I believe
 

I have a website with some images that many who believe in God might wanna look at my website is on photobucket Qconnection. Enjoy!

Thank you for all your posts. It seems like many of us may see an undeniable design in the universe. To me, it’s unfathomable that someone or something isn’t responsible for it. There are just too many connections, perfect moments, and strong feelings. I really don’t think a random roll of the dice could make our world the way that it is and how we feel it.

Like Roman said..this is much bigger than us all..I look up and see the stars and the moon and other planets..I am sooo curious about it all..I want to know why i'm here and not up there.But I believe God put me here for a reason,I love my God..even tho,I don't obey the ten commandments..and I don't go to church or read my bible daily..i'm queer..oh,the list goes on and on why some people think I deserve to go straight to hell,but I won't be perfect,for them,and it's too late..I know i'm a sinner and God loves me anyway,enough said.

To me god and the universe are one and the same thing. Not some superhuman creator monitoring all of us.. god just is, to me. I love science because it helps me to a better understanding of god in all it's glorious complexity.

I do have issues with organised religion, although I have no interest in getting into fights with anyone over the matter. Be happy with your faith , or lack thereof - so long as you don't act with malign intent, i will have no quibble with you. But to me it's faith that is god-given, whilst religion is clearly a human creation, and thus fallible. And I prefer to make my own mistakes - and thus I have my own, personal, faith.

By the by, when I talk about god I do so in various ways, simply because I am at that point focusing on some aspect of god that I feel close to just then.

May deity smile upon you all, always.

This business of design or otherwise in the universe is something that I have pondered quite a bit over the years. My understanding of science is sufficient that I am aware of some of the pitfalls that the unwary, or less well up on science, often fall into. The sheer size and complexity of the universe boggles the human brain, and allows plenty of room for random chance to produce strings of coincidences that may give the impresion of a guiding force behind them.

And I wonder at Creationists who on the one hand, claim to believe in an all-powerful god in one breath, then in the next, dare to set limits on god by saying that god could not possibly have created a universe in which evolution is a thing., when what I suspect they probably mean is that they cannot understand how god could manage such a thing, which is hardly surprising, what with god being so much greater than we are, by definition, in anyone's faith.

For years, having rejected the religion I was raised in, I had only science and my sense of wonder. And then it came to me that that sense of wonder in me, my joy at finding out about the universe and the gift of being here to try to understand it all - it makes me happy. I have faith, and that makes me happy. My religion, such as it is, is simply that which makes me happy with regard to expressing my wonder at being a part of this glorious, awe-inspiring universe. Religion, to me, should make people happy, or what is the point of it?

And for a while that was enough for me, but then I had another insight - if there's one thing that seems to be writ large in the universe for all to see, it is this - co-operation works. Things and beings in concert achieve more than things alone, whether one considers fundamental particles collecting together to form ever more complex structures, and the forces of nature at the most fundamental levels, or whether one considers animal and human societies. Co-operation works. Our civilisation would not exist without co-operation. Our very bodies would not exist without co-operation, nor would the atoms of which our bodies are made.

Yes, i am aware that I have stretched the meaning of the word "co-operation" somewhat further than I should, as there is no consciousness in fundamental particles or simple cellular life, and, too, I am aware of the anthropocentric-ness of my reasoning, as a universe in which stuff can't clump together and form complexity is one in which we could not exist to have this discusssion.

All I know is that, emotionally, this is how I feel - that written into the fundamentals of existence is "co-operation works". That is all the sign that I need from deity. This makes me happy. I do not know if the universe - god - cares about me, but it is a universe in which people coming together to help each other works better for people than everyone being selfish and attacking each other. This makes me happy. It is enough for me. If it is her will that I co-operate with others to help make them happier, and they with me, why, I am more than happy to comply.

Godess is awesome.

May she smile upon you, each and every one.

My spirit belongs to the Creator
 

I am a completely a living conscious human because I have
* spirit
* soul
* body (flesh & blood with all well functioned inner organs and brain)

My spirit belongs to its Creator (God)

Most of this is pasted from stuff i have written elsewhere, but here is my take:

Natural laws, like gravity, like natural selection, like entropy, acceleration, fibonacci sequences, etc., are visibly reified all around us. They are constant and predictable, yet not cannot be brought entirely under our control. We can manipulate them with great expertise, but only within the framework of their inherent qualities. We cannot exceed those limitations.

If natural laws exist, but cannot be brought under our control, they must be under other control, or their own– and the evidence of their existence is incontrovertible, so the evidence of non-human control is incontrovertible.

There is only one thing we can say for sure that every force of nature we can observe wants: progress. Every force of nature we can observe has an agenda that moves from left to right along a spectrum from evolution to disintegration.

Here’s the real story of Genesis: God was sitting at His laptop and he called up the evolution program and He said: “hear me out- you know how there’s all these living things down there and they’re all going to die but they don’t know yet? Let’s make one that knows and see what happens.”

And then the evolution program pushed some monkeys down out of the trees and made it so there weren’t enough bananas, so they had to start killing a lot so they could start eating enough meat to get brains big enough to fully appreciate their eventual annihilation.

Like, fully appreciate it.

And those monkeys were Adam and Eve, and all of those animals they killed to get their brains (the knowledge of good and evil) to that point were “the apple.”

Human individuals are nothing more than equations set to answer that “what if they know they are worm food?” question.

Evolution is the program God wrote to run the “existence” experiment for him.

In fact, God is the program. Right now that program is compiling data on a sub-experiment in consciousness. Humanity is the experimental group and apes are the control.

The problem is not in proving God’s existence, but in proving His concern.

Horrible things really do happen to people who we know don’t deserve them, who we know are just as innocent (probably more, if we’re honest) as we are.

We try to believe we can stave off the horrible with good behavior or perfect devotion, but deep down we know we’re not any more accomplished at those things than the victim sitting next to us. We try to earn our safety, but our experience tells us that only works about half the time. That is a powerless feeling, and makes us feel abandoned.

Horrible things happen because God is perfect. When we’re accused of letting personal feelings inform our decisions, we say “I’m only human!” Being “only human” is most often claimed as an excuse for behaving irrationally.

God is not human, so He does not behave irrationally. He does not intervene in the working of the law because to do so is not rational. God is a program– programs can always be counted on to operate strictly within the parameters that define them. Any result that seems outside the parameters is a result of undiscovered potentials within the parameters, not from the program’s intervention.

The operation is always “If A, then B,” and never “if A, then B, unless A is really awesome: if A is really awesome, then C.”

Whatever it is that is going to kill you is the culmination of all of the factors under which you were born. The program is not going to run back and reset these just because it’s gotten attached to how you turned out.

Although i profess a Christian faith, this is a deist cosmology. How can you be a deist and also believe in Christ?

Because the teachngs of Christ priorize humility above any other virtue, and humility is the only thing that "saves" you under a deist model. Having enough humility to not care that God doesn't care about you-- and to arrive at the end of your life without having let this cognitive dissonance madden and embitter you-- is salvation. Arriving at the end pissed off and bitter is damnation.

Insisting that reward and punishment happen in the afterlife is to insist upon an afterlife existing, which comes from a lack of gratitude for the life that you know to exist.

This shows a lack of humility, a belief that you deserve better than the life you were given. Trying to live without sin to gain access to a better world is, itself, a sin, by virtue of its challenge to humility. So the Christian cosmology is incompatible with Christ.