Izzy

It makes me think of a twist off of the invisible dragon in the garage story. There's no way of knowing, but I can say I'm reasonably sure. I guess you could say we're just asking the wrong questions.. but why is life after death entirely undetectable? We're able to see super microscopic viruses, we're able to study star systems billions of parsecs away. Are we seriously unable to detect conscious entities floating around in our midst? It really just seems like wishful thinking to me. If I'm wrong, I guess I'll be pleasantly (or perhaps unpleasantly?) surprised. So on Dawkins' scale, I'm a 6.9 post-biotic agnostic.

Thanks Olaf, you big grizzly bear.

Eugh, I got blocked. Two nights in a row.. You guys are so mean.

Lol, the spoilers are so cute. EDM, read the OT. You will find my analysis reflects the book faultlessly. I also have freedom of speech. Like no offense dude, but there is no such thing as a right to not be offended. If we're debating and you're telling me how awesome your god is, of course I'm going to tell you why he's and evil bastard. If you think spoilers, exclamation marks, and mad faces are going to change anything, I'm sorry, but there's no way. /offtopic There is not life after death. / ontopic

Hahahaha. That sounds like so much fun.

The four forces - gravity, electromagnetism, strong, and weak hold our universe and govern its laws. This explains your first two questions. Physicists are currently intensely studying all four in laboratories around the world, to improve our understanding of the universe. Just because we, as a collective society, can not currently explain every infinitesimal detail of this universe at crazily meticulous standards does not mean that 1) we won't be able to some day or 2) that god did it. You're (or the public in general) lack of understanding of current science does not mean you should be allowed to take the leap from not understanding to "Oooh, God did it." That's the lame and easy way out. The constants of the universe were defined when it came into in existence. If the constants (entirely random) would have been different at the beginning, it doesn't mean the universe wouldn't exist, things would just be very different. Light (with it's dual particle and wave properties ) behaves a certain way because that is how the universe allowed it to behave at the beginning. If this property was different, colors would be different. It's a meaningless point. You're asking why something is the way it is and asserting god did it, I'm telling you that something merely is and asking why it is at all (not to you, just in general). That's the difference between science and religions. You start with the end in mind, we start from the beginning. Okay, whatever. History textbooks are rewritten ALL THE TIME to keep up with current discoveries. Christians believe Noah lived to be like 700. Archeologists say it was a fact that he was like 30 (I don't remember the exact numbers, this was on the history channel). Using reason and logic, who are you inclined to believe? An old book, published during the time of witchcraft and wizardry, or someone certified in the subject with radioactive dating technology? Okay. Why that God? Why not Apollo/Bacchus/Ceres/Damkina/Enki/Farbauti/Gaia/Helios/Ixtab/Juno/Kingu/Lakshimi/Mithras/Neptune/Osiris/Pan/Quetzalcoatl/Ra/Seti/Thor/Uzume/Vulcan/Wicca/Xipe/Yam/Zeus? It's because of a random chance of birth in a random time period in a random geographical location that you had no control over. People existed for millions of years before the OT, they had different Gods. The Greek took their gods very seriously, and blasphemy was severely punished. We now consider their gods silly myths and do projects about them in school. In a few thousand years, I predict the circumstances will be indistinguishable from one another. Woooh. Now for the spoiler. Petty, because he needs our unyielding worship to be happy. Unjust/unforgiving, for damning those that won't have his sh*t to hell. Control-freak, for allowing the persecution of heretics for centuries. Vindictive, if Noah's Ark is evidence AT ALL for that. Blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser, for allowing the crusades, the holocaust, et al. Misogynistic, because remember kids, in conservative America, women are supposed to be in the kitchen making the men sammiches. The Koran is based off of the Bible, just taken one step further. The Koran just doesn't eliminate as many laws as Christians do. For example, women are still modest in front of Gawd, hence the hijab. They are almost more family-centered. It was only recently women were given the same rights as men, because men saw it their lawful right to be "the best". After all, God made Adam specially, and Eve was only created, from his rib, so he'd have someone to chill with and bang. Homophobic, because he doesn't want gays in heaven. Nope, he's scared, they gotta go burn. God fears sodomy. Racist, otherwise why would he have permitted slavery, including the gruesome middle passage? Infanticidal, for allowing the child's crusade and making abortion possible in the first place. Genocidal. *passes you a history book* Have fun. Filicidal. Man Gawd, stop striking us down with lighting, it's an awfully mean thing to do! Megalomanical. It makes me wonder what's up with God's sex life. It's the he's the dom, and the world is his sub. He spat on the world and then f**ked it, literally. He reminds me of a kindergartner going through the "MINE!!!" phase. The delusion of his own power/importance is actually a symptom of a manic/paranoid disorder. Sadomasochistic - yo. If he doesn't like what he sees, he can change it. Let's have another Noah's Ark. He was perfectly comfortable doing that the first time. Capriciously malevolent bully - no, truth. The capriciousness accounts for changes in weather, his malevolent bulliness the reason those changes in weather turn into natural disasters. Yeah. I realize it seems like I pretended God was real up there. Don't worry, I didn't. It was a critical analysis of the protagonist in one of the most gruesome fiction novels EVER.

Ah bollocks, unreality is way in the lead again. D: DRATS

Hmm. Guys, I really think we should work with him. I get the feeling the baddies will kill him off anyway though. Let's just go through the list and spy? BlaBlah switched his vote last second, which.. doesn't make him look good in my book. Sonja, spy on BlaBlah. GC, spy on Glyc (I'm assuming yuiop is good because he was voting for LJ), and Grit spy on qwerty. Report your findings here. If you are one of the people I'm telling you to spy on, just continue down the list. Good? Kay.

Hmm. Okay, guys, I think we should keep him for now. I don't know how much I trust what you're telling us, but we'll know if you start double crossing us. I think we should team up with him, considering if that's true, he can't win. It's worth a try, for now.

ZZZZZ (onomatopoeia )

STILL

Lmao, no he doesn't. According to your god, I go to hell for not worshiping your jealous and proud of it; petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

I have an answer. God told me Jesus' grave was robbed. I'm writing a new book of the Bible right now so it must be true. "Even the best history textbooks invariably present the past from a specific perspective. The bible contains stories that weren’t written down until at least 30 years after the supposed events happened, the only corroboration (Josephus) is thought to have been revised afterwards, and the text itself has lots of internal inconsistencies. You just can’t consider it to be authoritative in a historical sense – it’s obviously written by a true believer to influence other true believers. And anything that was heresy to the beliefs of those in charge was removed (council of Nicaea)."

People publish fiction all the time. You're missing out on an entire book store sectrion, bro.

If a man can make a chair, and a chair becomes as powerful as man and can make another chair, and make and do everything else that man can, doesn't that make the chair just as powerful, and essentially a man? Pfft. I am *at least* a demi-god. ..Is your quote in reference to OBEs? Dude. We answered you're question. The grave was robbed. Prove otherwise. PROVE that he rose. Where is your evidence? You have NONE, get over it. Where did god come from? Oh, you can't answer ONE simple question? You must be wrong then.

Adding to what unreality said, Buddha was cremated, so there was no body to rob.

EDM, sorry, this forum is way too public for me to elaborate on the experiences I have had, OBE, drug induced, or otherwise. You mind tricks you either way, which is why NO ONE has EVER been able to gather any physical evidence of a soul. It's all mental. People have been given dissociative drugs and hooked up to those machines that show you the parts of the brain that are lit up during them. The results are conclusive. Do some research. I have read the Bible, several Buddhist scriptures, some of the Koran, and various other things. Some of it was to pass time, other bits were for a pretty intense world religious course I took (and got an A in, so don't think I blew it off). I didn't call God a jackass. I said he WOULD be one if he punished people for not knowing better. Actually, there are currently attempts to recreate the big bang at CERN using the LHC. Earth can also be (somewhat) recreated by closing off some stuff in a water bottle (haha, we did this in like second grade). It rained in there. Did I create rain? No, but I certainly recreated it. We can clone humans (even though we don't actively). If I do, does that make me as magical as God? Doesn't seem like a difficult feat. Hambone gets it. This is boring/pointless. No, seriously, entirely unrelated, why did you quit (you can PM me).

CHRIS

No, I'm sorry, if you believe in a 6000 year old Earth and that the dinosaurs were killed like 5000 years ago during Noah's Flood and lived at the same time as humans, you do not understand science. I really thought you had something more to put forward here than just being another Christian following the bible. An empty grave proves nothing. This is a waste of time. *Unrelated* Why'd you quit drugs?

Haha, yay, we've been lucky so far.

Eugh. We've done this to death man. Why is that not good enough? JK Rowling writes about witches casting spells. George Lucas invented The Force. There's a magical ring out there. What makes this fairy tale special? Until not so long ago, people fully believed in witches and burned them at stake. (I'm friends with a guy whose great-great-great uncle was killed at the Salem Witch Trials.) People would believe in magic back then because they had almost no understanding of the world. The Greek believed in their gods for thousands of years before Christianity came around. Why Jesus and not Zeus? Is your book just more interesting? Do you believe in Noah's Ark? I wrote something about it for a class once. Here you are: The dimensions of the boat are 450 x 75 x 45. According to the Biblical description, it only had one floor, meaning there is roughly 35,000 sq ft for animals to inhabit. Because Christians like to deny evolution and the point of the ark was the repopulate the earth with exclusively the animals inside, with no mention of a second creation, all the animals we have today must be accounted for in the ark. Not to mention all the extinct animals, such as dinosaurs, because God demanded two of ALL animals, and Noah was not at liberty to specify which were allowed entrance into his ark. According to a scientific article, there are about 1,250,000 identified species of animal. This includes 1,190,200 invertebrates, among them 950,000 insects, 70,000 mollusks, 40,000 crustaceans, and 130,200 others. There are about 58,800 identified vertebrates, including 29,300 fish, 5,743 amphibians, 8,240 reptiles, 9,800 birds, and 5,416 mammals. Remember, a lot of these animals (like the insects) are tiny, but dinosaurs, elephants, etc. are also included in these numbers. Now, let's convert the boat into something everyone is familiar with, football fields. The boat is roughly the size of four football fields laid end-to-end. It would be *impossible* 2 million animals and the food required to feed them for 40 days in this space. The population of the entire city of Orlando is only 2 million people. Assuming you could, somehow, fit all of these animals into the limited space, remember, the only humans onboard capable of taking care of these animals are Noah and his family, a total of EIGHT people. Animals are fine in the wild, but trapped in a small boat, they wouldn't fare too well. Keeping the peace between animals, like the lions and the deer, would also be tremendously difficult. One could argue that God simply saw too it that the animals survived through the flood, but.. then what's the point of the flood in the first place? Furthermore, the simple act of gathering the animals is an arduous enough task on its own. God interfering would destroy the purpose: there would be no point of an ark if omnipotent God simply wiped out all the animals he didn't want and left the ones he did alone. He is all powerful after all, right? Why bother choosing the most difficult route to solve a simple problem? These problems don't even account for where the animals went to the bathroom. There is also absolutely no scientific evidence of a great migration where all animals in the world dispersed from one point and went elsewhere. We can conclude that Noah's Ark is a myth, and disputing would be entertaining.

Firstly, yeah, I believe Jesus existed. He was a teacher and a political leader at the time, much like George Washington. He was so influential that yes, we started counting again. I believe up to that point. He also died, at the hands of the Romans. However, one day, people noticed his remains were gone. Use your head. Are you telling me he became a zombie, or that someone robbed his grave? Many graves were robbed at the time, and it was unusual that the perpetrator was caught and committed do to a faulty judicial system and no DNA evidence. Just because we don't know something, doesn't mean we have to assume a god did it. Do you believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, both OT and NT?

What's more likely, Jesus raising from the dead or his grave getting robbed?

*edit* Oops, that posted twice. Explain your god to me. This is neither childish or disrespectful, merely an inquiry. Keep in mind that if something doesn't make sense, I'm going to tell you.

You're right, drugs have nothing to do with where we actually go when we die, but the presence of DMT in our body and it being a fact that its release coincides when we die should be enough to explain NDEs. I thought an ex-drug user would understand this better than the kids on this forum that seemed to ignore my and unreality's posts entirely. You say we have a soul, spirit, and body. I say I have a brain, a pet invisible dragon, and a body. Please provide evidence for this soul. Until you do, acknowledge the you are taking this on very far from proven faith. I base my reality off of the verified details that explain my existence through methodical and structured experiments, not hope. If you KNOW this god exists (please specify which one), please explain why. I for one am happily awaiting.