I had an extremely vivid dream once where I was in an armageddon/doomsday type of scenario taking place in a neighborhood surrounded by open desert (I'm from Vegas, go figure). Anyways, what originally "caught my attention" in this dream was how loud it was. I was in my house and could here people crying and screaming right outside my front door. I heard rolling thunder and loud cracking noises, too.

When I had the balls to finally go outside, I quickly saw how chaotic it was. People were on fire, women were running with their babies and some people were committing suicide. Then, all of a sudden, I see these small asteroids coming down, burning in the sky. As they hit, every one of them is hitting a person. People right in front of my eyes are getting crushed or burned to death.

The next thing I remember, I see my dad coming out of the house, running, with some personal belongings in his arms. As he runs past me he says "Get out here! He's not showing us any mercy!" Then my dad disappears into thin air. As I look up at the sky, I notice a big, black, fiery cloud splitting open. The noise of the rolling thunder is so loud it's almost unbearable. Then, 100 times louder than anything else, I hear this voice.. it's very deeep, very powerful and even earth shattering! From this cloud emerges another cloud, but this one has a face! Full of color and almost detailed, like it was made on a canvas. The cloud zoomed down towards me, completely covering the sky. It stopped about 10 feet from where I was standing.. and "it" said to me (with the loudest, deepest, most intimidating voice I had ever heard)

"Do you believe? Do you believe in me?" The look it had was one of "I'll kill you if you get this wrong" type of look. I immediately think in my head "Holy ****! He'll know if I'm lying! FML, I'm screwed!" That's when this sudden confidence comes out of nowhere and just fills my body. That's when I look back at him/it and calmly say "Well, I do now".
It let out a huge roar and then disappeared back into the clouds.

I literally woke up at that second and have never been that scared from a dream, since this dream. I remember most of it like it actually happened to me. But you know what I got to thinking about the next day when I was thinking about the dream? Why would God, a loving creator, scare the **** of us (in that way). Why all the fire and brimstone? Couldn't he have saved so many lives just by handling that situation a little more calmly? Was all that fear really necessary? Instead of thunder, why not a nice harp? Instead of asteroids, why not angels?

There is no "message" or point that I'm trying to make. Just putting this out there for you to interpret if you like. But as far as the OP's question goes (kinda), unless something happened to me that was similar to my dream, I would not give a **** if a god were revealed to us/me or not. IMO it's all after-death sht anyways. FML when I'm dead. BFD!


Just wanted to add one last thing (sorry wtl;dr already, I know). Both of my parents were very religious people. My dad (a Roman Catholic Cuban) read The Bible 23 times. My mom church-hopped her whole life. Newborn Christian after being Catholic. Then her and my sister became Mormon. Then they both became Jehovah Witnesses after that. I basically gave up on church when I got to Junior High School. And my dad only went to church occasionally. Anyway.. both of parents passed away within this last year and a half. My mother passed away on May 20th of 2009 (she was 52) and my father passed away last June, on the 30th (he was 69). You want to know what I think [seriously] happened to their souls? I think they went into the memories of their past. They went into the stories that people will tell about them.. that I will tell about them. Their soul is in their pictures. And those pictures tell their own story. They will live on as long as there is people (family, friends and complete strangers) who are thinking and talking about them. Do I think they're watching over me? No. Do I think they're in heaven? Nope. Don't believe in such a place. Do I think there's a god who has control over us or interferes with our lives? Absolutely not. That's why people die. There are no angels, fairies, demons, ghosts or spirits or god(s). We are on our own and we've done fine on our own for quite some time.

So.. Until the day comes where that rolling thunder starts and asteroids are coming down from the sky, as faces appear in the clouds above, no ****ing way in hell would I ever believe in something that I can't [personally] see, touch, smell, hear or taste.

But, to each his own. I only wish that your life is full of happiness, great friends, better family, long ass winning streaks, parties that run into the night and good health to get you where you're going. If you're a believer, more power to you. If not, even more power to you



LVG
| /.



Now watch me hit enter and have all this sht wiped away by a ****ing 500 error!

I'm obviously not explaining myself - rest assured I'm not imputing any further information, nor do I think it's an unreasonable course of action to sit quietly and wait for any forthcoming revelation before joining up to some religion or other. In fact, I think that for practical reasons the best thing to do is 'await further developments'. My query is in the label of rational to this choice. Suppose you and I were both atheists and both had this 'proof with no guidance' type of experience.

You shrug and say "Well, God exists. We'll see if anything else turns up."
I say "Yeah he exists. I'm going to go and read Harry Potter in case there's some guidance there as to what we should do about it."

Clearly I'm being irrational - there's no reason to read Harry Potter over the Bible the Koran or anything else, nor is there any reason to think anything will prove useful to me. How would you persuade me that I shouldn't do anything though? I can't see any argument establishing that doing nothing is more likely to be the correct course of action. Is there some reason beyond inability to distinguish between the plethora of competing Gods?

I know there's no reason to think we have to respond - there's no reason to think we shouldn't either is there? Maybe we don't, maybe we do - it doesnt make it 50/50 but what argument is there for preferring doing nothing over doing something?

It annoys me, but I've reconciled myself to it.

As for confusion - I'll take the blame. I don't think I've ever met anyone who considers my argument for a-rationality comprehensible, let alone compelling.

Religion will not make you a better person. You will make you a better person; religion helps.

Like i said i find this kind offensive. It indicates that because i dont hold a belief in a God that im more immoral then a believer and if it were show to me that the universal had a creator i would become more moral. I dont believe this. In fact i think i would become less moral if i followed some religious tenets and did what some people say God wants.

I think I understand what you're saying, and if I do then I think I might agree with you (or maybe not). But regardless, I don't think it is compelling or meaningful to form such an opinion. I think we both agree that acting on this information in any way is less rational than not acting on this information. However, whether not acting is irrational, rational, or arational is kind of a pointless discussion to me when we both agree that it's the best decision. Assigning one of those three words above to it just means we are now arguing over an arbitrary probability of just how rational such a decision is. Thus, any discussion would involve a large amount of...um... arbitrariness? (huh, that is apparently a word)

fyp

No, don't do that. Just say what you're going to say.

Btw, religion doesn't "conveniently overlook those religious people who are bad." An institution, person, or group might, but the religion itself is quite clear on what would happen to said bad person. Being part of a religion is not like joining a neat club with special privileges in the eyes of God. We're all going to be judged.

[x] nobody gives a **** about your dream story

[ ] was a good read

[ ] cool story bro

I read it and about what you wrote after the story. I was saddened that people were simply moving from one "cult" to another.

I liked it.

lolllll +1

what you basically just said is that you dont believe christianity is true because you dont think that it is true. i already knew that, care to give more specifics?

you really find this to be a satifactory answer in light of the fact that god does exist? it is barely an explanation without the knowledge that god exists. you dont think that you should re evaluate your previous conclusion in light of the new evidence?

this should be cause for you to look further then.

you already answered the good/evil question from a materialist view point.

[/QUOTE]

Yea some kids had to move around and go to different schools.. I had to go to different churches. I saw a lot of creepy **** and weird folks in them churches. I never really felt "right" in any of them either. I always felt it was so "put on". That people were putting on a show to either show off to others in the church or to fake their "faith" (like "Hey, look at me, I'm a super believer!"). Also, these were some of the most judgmental people I had ever come across. So ****ty, yet so righteous.

I don't believe in the bible for hundreds of reasons and most of them i have expressed in RGT more or less. I gave you the main one, i don't believe if there is a God he is or was in contact with earth. You can call it a guess or faith because I cant prove otherwise.

Going with God exists, no. I still think evolution is true. I think we come form star dust and evolved on this earth and i think we get our morals form that evolution. I think if there is a God then evolution and morals are apparently apart of his design. Now it seems like you want an answer why God did all that. But I don’t have those answers. The best I can do is say he apparently wanted some of his creation to live in social groups and develop morals. I dont know why.

I still and always will think about what a possible God wants, you just don't like what i see. Which is i dont know what a God wants.

I could make guesses like i dont think he would see premarital sex as a sin. And he doesn't think gays are immoral. And he really doesn't care about marriage one way or there other. Or maybe he is just some removed scientist who could give two ****s about my morals and is just messing around with an experiment. But those would all be guesses. Because i dont know what morals he wants me to have.

No i didn't. Me thinking we get are morals form evolution says noting about whether a possible non materialist God or God designed morals as apart of evolution.

If it could be demonstrated that there really was a creator then that discovery would be in the realm of science and not theological mythology. Atheists could accept the discovery and still be atheists.

I even want to argue that if that discovered creator threatened us all, had powers of inconceivable vengeance, and told us all we had to buy and follow has lifestyle book, it still wouldn't really be 'theology', it would just be a different scientific (and political) paradigm. So I'd be a 'worshipping atheist' or something.

I'm sure morals existed long before the church came along and confirmed the obvious.

= morals didn't come from a god or a religion