God

[KenWittlief]

wow, interesting thread!

some thoughts to ponder:

Science vs religion: Science and religion dont mix for a very simple reason. Science deals with things that are controllable, predictable and repeatable. Try to apply the rules of science to humans and see if you can draw any conclusions to prove anything. People respond to stimuli in different and completely unpredictable ways. Extend that out to God, and there is no experiment you can conduct to prove or disprove anything concerning God or religon, because you cannot put God into your laboratory condtions, you cant control God, and God would be infinitely beyond our ability to comprehend, so how could we predict what God would do in any given situation (in response to any test conditions we come up with)?

religon and conflict. Another problem here. Even if you take the existance of God as a given, now you have an even bigger problem: defining Gods nature. There are as many possible concepts of what you think God is (what God does, how God interacts with man, Gods character...) as there are people on the earth. The conflicts that arise from religion always stem from disagreement over what we think God wants us to do.

God and you. When I was taking philosophy and logic courses in college I gave religion a lot of thought, trying to figure out if it was possible to determine if God is real or not. I spent several days contemplating what sign God could give me (or anyone) to indicate that He is there, that He is real. I came to the conclusion that the only perfect sign (one that could not be a coincidence) would be if God came to you personally in some way, and interacted with you on a personal level, revealed Himself.

and in the end, isnt that what its really all about? if God is not interested in interacting with you on a personal level, then it doesnt really matter if God exists or not, right? If you never have any personal interaction with God, then what difference does it make if God exists or not?

Thats why these discussions always come down to the point where we must all concede that our religious beliefs are a personal matter. If God has revealed Himself to me, there is nothing I can say or do to convince anyone esle of that. God has to deal with each of us one by one.

For the record, millions of people state they do have such a personal relationship with the creator of the universe, and I am one of them.