Do People Believe Things Into Existance?

[Ruffyreborn]

so believing in an invisible man whos never shown his face or better yet does nothing when you need him the most doesnt seem foolish to you?

im sorry if i seem a little cynical but with all the crime, corruption, greed, selfishness, poverty, war, and dishonesty that is rampat in this world i cant believe that a just god could sit on his ass and just allow it to happen without intervening at least once

God gives people choices, so its up to the people to clean up their own act. He isnt going to nurse everyone like a baby, he knows we can be independant. You cannot place blame on someone that really has no part in the corruption of man, when its man themselves that are the cause.

The teachings of the Bible seriously are not narrow minded. You dont have this 'set path' you must follow. All the Bible does is give you detail, its up to you as a person to figure out what the Bible teaches, but it must be understood that people have to learn that they can be wrong, and can easily get the wrong idea from the Bible. When this happens, just try to reread what was misinterpereted, and figure out what it really means.

And a last note, there really is no more evidence that we were created through evolution instead of Gods creation. The only real difference is that many people say we have evolved and become what we are. Whether you believe in God, or believe in natures work, both beliefs are basically out of a book or from someone telling you where were from

Im not badgering you about your thoughts on this, just giving you my standpoint on how we came to be, much like yourself.

 

[Uzor]

I think you misunderstood my reference of the bible, I didn't mean to use it as an example of the end-all-be-all word of God. I only use the bible because it's the holy book I'm familiar with. All holy books have one thing in common- they infer something special, something divine if you will, about Humans.

And I tend to agree. You quote evolution and science, Humans competing with other species to become bigger and better. But tell me, from a purely scientific, evolutionary standpoint: why did humanity create myth, or art? Humans are the only species that have ever shown any interest in art, in mirroring the world around them through paintings and stories. Sure if you give a chimpanzee a paintbrush they'll create some abstract slop that some people call "art", but I've never seen a chimp make the paint, and use it to draw a picture of themselves.

Humans created myth, and religion, because humans are curious creatures. They need the answers to everything, and if we can't find an answer, we make one up. Vampires, zombies, ghosts, gnomes, witches etc. are all the result of human's constant seek of answers. Humans have great imagination, and its all a result of our lack of answers. Art is the result fo humans trying to communicate. We developed speach, and the earliest images is the result of humans trying to explain what happened to others. Later, we developed a more advanced "written word", and art was developed from there. Art is, after all, nothing but trying to explain what you see, or what you're imagining.

 

[Ruffyreborn]

Humans created myth, and religion, because humans are curious creatures. They need the answers to everything, and if we can't find an answer, we make one up. Vampires, zombies, ghosts, gnomes, witches etc. are all the result of human's constant seek of answers. Humans have great imagination, and its all a result of our lack of answers. Art is the result fo humans trying to communicate. We developed speach, and the earliest images is the result of humans trying to explain what happened to others. Later, we developed a more advanced "written word", and art was developed from there. Art is, after all, nothing but trying to explain what you see, or what you're imagining.

Humans also created the means by which they study the universe and everything in it, which can easily be full of mistakes without anyone knowing.

There are truly only two things that can happen that will prove that God exists. One is Him showing up on earth, proving his existance in form. Two is in death, whether or not you enter an afterlife. If you do, he exists, if not, then he doesnt.

There is only one thing (other than not entering an afterlife) that can really prove that God doesnt exist. This is the discovery of alien life, be it bugs, lizards or humanoids. Why this? Because within the Bible, God does tell us that earth was created as the lone planet bearing life.

Evolution and the big bang and etc. may be heavily accepted, but a lot of the time the scientists themselves tell us that theyre theories.

 

[Uzor]

Humans also created the means by which they study the universe and everything in it, which can easily be full of mistakes without anyone knowing.

There are truly only two things that can happen that will prove that God exists. One is Him showing up on earth, proving his existance in form. Two is in death, whether or not you enter an afterlife. If you do, he exists, if not, then he doesnt.

There is only one thing (other than not entering an afterlife) that can really prove that God doesnt exist. This is the discovery of alien life, be it bugs, lizards or humanoids. Why this? Because within the Bible, God does tell us that earth was created as the lone planet bearing life.

Evolution and the big bang and etc. may be heavily accepted, but a lot of the time the scientists themselves tell us that theyre theories.

Well, Christianity isn't the only religion, and far from the first one. The bible, too, is only a theory. It have taken all of its holidays, dates etc. from earlier religions. Its also full of lies. One of them being the star supposedly seen in the sky when Jesus was born. The only thing special about the sky that year, was a comet. However, I doubt they followed a comet, as comets was seen as bringers of bad luck. It also contains chapters that have been removed, as they're contradicting the rest of the bible. The bible can't even be proven with anything, really, while the evolution theory etc. can be proven rather easily. While yes, they're theories, so is mathematics.

 

[Reauland]

I had a friend tell me once what was at the end of the universe. He just said "The Tower." Didn't catch his name though.

And there I shall sing their names. There I shall sing all their names.

To the subject at hand . . .

Yeah, I most definitely believe that people can "think" things into existence. I find it endlessly fascinating that the jury's still out on where consciousness originates and where perception stops and immutable reality begins.

Here's one of my favorite anecdotal stories.

Supposedly there is a house in upstate New York where, over the course of the Twentieth Century, several people claim to have observed a cloaked, shadowy figure in a broad-brimmed hat. Of course, several explanations have been put forward by various people over the years, ranging from dead Confederate spy all the way over to the one I find most intriguing:

Among the house's former occupants is one Walter B. Gibson, a remarkably prolific writer in a field known for prolific writers - pulp fiction. Gibson wrote literally hundreds of stories, all starring his most famous creation - The Shadow.

If one person can focus enough creative "energy" to have people still seeing this fictional "ghost" years after his departure, what can entire cultures do?

"My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." - J. B. S. Haldane

 

[Ruffyreborn]

What is reality, other than what each and every person perceive with their own senses. Who are we to tell someone that theyre wrong just because we cant see something, and they can?

There are still unexplainable incidents where people are beaten, battered or cut and such, physically and/or mentally. The first assumption is that their crazy, so the 'normal' people try to find help for them. But how do we know that what they say happened really didnt? How does someone become so abused if there was no tool for them to do it to themselves?

 

[Tok]

What is reality, other than what each and every person perceive with their own senses. Who are we to tell someone that theyre wrong just because we cant see something, and they can?

There are still unexplainable incidents where people are beaten, battered or cut and such, physically and/or mentally. The first assumption is that their crazy, so the 'normal' people try to find help for them. But how do we know that what they say happened really didnt? How does someone become so abused if there was no tool for them to do it to themselves?

how am i to know that everyone isnt just a figment of my imagination? and human interaction is just my mind throwing up a curtain so i wont figure out whats really going on?

 

[Alyada]

how am i to know that everyone isnt just a figment of my imagination? and human interaction is just my mind throwing up a curtain so i wont figure out whats really going on?

Probably because it's not.

 

[Fellina]

It's called solipsism, and pretty much everyone over the age of 2 has outgrown that idea.

Solipsism is the position that only perception exists. The question of plausibility can be viewed as whether an idea stands up to common sense and arguements of reasonableness using simple or intuitive logic and is free from obvious internal contradictions. Solipsism is suspect on at least two reasonableness grounds.

1. The technical grounds: Perception is the faculty of awareness. Can a faculty exist apart from something having that faculty? A faculty is an attribute or capability. The concepts of 'attribute' or 'capability' are not primaries; they are used to describe the nature of something. Hence attributes and capabilities require entities that have those characteristics. Hence perception requires an existent entity with the faculty of awareness, thus contradicting the solipsist premise that only perception exists.
2. The common sense grounds: The solipsist position that only one's personal perceptions can really be known to exist requires one to hold that all the creations of which one is aware were created within one's own perceptual functioning. Thus the plays of Shakespeare, the symphonies of Beethoven and Mozart, the theory of Relativity, the theorems of Calculus and higher mathematics, even the very concept of time, matter and so forth were created by one's own perceptual operations.

As far as the whole science vs. religion thing . . . I'm not even going to continue. Both hypotheses for the origin for the universe are currently unproveable. I believe even Steven Hawking has been quoted as saying that science and mathematics can neither prove nor disprove the existance of God. All I ask is that you consider that there are a lot of people out there who are intelligent, educated, rational people that still believe in the existance of something that they call God. Don't lump us in with the ignorant bible-thumpers that can't tell human fiction from the Divine, and please don't :coco: at us just because we choose to accept that there may be something other than pure coincidence at the beginning of existance.

 

[Ruffyreborn]

As far as the whole science vs. religion thing . . . I'm not even going to continue. Both hypotheses for the origin for the universe are currently unproveable. I believe even Steven Hawking has been quoted as saying that science and mathematics can neither prove nor disprove the existance of God. All I ask is that you consider that there are a lot of people out there who are intelligent, educated, rational people that still believe in the existance of something that they call God. Don't lump us in with the ignorant bible-thumpers that can't tell human fiction from the Divine, and please don't :coco: at us just because we choose to accept that there may be something other than pure coincidence at the beginning of existance.

That was well said

 

[Amidamaru]

lol I speak the truth. I got tired of always fearing the dark by age 16 and I just went after it. I started running deep into El Yunque (Puertorican Big Rainforest) at 1am. I just wanted an answer and didn't find one after 30 minutes waiting there in that darkness between all those trees...

Then I went to old houses, cemetaries and entered dark allies after exiting nightclubs still looking for something... "magic". Nothing!

The only action I got out of that search for the occult was that I got mugged in 1991 and there I learned to fear the living more than the dead...

El Yunque cabron !?!?! omg lol .... idk what to say but i know i wouldnt go there @ 1AM i might get lost... not like there is anything in thar lol

 

[Uzor]

What is reality, other than what each and every person perceive with their own senses. Who are we to tell someone that theyre wrong just because we cant see something, and they can?

There are still unexplainable incidents where people are beaten, battered or cut and such, physically and/or mentally. The first assumption is that their crazy, so the 'normal' people try to find help for them. But how do we know that what they say happened really didnt? How does someone become so abused if there was no tool for them to do it to themselves?

Because its really rather easy to hurt yourself if you really try.

A recent example. A customer of ours turned in a pair of shoes, complaining that they were ruined after only a month. She swear her daughter never did anything to her, because she loves her shoes. Its her little angel, her precious daughter would NEVER do anything she's not allowed to do, right?

Well, the shoes had very visual proof that the shoes were ruined by her daughter. She had most likely rode a motorcycle behind some boy she liked, and had thus burned the shoes on the inside. Her mom swear that she had never done such a thing. That is, untill she decided to take it to court because we didn't want to pay her the money back for the shoes. At that point, we won, and she got angry at her daughter, as she was not allowed to ride a motorcycle at the age of 15, nonetheless behind a guy 7 years older then her.

The mind can convince ourselves that ANYTHING is true. And if its not physically possible to do, it can even alter our memories, or cause us to hallucinate. That's one reason that some drugs are so dangerous, as it can cause us to hallucinate and seriously believe we can fly. Mental illnesses can cause us to believe something is causing us physical harm, which causes the person to physically hurt themselves, trying to get the hallucination off of them. They can literary scratch ther skin off, and pull their hair out.

As for the "convince ourselves that anything is true", quite a lot of people do that on a daily basis. Some people actually change their entire personality, likes, dislikes etc. just to fit in, but are a completely different person while at home. Other people lie so much that they live in their lie, and eventually even lie to themselves, and convince themselves something is true. The most notorious liers, aren't even aware that they are lieing, because they do it all the time so they believe what themselves are saying is true.

People don't want to doubt their own sanity. The brain tricks us to believe we are the best, best at everything, and never lie, if we do it often enough. We never do anything wrong, really. That's why they say the first step to fixing a problem, as admitting you have a problem. You can know something is true, or bad, but lie it away. That's why they always say insane people don't know they are insane.

Lieing to yourself is honestly the worst thing, and most dangerous thing, you can do. Because most of the time you're not even aware you're lieing.

If we bring religion into it... If you speak to God, you're a saint. If God speaks to you, you're insane. So basically, all of the saints in the bible were insane ;p

But seriously though, look at people that do the whole tarrot card thing. They are lieing to themselves on a daily basis. They seriously believe they have that talent. Every time they're wrong, they shrug it off. Every time they are right, its amazing, because the cards were right. Additionally, if they are wrong, it wasn't the cards that were wrong. they just read the cards wrong. Because the cards never lie, right? Sadly, they don't seem to understand statistics and numbers very well. There's a rather good magic trick with cards. Place the cards in a pre-determined order. If you split the cards in twice, from anywhere, and then add the bottom card to the top cards, and repeat it 13 times, the card will almost always end up in the exact same order you placed them in, in the begining. Its not fate, its not destiny, its numbers. Its not magic either, for that matter. Statistically, tarrot card will be right every now and then, but they'll be wrong the majority of the time.

 

[Makelith]

I really don't know how someone can believe this. You create something, you're responsible for it. You can't just make people and say "Oh they're so corrupted, I'll let them sort themselves out."

Whenever you do something bad, do you get scolded or do your parents? If you do something illegal, do you go to court or do your parents? (i only know of one state where if you are a minor your parents get tried instead..i think its michigan?)

In that same sense god could be considered everyones parent. Its not fair to hold him responsible for the wrong actions of his children. He gave guidelines to live by, and basically said "You should do this if you want to stay on my good side, but do what you wish."

How does someone become so abused if there was no tool for them to do it to themselves?

Like Uzor said. It is REALLY easy to do major damage to yourself if you are determined. Iirc, it only takes about 8 lbs. of pressure to pull one of your ears off of your head.

 

[sekehmet]

hi, im new to qcdn and this topic happen to catch my eye. lol took forever but i did read all the posts leading up this this one... 1st id like to point out im probly ur average person regaurding basic hs education,also im not a religious person. but heres what i think regaurding all past topics(forgive me if i foreget any:wacko
GOD:
i think there has to be something out there helping things along idk if its a consious being or just a force. i belive this is out there because of things like irony,& secrenicity (sp?)
MONSTERS/MYTHICAL CREATURES:
again totally possible, we have only explored 1% of our ocean floors, and only 10% of the worlds underwatercaves. we know so lilttle about our own planet that im sure there are still new things to be discovered. the sealacant and the giant squid are both expamples of this.
OUR UNIVERSE:
i dont rember much about high school as a matter of fact i slept throu most of it :nono: lol but i do recall hearing something recently i think on the science chanel regraurding string therory. a therory that everything in the world/universe all atoms everthing are connected by extremely small string that are circular, in fact they are so small we cant even techically see them with any modern equipment. i have always belived that everything is circular alot like karma what u give out u get back and so is same with the universe. i belive that the universe is never ending because its circular, like a ring. this string therory is only a therory but it fits alot of my personal belives so i tend to side with it.
DEATH:
its known that the brain is only active for 10 seconds after decapitation etc, but we have all had those moments where we fell into sleep and woke up an hour later and felt like we slept for forever, or sometimes u feel like u havent sleept at all. my point here is that in ur mind 10 seconds can be an eternaty. pleanty of time to visit past away loved ones and friends. also i have noticed at least one person metioned a movie called WAKEING LIFE (sp?) i like this movie alot because it fits alot of my belifs regaurding a shared consious between all man kind and that heaven and hell are a dream our mind creates to pull us away from the trauma of our bodies dying, or at least that is what i took away from it. also another movie that follows this idea is JACOBS LADDER i highly recomed both.

as for everthing else if i forgot to adress a subjuect im sorry, i also apologize for any spelling/gramtical errors on my part im not a very good typist lol:wacko: anyway had fun reading this subject and i look forward to any posts replying to this one try not to be to harsh on me lol :biggrin:

 

[Halifirien]

And a last note, there really is no more evidence that we were created through evolution instead of Gods creation. The only real difference is that many people say we have evolved and become what we are. Whether you believe in God, or believe in natures work, both beliefs are basically out of a book or from someone telling you where were from

I have to disagree because here's a very large difference between the two. Knowledge doesn't just "come out of a book" or from authority. The methodology of science is designed to build on past knowledge and constantly test it, discarding what doesn't work and finding what does. It's a self-correcting mechanism, basically.

Mythologies -- Christian or otherwise -- are based around personal revelation, which can't really be tested. They depend on authority (taking someone's word for it or just following cultural conditioning) in a way that science does not.

 

[Ruffyreborn]

Science does do it, which is why most idea's from science are called theories. They have not been proved, or disproved. If thought about, theories are just as much a myth as myths themselves. Some theories are found to be true over time, and the same comes from some myths.

Unless a person can witness evolution with his or her own two eyes, then it cant be proved. I know, the human race builds its knowledge by trying, failing, and trying again until they get it right, but it still stands on that all our knowledge comes from methods we created, which could still be totally wrong without us knowing.

 

[Chasym]

you might be interested to check out the camp of people who went into creating someone with their thoughts, It really happened and is well documented that they spent alot of time creating an imaginary man with a very deep detailing of his entire life, looks and etc.
Soon people started to see him around the camp...then people who came to the camp and didnt know what was going on had saw him, he was like a ghost, but to a T what they thought up, and getting rid of it was harder than creating it.
It goes along with alot of the stories of people being beat up by poltergeist only to learn its something they creating by bottling up too much.
If i can remember the name of the camp thing that did this ill post it,
but i know if it was referenced by sylvia brown in one of her books at some point and thats where i first learned of it.

The lockness monster aka nessie would be another one, along with bigfoot. Enough people believe it that it can become real.
I for one think its possible yeah, But it would take a whole hell of alot to make something like that happen if at all, its about as rare as spontaneous combustion.

 

[Makelith]

Unless a person can witness evolution with his or her own two eyes, then it cant be proved.

Sup Galapagos Islands and Charles Darwin. That is about as close to first hand wittnesses for evolution. There are plenty of other examples of evolution that i'll show when i think/find them.

EDIT: for Chasym

I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry. And that's extra scary to me, because there's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run. He's fuzzy. Get outta here!

- Mitch Hedberg

 

[Ruffyreborn]

Sup Galapagos Islands and Charles Darwin. That is about as close to first hand wittnesses for evolution. There are plenty of other examples of evolution that i'll show when i think/find them.

EDIT: for Chasym

I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry. And that's extra scary to me, because there's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run. He's fuzzy. Get outta here!

- Mitch Hedberg

You got me there, completely forgot about those islands. But, we can take into consideration that many animals/species are endemic anyway. (Just learned that word, lol.) There are species all over the planet that exist in only one area, but with these islands being fairly new, I can see why the current theory is held.

But, evolution can also be confused with interspecies animals, I would guess. There are actually real Ligers out there, because a Tiger and a Lion produced that sort of offspring.

 

[Makelith]

But, evolution can also be confused with interspecies animals, I would guess. There are actually real Ligers out there, because a Tiger and a Lion produced that sort of offspring.

I don't quite understand where this came from, but the Liger was a mythical creature (see: Napoleon Dynamite) far before they were bred in captivity to actually produce that. A better example of a cross species animal would be a mule. Mule = Donkey + Horse.