“Relationship With God”
I just heard someone use the oft-used phrase “my relationship with God”, and had to stop the conversation right there.
In what sort of twisted world do we live in, where people can say something like that and expect to be taken seriously? You very literally have to be delusional to believe you can have a relationship with a god.
First off, if you believe you can hear the voice of god, you should seriously get your head checked. It bothers me to no end when people passively accept when people claim god spoke to them instead of telling them “no, that you was you talking to yourselfâ€, or, “you’re crazy”. This complacency is entirely harmful, not just to the person making the claim, but also those around him/her. Letting people believe anything they want to is entirely harmful, in the same way letting a child believe he can fly if he jumps off the roof of a building.
Secondly, what sort of twisted definition of the word relationship do you have to have, in order to feel you can have a relationship with a being that never gives even the slightest response? When was the last time that god actually did anything for you? Has he ever cut the lawn when you asked? Give you a backrub when you feel tired? What about doing the dishes? Obviously not only an able bodied person can do such things, but what if anything has god EVER done in your “relationship”? I often get anecdotes of some obscure occurrence that was then construed as being an act of god, which can always be more accurately explained in a rational way.
This leads to believe that dogmatic individuals have no real concept of a relationship, which is quite an irony given that it is the religious crazies that feel the need to go on and on about our relationships and love all the time. Then again, they see no irony that a celibate old man should be teaching them of things like love. Why? Because of the intensely loving relationship the priest has with god. Hahaha.
So, what have I derived from all this? Religious folk are far more in love with ideas and dreams than they are with reality. They would much rather exist in a dream-like state than spend their life awake and self-aware. Don’t believe me? Why do all religions spend so much time fixated on the wonders of the after-life than on pre-after-life?
You only get one life, don’t spend it day dreaming of what’s next.
Sep 02, 2008 @ 22:37:26
I can not agree more!
Religion is for people who like to live in an unrealistic state which is why they all have impractial rules and regulations!
These people are too fixated on death, it’s funny because they all claim to be happy, HAPPY PEOPLE!
Sep 03, 2008 @ 14:44:32
I heart you Ian and your blog. I’m used to your reposting absurd stories from the interwebs, but I do love when you have a rant.
Sep 03, 2008 @ 17:09:56
I try. ;)
Sep 04, 2008 @ 17:14:43
Oh yeah, and this too, a comic about a relationship with god:
http://www.malfunctionjunction.net/comics/10172005.gif
Sep 06, 2008 @ 17:44:25
I am a Christian that professes he has a relationship with Jesus…Frankly I was surprised myself, I often thought God was to busy over in Israel to be really bothered with me…However over the Years I have grown to expect God to lead my life…as long as I am in His Will for my Life…Namely, I do not have unrepented sin….
I assume your faith is in Science,,,how about this…Our planet is 25,000 miles in circumference and weighing 6 septillion, 588 sextillion tons, hangs in space. Spinning at 1000 miles per hour with perfect precision so that time is kept to the split second, the earth careens through space around the sun in an orbit of 580 million miles at over 1000 miles per minute…Don’t get me started on, comets, the sun, the milky way…what about the human cell…If Charles Darwin was alive today he would probably be a repented christian….lol’s
The bible says the fool does not believe in God, not because of your intelect…but rather to say there is no God,, you would have to have always been, or search the universe…we are here but for a vapour of time, and cannot change one single hair on our heads…
Atheists attack christians, or christians intellect, because you cannot attack our Lord Jesus, or the Bible,, because both are true.. and if you could prove them false…you would scream from the roof tops….
But rather you attack humans, who are most foulable indeed….
The fact is Independence is what we all suffer from, independence from the living God…and the more you put strenght in your own independence the further you may get from our Lord… It is this independence you long for, you deciding what is right and wrong…we humans suffer from wanting to be our own gods…
In all fairness, does not the science of today, simply prove intellengent design?
Do you believe in the devil? and does he not whisper sweet nothings in your ear….
Look at all the evil in the world,, do you really think this is all just normal and the way it ought to be,,,, how much of the earth’s sufferring is do to Human greed?
Your Christian Friend, believe it or not!
Sep 07, 2008 @ 22:53:00
What are you basing this presumption on?
So, where did god come from? Has he always been?
So I wonder, who do you suppose will tell me about god? Will it be god himself, or a human? How will i know this person will be telling the truth and not telling me what he thinks? What if he is wrong? What if the bible is not the word of god? What if this person who teaches me about the bible is not really someone sent by the devil? What if Christianity is not the right religion and by engaging in Christianity, I am only making god more and more angry?
What if god doesn’t exist at all and I’ve been wasting my life with trivial non-sense, only to die an old man with no accomplishments because of my misguided devotion to a being that does not exist?
Certainly not. In fact, it’s the exact opposite.
You blame humans for suffering and affix all positives to god? How convenient.
Sep 08, 2008 @ 11:20:17
still enjoying the conversation…
Charles Darwin….website included
THE QUOTE: From the Origin of Species, CHAPTER VI – DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY
“Organs of extreme Perfection and Complication. To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.
This is not why I say he would probably be a converted christian,,,
But Darwin stated something that his theory would crumble if… i could go search it ( something to do with the Human cell)( and also Bacterial flagella does not fit with natural selection )…..
and what ever he stated has been proven today..i have it on a video…plus…I read alittle about darwin…he really never answered any tough question….
Lastly did you know darwin’s grandfather had similiar ideas, before the Galapagos island…this is very strange…if this is true he had preconceived ideas before Galapagos…and that is not science…
“So, where did God come from? Has he always been?”
In all fairness where do you stop, how far do you go back?….what came first the chicken or the egg…and where did the egg come from..cosmic soup?….Do you look to a cosmic soup?… if you do your still missing the missing link….I’ve watched video’s on DNA and the building blocks…potentially from your soup…
I think it takes way more faith to believe in the soup theory ….than intellengent design….
Like I said before, the science I read proves my faith,,and the science you look to proves yours….so science taken with a bias proves nothing…for either of us…
As to “You blame humans for suffering and affix all positives to God? How convenient”
Absoultely…..God is perfect..the Creator…and whatever He does is Right…and He is true to Himself in that perfection…what ever that maybe…..
As to “What if he is wrong? What if the bible is not the word of god? What if “…..
I tell you the truth…Jesus loves you…and He knocks on the door…and all who seek Him will find Him….I speak the truth….
It is up to each individual to open that door…and then the truth will be revealed to you….But it takes faith to open that door….christianity is unique in many ways…
the most unique way, is it takes belief in Jesus… not trusting in MAN’S GOOD BEHAVIOUR for a ticket to paradise….but realizing that we are guilty…. and cannot earn our way to heaven through our so called good deeds…
Sep 08, 2008 @ 11:21:35
website I quoted from
http://www.carm.org/evo_questions/darwineye.htm
Sep 09, 2008 @ 08:47:49
Give it up, Bruce. The burden of proof is on you, and due to the fact that you will never offer anything concrete or rational to back up your claims – they are meaningless. It’s also hard to take you seriously when you have trouble spelling ‘intelligent’ which is the operative word in the back-peddling attempts at a backwards, irrational argument against science.
If you’d like, you can go ahead and say that God created evolution, and he set everything in motion, and now leaves everything as it is to progress how it will. I won’t agree with you, but it’s certainly a more reasonable ideology than actually believing – for just a second – that we’re all running on a treadmill after a dangling carrot, praying and repenting and slaving away our short, short, short lives – wasting them in church, waging wars, forcing beliefs on others, enforcing bigotry, teaching close-mindedness everywhere we go… in order to appease something there is no proof of even existing.
Sep 09, 2008 @ 10:44:17
Hey ..I feel it is time for me to go…sorry for the spelling mistakes…I apologize
as for some progress, I have finally saw someone spell God with a capital G.
Lot’s of laugh’s
As for my intelligence,,, I am sure I am far less educated, intellectual….less of a forward thinker..than maybe all that have ever visit this site…
All I can say to that is… thank you Jesus
Oct 03, 2008 @ 12:21:25
Bruce….
If it was not for science, you would still be thinking the earth was flat and the center of the universe. Ironic don’t you think, that you use science to try and prove your case?
The earth has 3 choices, slow down, consistent rotation or speed up. Either of the other 2 choices would probably make the earth uninhabital. By the way, why do any of the other planets and suns need to spin?
I have a cartoon that has god and an angel looking at a man’s brain, the caption says you are here. God says is this some kind of joke.
Oct 03, 2008 @ 12:26:28
Now exchange man for god and instead of a mans brain it will be an insects brain, in which case the man will say is this some kind of a joke?
Oct 03, 2008 @ 19:09:18
** the universe evinces neither affect, nor morality, nor intellect **
A mishmash of middle eastern magical texts makes spurious claims of being god-given. Their nihilistic dualism and androcentric understanding of human nature are too damaging to contribute to a humane planet-wide ethos.
Neither physical nature nor human nature *say* anything about a superordinate, supernatural realm populated by creators or law givers. Nature is silent. There is no concept of truth in nature. (Indeed, there are no concepts whatsoever in nature.) Nature *knows* nothing.
Nature is neither meaningful nor meaningless. Neither a source of comfort (natural theology) nor a source of despair (existentialism). Both are rooted in the same mistaken presupposition that supernatural *meaning* can be found by searching the heavens for gods or quarrying human inwardness for moral laws.
Instead, religions belong to cultures embedded in nature. And *cultures* are our distinctive human-all-too-human handiwork. Religions are obsolete, unnecessary cultural artifacts.
Any specific religion reenacts and institutionalizes a cultic myth. It gets spread through custom and imitation, financially supported by mores and law, and enforced by intimidation and violence.
Xian mythology, like related big-4 monotheisms zoroastrianism, post-exilic judaism, and islam, posits a moralized universal order which never existed. No more can be found in that fiction than the ancestors put into it.
Some of that *meaning* derives ultimately from Sargon I’s imperial propaganda when the very first violent yoking together of disparate city-state cultures occurred in what is now Iraq.
Sargon I appears in a low relief sculpture as a god receiving a legal and moral code directly from a greater god enthroned above him. (A myth of divine origin of morality turns out to be ancient political “spin.†Still works today, doesn’t it?)
Adjust your understanding, adjust your expectations, and you will have a right relationship with the only total reality there is, nature.
bipolar2 © 2008
May 05, 2009 @ 02:34:30
Please consider the possibility that many people see God simply as energy, everything that is and ever will be. This includes intuition(why one might”hear voices”), and this also includes ourselves in general. I’m not religious and I don’t use the term God when I’m talking about the Universe, but I do believe that there is a higher power out there, in fact, we are the higher power. just my thoughts, take it into consideration. Not everyone is talking about the man upstairs that punishes us for our so-called sins when they refer to God.
May 06, 2009 @ 04:48:06
There is no god. Get over it.
May 06, 2009 @ 06:46:23
Bruce, you say “I assume your faith is in Science,,,how about this…Our planet is 25,000 miles in circumference and weighing 6 septillion, 588 sextillion tons, hangs in space. Spinning at 1000 miles per hour with perfect precision so that time is kept to the split second, the earth careens through space around the sun in an orbit of 580 million miles at over 1000 miles per minute…Don’t get me started on, comets, the sun, the milky way…what about the human cell…If Charles Darwin was alive today he would probably be a repented christian….lol’s”
Well, completely ignoring the fact that it is INCREDIBLY difficult to take any poorly laid out, spelled and grammatically faulty argument seriously… giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you are ESL, here’s a basic answer.
One: Earth’s precise rotation, mass, size, etc. It’s called chance. How many millions of billions of solar systems, planets, galaxies and suns are there in the universe? Even assuming that for every particular condition necessary for life, there’s a one in a billion chance of the planet getting it right, there’s probably enough planets in the galaxy to allow for that chance to dictate a half-dozen planets that are inhabitable by humans, never mind any other type of life form. You are trying to argue that our existence necessitated a planet just like Earth and the fact that an Earth existed for us proves “God”. That is very short-sighted, as it can easily be argued that the existence of the planet is what allowed for our evolution, not vice versa. Our planet created us, not us creating our planet (or the plan for us).
Two: Darwin. What all your ID theorists keep forgetting is that Darwin DID believe in God. His theories were never intended to prove where life itself came from, just how it evolved. If any of you actually read some of his writings, you’d see clearly that he believed “God” put basic prototypes of animals on this world in Eden and that when it was closed off, they were forced to evolve to adapt to the new world. True, Darwin wasn’t a fundamentalist “everything by the Bible exactly as it says” Christian (and neither are 99% of modern day Christians)… but he did believe in a “God”.
Another point of yours: “Atheists attack christians, or christians intellect, because you cannot attack our Lord Jesus, or the Bible,, because both are true.. and if you could prove them false…you would scream from the roof tops….”
I can prove them false as much as you can prove them true. Have you READ the Bible? Not only are there dozens of contradictions, it endorses slavery, genocide, murder, rape and more. So Christians say “Well you can’t take it literally” or “But that’s mostly in the Old Testament” or even “Well it was written for a less civilized time”. If the Bible is the truth and the “Word of God” then why is all this even possibly the case? Why would God allow for the Old Testament to still be around if it’s not valid anymore? Why wouldn’t God inspire a new scribe to fix up the errors and the out of date material? Why would he allow the Bible to be written in such incorrect literal terms if he actually meant something else in the first place? It doesn’t make sense for a book that is highly offensive and occasionally outright disgusting when taken literally to be a “true” moral guidebook. It’s not even that the Bible is read as a historical text, but it’s being used to argue moral standpoints. So where are the Christians that stone every person who denies God? Who stone children who mouth off? Who burn heretics at the stake? And if those decrees of the Bible are no longer valid, then why are any of them? If you’re going to say that a book is absolute truth, you can’t pick and choose what you follow. Only if you’re going to accept that the Bible is, at best, an outdated historical and moral guide can you choose what you follow from it… and at that point you can no longer use it to command certain beliefs from others.
You say that we cannot prove that there is no “God” and you’re right. As a matter of fact, even though I identify myself as an agnostic atheist, I do believe in “God” as it were… but more as a concept than as an actuality. I believe in God like I believe in “good” and “evil”. None of them exist or exert any real force upon the actual and natural world, but they are mental concepts that allow people to define and alter their actions. There is “God” as much as there is “right” or “wrong” or “good” or “evil”. You can’t put an absolute definition on any of those concepts as each has so many shades and slight alterations.
However, I CAN say that I do not see evidence for an actual physical/spiritual God. As much as I cannot prove that there is no God, nobody can prove anything. We can’t even prove that we aren’t actually part of the “Matrix”. We can’t prove that we aren’t little more than a mass of firing synapses being activated by some greater power. But for the same reason that I do believe that this life is relatively real, I also believe that there is no “God” in the Judao-Christian sense. The proof simply does not support that belief. Ask yourself this… outside of the Bible, what proof is there? Human existence, the Earth’s existence… all of that can be attributed to chance and given the size of the Universe, it isn’t hard to reason that it almost “had” to happen somewhere. Knowing chemistry, I also know that atoms will join together in the most beneficial bonds. After that, it’s no great stretch of the imagination for those beneficial bonds to bond with other beneficial bonds to eventually create cells and from there is just a matter of the process of evolution, as developed by the “God” believing Darwin. After all, it’s no great leap of faith to go backwards from his starting point of “God put X on the planet” to develop cells from atomic bonding.
I always find it humorous that Christians try to deny evolution when they were the cause of many evolutionary proofs… like most dog and horse breeds. They start freaking out about evolution because they know that once they accept that “God’s creatures” have changed over time, they might have to follow the theoretical chain down. However, nobody has discovered the origin of thinking life yet. Christians don’t (or won’t) realize that with where our knowledge of the process of evolution is at this point, they can teach what Darwin believed… that God created a certain number of life forms and allowed them to evolve. It is only a slight alteration of the basic story of the Bible (after all, Genesis never says WHAT animals Adam named or even what Adam himself was like) and seeing as I don’t see any stonings or burnings of heretics, it’s obvious that Christians are open to slight alterations and variations on at least the Old Testament.
I was raised Christian. I went to Bible camp and to church. I was told that all evil in the world was human sinfulness. And I do agree that if there were a “God” that he would be too busy to deal with the little things. But if I were all-powerful, all-seeing and all-good, I sure as anything would at least be making sure that “evil” wasn’t being practised in my name, especially if I were the sort to take the first four of the ten commandments to decree exactly how people were allowed to worship me. But still we had the crusades, we had (and have) holy wars. Hell, even just the fact that the “followers of God” who believe in the “sacredness of life” feel that it’s OK to kill fully formed and functional human ADULTS to protect weeks-old embryos is a little hard to stomach. Wouldn’t the God who commands “Thou shalt not kill” step in and tell his people that if they want to do his work, they should do it WITHOUT killing? After all, that’s what they’re trying to prevent, right? Or does God say that it’s OK to kill (or allow to die) any human that’s out of the womb, but we have to protect them when they’re still inside. After all, a surprising percentage of “pro-life” supporters don’t donate to children’s charities, have their own children rather than fostering or adopting, protest government funding of welfare programs and support the death penalty and the war in Iraq. For “pro-life” believers, they certainly allow for a lot of death and suffering of already living humans. But don’t dare suggest that they go volunteer to save the dying children in Africa rather than picketing abortion clinics… obviously once they’re born children are no longer in need of aid or protection! “God” must be really supportive of laziness to be telling his supporters to deal with the near “dangers” of abortion and homosexuality over the ones that would take more effort than just ranting!
For a perfect “God”, he sure lets a lot of stuff slide in order to perform the miracle of putting Jesus’ face on a piece of toast!
May 06, 2009 @ 17:04:40
When people talk about their relationship with God, this is not, in my opinion, something to treat necessarily as delusional.
It is not possible for anybody to describe a being who created the universe and who therefore exists beyond it, if we ourselves are bounded by it (the universe). Therefore, any claim that involves a *concept* of God is meaningless.
Nevertheless, “a relationship” is a collection of emotional states of some kind, so the fact that the object of the relationship is meaningless, does not mean that the emotional states themselves are meaningless, and this, I think, is why it is usually impossible to successfully argue with a believer.
Putting it another way, reality for me, is my experience, rather than a collection of facts about my experience.
May 06, 2009 @ 17:10:36
Religion is nothing more than a crutch for those who cannot face the reality of death.
Asking where the “spirit” goes after death is like asking where the music goes when the orchestra stops playing, it only exists in the memory of those who experienced it… just like people.
May 06, 2009 @ 17:34:29
Alan H is correct that religion is a crutch for those who cannot face the reality of death.
I think that we should deal very sensitively with those who cannot face the reality of death.
I think that we should deal with most sceptics as if they were actually the fuck-wits that they appear to be.
May 06, 2009 @ 17:35:50
What puzzles me is that so many folks want to be associated with a ‘god’ who is profoundly mean spirited. ‘he’ did a whole lot of smitting back in the day. Toe the line or get zapped. Gee, fun guy.
Second point… if ‘god’ is a loving god than why do so many people murder other people in ‘his’ name ??
The Bible (such as it is) is full of anger, killing, rape, etc. all done in a ‘righteous’ and religious manner against perceived ‘sinners’. WTF !!!
Sorry, folks. I’m not mentally ill enough to want to foist such ill manners on my fellow travelers on this big lunk of dirt.
May 06, 2009 @ 23:45:45
I wonder how, for example, the pious Italians who were tragically killed in the recent earthquake can reconcile the deaths of so many innocent people. They’ll ‘Cherry Pick’ and say that it was a ‘miracle’ more weren’t killed rather than face up to the facts that an earthquake is a random natural event. Then in a bizarre twist, they held mass to give thanks to their loving god for sparing the living. I wonder if they now suspect that those who did die were in fact ‘evil’ and deserving of God’s wrath?
May 08, 2009 @ 12:47:05
Celeste111, what you described is Pantheism. I myself am more of a Pantheist than an atheist..
Jan 30, 2015 @ 18:22:26
Bumping this old thread. Sigh. StumbleUpon needs a date filter. Still, I am glad it found this. So, how many people make fun of you for the derisive comments about godly back rubs or manicured lawns? Then, how many of those people pray before their child’s football game, as though god has nothing better to do? Better yet, how many catholics are taking their pets to get “blessed?”