g303320-d8671285-i226337823-Pier_de_Iemanja-Vitoria_State_of_Espirito_Santo.html

Google Iemanja images, or the wikipedia article for her, which has another photo of a statue. She is one of the most popular Orixá gods.

As far as Heavenly Mothers go, she's pretty cool. I like the HMs who have a protective side, who will be generous and nice, until it's time to not be, then, you watch out.

My not-so-nice Irish ancestors had a triple HM called the Mor-Rioghan, made up of maiden, mother, and crone. They were the mistresses of fate, the ones who chose who lived through the war and who didn't. One of the three, Badbh Catha, was the black war crow who could slay 100 men with a single battle cry, and was occasionally seen as the banshee washing the clothes or entrails of the soon to be slain. They were some real optimistic perky folks, my old tribe.

I think 'mother protector' goddeses are a reminder you can only push women so far, especially when it comes to messing with their kids.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2019 02:42PM by ptbarnum.

> My not-so-nice Irish ancestors had a triple HM
> called the Mor-Rioghan, made up of maiden, mother,
> and crone. They were the mistresses of fate, the
> ones who chose who lived through the war and who
> didn't. One of the three, Badbh Catha, was the
> black war crow who could slay 100 men with a
> single battle cry, and was occasionally seen as
> the banshee washing the clothes or entrails of the
> soon to be slain. They were some real optimistic
> perky folks, my old tribe.

There was a similar troika in ancient Greek mythology--shouldn't come as a surprise given the Indo-European connections. There are three (or nine) muses, three (or nine) fates, and three (or nine) harpies, all representing different phases of the same divinities' life cycle. More generally, the goddesses of Greece represented the variable powers and moods of women as the Greeks perceived them.




ETA: I just checked wiki. There is a lot of evidence of the tripartite goddess throughout the Indo-European lands from India to Ireland. In the following article, search for the section called "fate goddesses."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology#Fate_goddesses



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2019 04:35PM by Lot's Wife.

Things make more sense to me if i see 'it' as an indifferent universe. Of course an indifferent universe would not care about things like the holocaust or the greed of mormonism or poverty in general.

I am always shocked at those who expect a personal relationship with some Daddy type being who has over 108 billion children and counting. Expecting immersion, sprinkling, not drinking coffee, or paying up to be that which a creator of a universe is interested in as a deciding factor for some type of individual judgement. The religious have taken this concept of Omniscience to the breaking point I would say. Their god has indeed created a rock too heavy for said god to lift. For this reason I find the idea of Judgement day to be absurd.

Those who preach love and forgiveness can't wait to see others get their final rebuke and penalty for some reason. Their idea of heaven is "Comeuppance Day" for everyone else. This is why they hope for a God. Christians just want to be the ones sitting in the benches of the Coliseum this time when those they look down on are fed to the lions and maimed.

As long as men are making up Gods, I have designed mine to fly higher than all that.

I want God or Mr. Universe to have some sanity and make some sense to my brain. Not put my brain in a double-bind every two seconds. Why is a God that created the sun so concerned about a humans private parts? Makes no sense. If i have to fight the lions in a coliseum on final judgement in front of a crowd then so be it. I'll fight their jesus in a colisuem on judgement day. Now that is an awesome fantasy for a warrior. I'll just call any great mystery Mr. Universe from now on. I think thats pretty funny actually.

Mr. Universe it is! Perfect.

You create your own reality. You have to unlearn beliefs that don’t serve you and learn ones that do. The only lies bigger than Mormonism are the lies we tell ourselves.

Positive thinking is very important because your beliefs attract experiences that reinforce them.

I love this exchange between Pagan and Christian from the 1973 film, The Wicker Man:


LORD SUMMERISLE: I’m confident your suspicions

are wrong, Sergeant.

We don't commit murder up here.

We're a deeply religious people.



SERGEANT HOWIE: Religious!

With ruined churches,

no ministers, no priests...

and children dancing naked.



LORD SUMMERISLE: They do love

their divinity lessons.



SERGEANT HOWIE: But they-they are-are naked.



LORD SUMMERISLE: Naturally. It's much too

dangerous to jump through the fire

with your clothes on.



SERGEANT HOWIE: What-what religion can-can-can

they possibly be learning...

j- jumping over bonfires?



LORD SUMMERISLE: Parthenogenesis.



SERGEANT HOWIE: What?



LORD SUMMERISLE: Literally, as Miss Rose would

doubtless say in her assiduous way,

reproduction without sexual union.



SERGEANT HOWIE: Oh, what is all this?

I mean, you-you-you've got

fake-fake-fake biology, fake religion.

Sir, have these children

never heard of Jesus?



LORD SUMMERISLE: Himself the son of a virgin,

impregnated, I believe, by a ghost.

Do sit down, Sergeant.

OMG You have made my eyes laugh. What a punch line.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> OMG You have made my eyes laugh. What a punch
> line.

The punchline is that Lord Summerisle has Sgt Howie burnt in a wickerwork cage in the shape of man, so that they can get their apple crop back.

Howie rightly points out Summerisle will be next when the crops keep failing.

If there is a God, he/she/it ain't the Mormon God.

If he is the Mormon God, then I defer to Martin Gore.

"I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours
but I think that God's got a sick sense of humour
And when I die I expect to find him laughing."

What if there is a god and her name is Mother Nature?

What if Mother Nature baked a cake bigger than the whole universe, but called it pudding!!

She would have to shut her pie hole.

The curiosity is -- what is it in us, that wishes to find meaning and something greater to make sense of things, this that persists.

Going back to the Paleolithic is evidence of this seeking (or perhaps, what we today interpret as evidence of this seeking) - we bury our dead with ritual, build altars, pyramids, invent all manner of mythology, etc. It is as though the whatever "god-of-the-day" is irrelevant, but that there is a "god-of-the-day" at all, is not: that remains. What is the advantage of this drive? If it did not somehow enhance survival it would have been evolutionarily extinguished. It takes a lot of resources to create these rituals, these monuments, after all. What is the evolutionary payoff?

There may or may not be a "god;" but the drive for one, the want, exists in us.

Psychopathic cons simply twist this want to their advantage e.g. Jim Jones, Koresh, Joseph Smith. But the drive, the want, was there first.

Taking additional reflection -

- is the want, drive, evolutionary advantage - all that - is it at all connected or correlated to the need for others to believe "as I do"?

OP describes a struggle of others attempting to "convert" the writer to their own vision, their own particular peculiar "god-of-the-day." That takes effort. Why is it important enough, what you believe, for another to expend resources, to bother with?

Why are "heretics" "disbelievers" burned at the stake or banished "beyond the pale" -- (pale being originally the vertical wooden posts of the defensive stockade of a settlement) (to be "beyond the pale" is to be cast out to almost certain death)

What's that about!?

The more people they can get to believe in their God, and join their club, the more they feel that theirs is the right one.

The more they invest in converts, the more right they feel.

If people were really so right, they wouldn't need others validation that they are right.

It's all psychological games, mixed with religion.

God as a symptom of something else?

Your slant makes a lot of sense, Dr. No. And the "why" you bring up is a fascinating point as well.

What IS the real reason mankind needs Gods so badly. And it appears that whatever that is, ties into the need to constantly reinvent those gods as gods seem to evolve at least as fast as hairstyle trends.

All this made that old Peggy Lee song, "Is That All There Is?" pop into my head and won't go away. We desperately don't want the answer to be nothing.

Does God just relieve the stress of being mortal? Like any other antidepressant?

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> God as a symptom of something else?
>
> What IS the real reason mankind needs Gods so
> badly. And it appears that whatever that is, ties
> into the need to constantly reinvent those gods as
> gods seem to evolve at least as fast as hairstyle
> trends.
>
> All this made that old Peggy Lee song, "Is That
> All There Is?" pop into my head and won't go away.
> We desperately don't want the answer to be
> nothing.
>
> Does God just relieve the stress of being mortal?
> Like any other antidepressant?

================================

Something to this riff

Can't explain or put it into words (yet) but this definitely hits the "mmmm, yeah" button

Makes me conjure the question, "In 500 years will today's God still be viable? Or will this centuries Heavenly Father need an update? Since, I believe you are right that the drive to have a god is eternal even if God is not.

Good point. God evolves. Even the Mormon God of 200 years ago no longer exists, his throne having been usurped by the much more conventional and ambiguous being that today's Mormons embrace.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> the drive to have a
> god is eternal even if God is not.
===============================
Thinking on what may be the evolutionary advantage . . .

Better survival/reproductive odds of people working in coordinated teams vs. solo.
Perhaps a unitary god merely provided a social latticework to unite a people into a group. And why it is that different gods provoke warfare.

Perhaps as a result of enhanced survival, through evolutionary selection, it's now in our DNA

And who was the ascerbic sage that quipped that "man created god in his own image"?

;-D

I like it. God as a unifying image. No need to be real. In fact, better if God isn't real or is at least perpetually absent because then the unifying principle that is the idea of God cannot be undone.

And here we are right back to "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" but this time with a purpose?

What if God stuck his head in to say hi and everybody just went, "Meh . . ."?

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What if God stuck his head in to say hi and
> everybody just went, "Meh . . ."?

They would all get 'A's in Deism.

That is precisely Dostoevsky's insight in The Grand Inquisitor. Jesus shows up to the pope and effectively says "I can take over the church now." The Inquisitor has him executed because the Catholic Church's organization and God are superior and Jesus would just mess things up.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> n/t


You could build the world's biggest Atom Smasher and smash two protons together and see what came out? And you could find something you call a God Particle which isn't actually a particle it's just a field that's everywhere and nowhere until we found it deep beneath Switzerland.

Is there a name for the condition, which when one is suffering from it, all words on paper must relate, one to one, with events in Space/Time?

Sola scriptura?

The question doesn't get us anywhere.

If there is a God, then....what?

We're still in the same predicament we are in now.

We still have to decide who, if anyone, who claims to speak for such God really does speak for God, when all the evidence indicates that none of those self-appointed mouthpieces of God are what they claim to be.

We still have to wonder why God can't simply put in an appearance and put all the doubts to rest.

We still don't know exactly what God's attributes are. Is God omnipotent or just way more potent than average? Is God omniscient or just way smarter than average? Is God omnipresent or a being that just gets around quite fast and has more surveillance equipment at hand than anyone else?

Is God still alive or still around?

Is God nice? Is God a psychopath?

This kind of "what if" exercise is a dead end. If God was really the type of omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, kind, loving being portrayed in the major religions traditionally, there would be no need for this "what if" exercise. His existence would have been proven more convincingly than anything else ever has been proven. It's precisely because the track record of prophecies, pronouncements, proclaimed "eternal principles" etc. of "God" have failed to prove true so many times throughout history that we find ourselves indulging in "what if there is a God?" types of mental exercises.

There is no clarity and never has been.

The group that is most aggressive and most powerful tears down and ridicules the gods that were worshiped by their vanquished and conquered enemies and elevates the victors' god above all others....and this lasts until another stronger group comes along and replaces that fantasy with their own fantasy.

If there is a god. I want to continually be at his side so that I can whisperer in his ear, and remind him that as a jerk, he is only OK.

If there is no god. Then I'll be at the movies.

I remember seeing (on TV) of the two astronauts who landed on the moon. ("One step for mankind".)

They reported that when they got out of their spaceship, they physically felt a goodness pervading their atmosphere, and one was converted to the likely reality of there being a God.

That doesn't mean anything--they were already religious. Aldrin is a Presbyterian (and took communion after landing on the Moon), and Armstrong was a self-described deist. Of course they would "feel" something during a particularly emotional experience like being the first humans to walk on a body other than Earth.

Mormons cry when they bear their testimonies and say they feel the presence of God in the temple, but that doesn't make their claims true either.

Then some of my aquaintances are in deep dodo!

Glad to make your acquaintance.

Most likely, exmos don't have a thorough understanding of the OT and NT. To understand God, you have to immerse yourself in a study of the Bible.

In the OT, religion was animal sacrifice. The first born unblemished animal, sacrificed by either a burnt offering, or a peace offering. That was religion BC. It was an ordinance, given to the covenant people to do AND to see the symbolism of the anticipated Saviour.

There was no other thing to do to instill this anticipated event. Hundreds of thousands of animals sacrificed for hundreds and hundreds of years. The peace offering could be considered celebratory, only the liver, caul and kidneys were burnt on the alter of brass by the Levites, then the Levites got a portion of the animal, and the rest of the animal was cooked and eaten in the temple courtyard by the family.

Every morning and evening, as well as other times, the burnt offering was done. Over and over and over for hundreds of years this was done to bring to rememberance of a Saviour who would suffer and die for sins. Yeshua, in a completely selfless act suffered for those that humble themselves and repent. It involved pain in the garden and death.

Someone dieing for someone else is the highest way to show love for them. And even though Yeshua did this, he gave the glory to the father.

To see the total and complete selflessness of this, shows a higher power at work.

6 iron Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Someone dieing for someone else is the highest way
> to show love for them.

I know right? And if it is a scripture they are dieing bonus points.

https://writingexplained.org/dieing-vs-dying-difference

6 iron Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Most likely, exmos don't have a thorough
> understanding of the OT and NT. To understand God,
> you have to immerse yourself in a study of the
> Bible.

Yes, and to truly understand the truth of the Peoples Temple, you have to drink the Kool-Aid.

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."

Carl Sagan

Tell that to the pantheists, like the Zen Buddhists, who believe the “Tao” is Nature. Nature is omnipotent and omnipresent, so Nature is God. Learning the secrets of Nature is learning the secrets of God.

"When I use the word, god, I mean it in the same sense that Einstein meant it, in the impersonal sense of the word, to mean the laws of nature. So to know the mind of God is to know the laws of nature. I predict we will know the mind of God by the end of this century." Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Is there a God?

> Tell that to the pantheists, like the Zen
> Buddhists, who believe the “Tao” is Nature.

I'm not sure where this comes from. First, Zen Buddhists are not pantheists.

Second, "Tao" is a Chinese concept that does not show up in the Indian classics, the Chinese Chan classics, or the Japanese Zen classics. You are confusing distinct--and in fact rival--traditions.

Third, in Taoism the Tao is not nature. It is a system of principles prior to heaven, prior to nature, prior to human sentience, and prior to the proper social organization. Saying that the Tao is nature is like saying money is a dime whereas in fact the dime is an infinitesimal subset of money. You devalue the Tao.

These words have established meanings. You shouldn't just toss them around as placeholders for your own ideas, which should stand on their own.

Hand of the Almighty
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XLwtqwnI6ko



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2019 02:47AM by Tevai.