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firstly it is important to note this thread is about spirituality, not religion, as such it is intended to be a discussion of personal beliefs regarding the existance or non-existance of a god/gods, afterlife and so on, this thread is NOT a place to dump on religion. again I stress this thread is about discussing different views on the subject, now since I always seem to be the first person to comment on any thread I create (go figure) I'll let someone else do the honours this time

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Re: spirituality but one doesn't have to follow any particular religious doctrine to believe in a God, just some food for thought I'm willing to accept the existance of a God if someone is able to show me proof of its existance, I do believe there is something after death though exactly what is anyone's guess, I don't believe there is a heaven for those who have lived good lives nor a hell for those who have not, though whether we remain here in some form (ghosts, spirits or whatever which for the record I believe in purely because I have seen evidence with my own eyes) or we are given another chance at life, which I would like to believe is the case, I can't really say

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Re: spirituality I'm agnostic towards the notion of a God in any kind of Abrahamic sense, but I do believe in a sort of conscious pervading depth and balance to the universe. That is, I believe in an impossibly complex and at the very least proto-sentient system underlying everything, a system distinct from physical, observable reality but one upon which physical reality is founded. As for after death, I think that we return to the realm of the mental, which is removed from perfect understanding but closer to that level than physical reality. After we run through the loop a few to a few million times, eventually we figure it all out and exist in a state of understanding.

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Re: spirituality We are energy and energy changes state. We die and your energy changes so therefore there is an afterlife. Whether we are conscious of it is an other matter, I doubt it. I don't believe in heaven or hell or any rubbish like that, or ghost etc. I think that sort of thing is something we are taught by others.

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Re: spirituality I'm very much a proof oriented person, as I said the only reason I even believe ghosts or spirits or whatever you want to call them are even a possibility is because of personal experience, the lack of any evidence to support the existance of a God or Gods leads me to the conclusion that there is not a divine being watching over our every move and judging us, it is possible however that something does exist for the sole purpose of upholding the natural order, that is, whose purpose is to ensure balance in the universe, note though it's only a possibility and a slim one at that

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Re: spirituality

I'm very much a proof oriented person' date=' as I said the only reason I even believe ghosts or spirits or whatever you want to call them are even a possibility is because of personal experience, the lack of any evidence to support the existance of a God or Gods leads me to the conclusion that there is not a divine being watching over our every move and judging us, it is possible however that something does exist for the sole purpose of upholding the natural order, that is, whose purpose is to ensure balance in the universe, note though it's only a possibility and a slim one at that[/quote'] You believe in the possibility of ghosts because of personal experience, but need proof of the existence of other metaphysical being(s) or consciousness? Maybe I need some clarification, but are you saying that you would require proof as opposed to experience to acknowledge the possibility of one, but not the other, or if you had experienced some kind of event that you feel should be tied back to god(s) or some kind of divinity, would that be sufficient? It just seems a bit strange to me that as we have no way to define what does not exist in our physical realm of being, that your criteria for the possibility of any number of things that lack definition by our world would possess different qualifiers for belief (or acknowledgement of possibility), when as they are undefinable, it's entirely possible that you have experienced one thing, but interpreted it as another. Most philosophical reasoning goes as far as to establish some basic metaphysical guidelines for existence and the nature of reality, but also rely heavily on empirical data (experience) for their definition of what is beyond the boundaries of our reality. I personally don't believe that objective proof is something that's even possible to establish when attempting to define the divine/underlying/universal, that empirical data is probably about as much as we have to go on, which will obviously vary wildly from person to person. We've already seen a few greatly differing opinions on the matter here, all of which are without any objective substantiation, which is part of what makes this subject so fascinating to me. My beliefs/thoughts/feelings on this subject are quite complicated, so it may take me some time to properly articulate them, time which I don't always have when posting at work. Maybe I'll add stuff as I go, maybe I'll mysteriously get a bunch of time that I can dump into a large description, I'm not really sure how it will go, but I will probably actually keep reading in this thread, as I have almost universally skipped over the "deep and meaningful" section of this forum in the past. Not sure what the reason is for that, maybe I don't usually like to share my views regarding topics like this, or maybe I don't like reading the thoughts of others regarding those topics, or something else entirely.
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Re: spirituality Blut in this instance I would accept experience as sufficient proof of the divine, an experience for which there is no other logical explanation, logic would suggest that there is a sort of natural order to things and that if such an order exists there must be a force monitoring it and correcting any inbalances in said order

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Re: spirituality I'm a bit of a skeptic myself, so I have a hard time with things like logic, causality, and linear thinking for more than just really basic things. Especially when referring to a dimension outside of our own where our same rules may or may not even exist, those things seem to me to be a bit pointless, or at least have different parameters that our outside of our realm of understanding. Empirical data is the only kind that I feel that I can rely on in this subject, and even then, my skepticism still makes me doubt a number of things that I have experienced.

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Re: spirituality

Iceni may be worried about being ganged up on by non-believers' date=' to be fair.[/quote'] I doubt it, he's always been open about his beliefs. I could actually be defined as a Christian, though certainly not in the traditional sense, as my beliefs tend to have more of a gnostic bent to them (some Eastern tendencies and a different concept of "God"), and I despise the notion of organized religion. Banding together under a common theme is not unheard of, but in the case of religion, it tends to be about more than just a common theme, especially in the many thousands of schisms of the Christian religion, who really all just want to bicker about the dogmatic details and minor differences. It is interesting then, that after breaking away from someone due to a disagreement about these differences, they still tend to ostracize their followers for not falling in line with exactly what the church leaders think. Especially when considering that Christianity is a religion that feels that we were all "made in God's image" and were obviously not all made the same, you would think that attempts to squash out individuality within the congregation would be interpreted as heresy instead of as a common and acceptable practice.
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Re: spirituality

People pay for porn nowadays?
Yeah, I've never understood that. I doubt that anyone could ever even scope out all of the free porn that's out there in their lifetime if they wanted to, let alone the amount that you're charged for. I think I heard once that over 80% of websites on the internet are porn related, and even if only .01% of those were free, there's still a theoretically limitless supply.
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Re: spirituality

So far everyone in this thread is essentially aligned even if the details vary. I'd be interested in a Christian like Iceni joining in on it.
Thank you - I'll give it a go. :)
Iceni may be worried about being ganged up on by non-believers' date=' to be fair.[/quote'] I am pleasantly surprised to see someone else taking note of this problem. The current societal assumption is that one 'believes what one wants to believe', but when it comes to action there's a paradigm that everyone absolutely must stick to. Break that rule and you'll really get screwed over. As an example, one girl in my intro to politics class last year made the mistake of expressing anti-abortion views, based on her faith. This was a view contrary to the socially accepted one; she was indeed verbally set upon in a slipshod and mindless manner by essentially everyone in the class. This is why I despise the modern conception of 'tolerance' with every fiber of my being. I have never seen amount to more than a meek throwaway phrase evidencing a apathetic and broken spirit. At its worst, it is a hypocritical pretext for introducing a new social paradigm. In all of this I see Tocqueville's wisdom becoming ever more relevant.
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