God - Anyone believes in it

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I am, by and large, with Romana in that I regard Process Theology as a pretty neat framework for my own speculations.

I would regard myself a theist, rather than as religious - to denote that I am (at this point) more concerned whether S/He exists or not rather than with worshipping Him/Her. "Panentheism" - the idea that we, and the Universe, are part of God but God is a bit more than that, fits me nicely. I am furthermore convinced of the validity of scientific method, including evolutionary theory. I would regard God as someone immanent in the regularities of nature (i.e. fundamental constants and natural laws as "God's mind"), rather than as a cosmic trickster who can break them at will.

I have nothing nice to say about silly arguments such as that Aspies cannot be religious because to be religious is to be irrational and Aspies are rational. I mean, come on - what kind of playground logic is that?

I have nothing but respect for thoughtful atheists, but there is a kind of atheist who will gladly use scientific fact to bombard religious people with, but not go near a theology textbook himself. And a lot of work written within theology, philosophy of religion and all (the already mentioned Whitehead, but also say Arthur Peacocke) is extremely well-thought, and utterly rationalistic stuff. Religious thought is quite a bit more than the cliche-picture of a bearded guy sitting on a cloud doing miracles. This why I find the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster spoof funny on the one hand, but a bit childish on the other: it parodies a kind of religious worldview which is in no way representative of the whole.

There's two possibilites for me anyways.

He's a space alien, (you heard right) that genetically engineerd us out of himself and monkeys, and if you think this is crazy talk whats even crazier to me is god speaking to dirt and making a man out of it.

i always go back to when civilizations first started, to see what they have to say about it. because more than likely everyone who comes after them will rip off there ideas and put there own twists on the origional idea.

the sumerians thought a space alien made them, so im leaning more twords what they believe.

the other possibility is we just evolved over many years after protien was introduced into our diets, and we made god in our heads.

Rationality is a means of deriving value from truth. Faith is a means of deriving value from unlikely possibilities.

Rationality is doing the right thing for the right reason. Faith is doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Rationality is taking responsibility for your actions and doing the best you can to improve things. Faith is a child's dependency on his mother.

Without God, and with the tendency to care about other human life (which is common in most humans), we have the incentive to progress as much as we can in our lifetimes for the sake of future generations. With God, we have no reasons to progress, in fact, with God, regression towards "the old ways" is what is valued.
Tradition is a euphemism for the preservation of the obsolete, and the overestimation of humans from previous generations and even millennia.

In a nutshell, religion is an evolutionary tool which is useful for the first chunk of a civilization's history. Survival is a little tricky nowadays, but it was a real challenge before. Religion has the potential to make an overall improvement to society at first by keeping people plugging away at their lives without losing motivation, but at a point, and I think that point is now, its detrimental side effects gradually outweigh the pros.

Cures to illnesses are being held back from being discovered by those who feel it's wrong to study stem cells. Understanding and acceptance of what is perhaps nature's ingenious population control response known as homosexuality is taking far too long because people were pressured long ago to make kids before they themselves died from the harsh environment of the time, and that mindset was preserved by religion even though the relevant factors have long since changed.

I can't say that God definitely doesn't exist, but I can say that if there is a god, it's very unlikely that he happens to be any one of the ones we came up with.

I'm glad that I have AS, because as a result I seem to be free of one of the biggest cognitive curses that typical humans have. How to put it... maybe something like.. "binary assumption haste." People come across some sort of question, before they even apply any real logic to it, their mind presents them with two options. It's always two for some reason. And that's bad enough as it is, but then most people have to go a step further and choose one of those two options right off the bat, even if they have no criteria with which to narrow it down.
We as humans sort of just found ourselves existing here, and have been studying to try to find out more about this plain of existence and ourselves. Naturally, at least some people will consider the possibility of us having been created by a god. At that point, it's practically a coin flip that makes a bunch of us religious, and a bunch decidedly non-religious.

Perhaps people feel defective in some way if they aren't able to firmly decide on an answer to every question. And that's what religion is all about; Encouraging the right brain's emotional need to jump to conclusions and defend them to the bitter end.
Science / rationality / etc, are all about the opposite. Decide on something that seems most likely if given enough information, and update as necessary.

i need to get out of the united states, the problem is the majority rule here and unfortunatly is christian. i've thought about moving to canada, but i need more inner/self motivation to do it.

according to the bible, god is love. just an abstract concept, love. (also happening to be omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent (yet condemning all but a few select devout sheep to hell), and the origin and creater of "all")
according to the torah, god can be whatever you envision him as.
acording to druidists god is nature itself, represented by a few entities if im correct there.
according to pantheists god is every material thing in the universe.
according to hindus god embodies a multitudes of subgods which are all one and the same god. kinda funny if you ask me.
dont even ask about allah...

so where is this monotheistical bearded old man that everyone thinks of when the word god is mentioned? how did "He" get into existence?

beats me...

and at any rate: he who relates to ages old manuscripts written by several highly questionable individuals for his take on reality and morality is the biggest fool that walks the earth, along with all the others similar to him.

Ok, I could say god is life, god is death, god is the universe, god is beyond comprehension...

But to me? All existence is in motion, and all motion is in existence, the space between, the gaps, or voids are always changing size and shape, I believe conciousness is a literal representation of this vibration in all things. Therefore when I die I believe I become part of everything that is, was, and shall be, according to how I live.

I do not need to believe in a concious creator judging me to be comfortable with death. I prefer to believe we're alive to live, to ponder the ever-expanding infinity of truths to be found in life, for to ponder death, as something separate and severed from life, is why we need to create such things as heaven and hell and the creator judging us from his/her seat up on high..

I think a certain naivety is required to make god out to have the same form of working conciousness itself, for what is beyond our comprehension? How everything works together! Its not the universe that is god, it is EXISTENCE..

But until I can write it in a definable essay format proved with axioms, lets leave it at that.

I'm still high from getting out of hospital for a little operation, I have a strange feeling I'm wandering today.

IMO the only reason why God has survived is because so many people have re-invented him/her/it and the whole concept of god has become so ambigious it could mean anything from just and abstract principle to the bearded old man in the sky.

Bingo it could be something very specific, or something very vague, the point being believe what you wanna believe, share what you wanna share, truth is self evident, what you don't wanna know, you can use faith to fill in the gaps..

We can all get along