Dear God,Thank you for bearing me to a broken family. Thank you God for birthing me to an abusive father. Thank you God for infilitrating my culture and raping any sort of history and tradition that my family’s race had and leaving us sublimated to the power of the elite. Thank you God for allowing me channels of ill-supposed-truth to open my eyes to the untruth that is taught in the belief of you. Thank you God for the anomaly that is New York City and how it opened not only my eyes but my inner-man to the depths of what humanity is. Thank you God of ridding me of God. Remoy Philip, New York/USA Share:
April 14th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Dear Remoy, don’t give up. Don’t. Give. In.
Darkness exists. And just as clearly, so does light. Live in it. Surround yourself with it and those that do the same. It is your shield — and yes, shields are needed. If the place you are kills the light in you, go. Find God again. All true children of the light suffer. Don’t. Give. In.
God bless and keep you in this journey.
Love,
Jess
April 14th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Freedom is not fighting. Freedom is not holding on. Freedom is surrender.
Breathe in that free air. You’ve come a lot further than most will ever come.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
we all have different visions of god, maybe god is what is in you, your inner strength, your ability to stand up and believe in the things that make you who you are as a person. You talk about your inner man so you are already aware of your strength use it to grow and connect with others……
April 14th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
i love your blunt words, people should stop their sugarcoating, some things are just fucked.
but you can come out as such a better person than people who live a life of denial
it doesn’t matter if there is a god or not.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
What if God does not know about this world? What if we are already home in heaven? What if we are sleeping and this world is just a dream?
April 14th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
It’s time we all grew up - there is no God! Get over it. The concept comforted and served us well (and often not so well) in the past - but it’s now redundant, increasingly divisive and stultifies any attempt at an open, inquiring approach to life.
Now can we get on with the important task of making our neighbourhoods and the earth a place where all have food, clothing and shelter, and are able to live lives that have real purpose.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:29 am
Every comment, every idea, every expression on this page is beautiful. Thank you people for your inspiration and openess!
April 15th, 2008 at 2:45 am
Michael-
What’s the point of making our neighbourhoods and earth a better place if there is no God? You imply that there is a morality that we should follow - feeding, clothing, and sheltering everyone. Where did that morality come from? If there is no God that forms morality in man, then we should all just live for ourselves, because this life is all we have. Fortunately, there IS a God, and He cares deeply for the poor. He’s the one who came up with the idea of caring for the poor, as shown throughout the Bible. The fact that we aren’t doing it as well as we should shows that we are still broken as people - it does NOT reflect negatively on God.
Remoy, I am sorry for the life that you have been born into. Mankind is severely broken, and I feel for the pain you have experienced as a result. I will pray that God show Himself to you in an unmistakable way, and that you will allow your eyes to be open to what He has to show you…
be God’s…
Mike
April 15th, 2008 at 3:32 am
The idea of God is the best and worst idea humankind ever had. There is only one rational approach to religious faith, in my view, and that is to identify God with the good that we do, with ‘good’ defined as all free and voluntary acts that preserve, honor, or promote all forms and instances of life. Religions are long-evolved systems of ideas and practices that work towards bringing this good God to daily life. So too is moral philosophy, and much poetry, song, and science. Whatever works to do good, works to bring about God. God is in our hands, and we in His; God is in your hands, and you in His.
April 15th, 2008 at 3:42 am
What an excellent site - and comment too.
Yes, some things are dogshit - the main reason most people turn away from “love preaching” religions.
But, like Willow says, (I guess that”s what he means) it is time we returned to an honest dialogue with God.
(Whatever His name is…) Like in the old days.
I wish people had the courage to do this in organised religions too, or leave their faith and (pseudo)god, - instead of killing others.
Yet another good reason for not believing.
—
I wonder though why people with very similar family backgrounds go in two opposite directions: One a true believer, the other a god denying enthusiast. (That’s not meant to be an offense, Philip)
April 15th, 2008 at 4:07 am
AMEN, BROTHER REMY! I admire your strength and courage. Don’t lose hope in the good that lies in most people around you. We don’t need a outside reason or possible future reward (i.e. “God”) to be enlightened and to contribute towards making this world a better place.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:36 am
Remoy, I am so sorry for what has happened to you man! I would like to apologize for what people have done to you or not done to you in the name of God! I really hope that you find happiness!
April 15th, 2008 at 6:03 am
There is no God? Prove it! If there is a God then that fact can’t be redundant now. If there isn’t a God then there never was and since it is people who are devisive, then if you ‘get rid of God’ then people will use something else to be devisive and stultify.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Michael,
Your view of life is very honest and sounds true in all aspects except one:
I have all the food and clothes and happy hours I want. I think I am doing my best to help others to get what I already have. But when I think about it at the end of the day, I have to say, life has absolutely NO PURPOSE for me without God. It is too short, too accidental, and it is only a joke without the prospect of eternity. And I guess you need some kind of a god or somebody to give you that - I do not have eternity in my pocket and I don’t know anyone who has. Do you?
April 15th, 2008 at 8:09 am
“get on with the important task of making our neighborhoods and the earth a place where all have food, clothing, and shelter, and are able to live lives that have real purpose?” This idea itself posits the very challenge that God made to humanity through Jesus Christ: “love your neighbor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked…give to the poor… do justice, love mercy…and feed my sheep”, he said. Do all these things for the glory of a God who loves us. Find purpose? We have purpose. Live this out, know God, see “the depth of what humity is” and can be.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Dear Soul,
The universe has no purpose, it seems. I can live with that. But in the universe has a purpose: which is to create more and better life; and I can and do to live with that. Every time you preserve, honor, or promote some form or instance of life, including yourself, you conjure up the God you are looking for. You have eternity in your pocket, Soul. Every time you do the slightest good “for no good reason” you light Him up, like a match-flame that is different on every occasion, but made of the same “substance,” God, every time.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:55 am
…oops. “But in the universe has a purpose:…and I can and do live with that.”
April 15th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
oops 2: “But life in the universe has a purpose….”
(wish there was a way to review one’s own comments before posting)
April 16th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Remoy: Thank you for opening your eyes and looking past the world we create for ourselves and into the world that exists. We all have a tendency to want so bad for there to be something greater or something more, so much that we poison our own minds with delusions and half truths. It takes someone with an open mind and a strong will to stand up and refute the world around them.
If something is worth believing than it should stand the tests of scrutiny.
Mike: In fact religious morality is born from the intrinsic altruism that humanity has evolved throughout our existence. Social evolution has inbred additional instinctual directives beyond self preservation. It is in the best interest for the individual that the whole exists and prospers. This ideal alone gives way to many of the morals religion tries to stake a claim on. Why don’t we murder, rob, pillage, rape, and in general cause anarchy? You won’t find the answer in the form of some deity, the answer is inherent psychological behavioral patterns we learn throughout our lives.
Rejoice in what exists, stop trying to look over the edge of the earth and start looking around the world we all live in!
April 16th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Hey Remoy!
You’re welcome. If I could I would get rid of myself too.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Free will is usually the source of relational calamity. While he loves us, he allows us choice. He works inside our systems, while trying to free us from them.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:53 am
Amen Remoy!
You make your own purpose.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Comments posted by Mike:
April 15th, 2008 at 2:45 am
“Michael-
What’s the point of making our neighbourhoods and earth a better place if there is no God? You imply that there is a morality that we should follow - feeding, clothing, and sheltering everyone. Where did that morality come from? If there is no God that forms morality in man, then we should all just live for ourselves, because this life is all we have. Fortunately, there IS a God, and He cares deeply for the poor. He’s the one who came up with the idea of caring for the poor, as shown throughout the Bible. The fact that we aren’t doing it as well as we should shows that we are still broken as people - it does NOT reflect negatively on God.”
END HYPNOTIC TRANCE HERE!!
Mike, this is precisely the sort of rhetorical brain pollution which the mullahs begin with (by the shovel full) before eventually imparting some of their desperate, starving followers with their own purpose (to kill all infidels, which includes you). It begins by defining the origin of good as somewhere outside of the person who commits any such actions - where this exits, evil can be instantly transformed into good with just a few words, as it suits the interests of whoever leads the group in question.
The news is that the origin of “Good” and “Evil” is YOU. Millions of years evolving have programmed into us this concept which we call “Good” , and in a highly evolved species such as ours, it makes perfect sense. While this may sound cold, the tendency to do unselfish acts, often at personal expense, to ensure that more of your group survives has an important purpose in our species’ evolution and survival (and the families of suicide bombers are promised a bright future, and their actions billed as heroic in their home community). There are lower (currently, see Planet Of The Apes for morbid giggles) animal species who practice this, who have been on this planet far longer than we have. “GOOD”, the word for which is curiously similar to “GOD”, is the foundation of social behavior, and I am quite comfortable with the observation that there is at least some amount of “GOD” (as well as some amount of SATAN) in every single one of us, without dwelling on the irrational concept of either being manifest outside of us (and I do NOT say this in an individualistic sense, it is the group dynamics of the human species which I am referring to). If there are some who have an unusual amount of Good God in them, than it should hardly be surprising that there are at least as many dominated (perhaps it’s bad gens) by Evil Satan. The opposite of social behavior is selfish behavior=evil, but it’s also a trait shared by all creatures, if lower down the evolutionary ladder.
Furthermore, good and evil are highly subject to group perspective in their definitions. We are all the same species, and some things which are considered right, or even holy, in some cultures (including ours) violate the core of that genetic program which defines our humanity (such as don’t blow yourself up or mutilate your own offspring), but such practices, and it’s fierce defenders are exemplary of the power wielded by those who degrade the human mind, spirit, and soul by taking the basic good out of their young listeners and replacing it with irrational garbage. They can even rally the kids who grew up on the ass end of society to unselfishly go where there’s still oil to plunder (so that established industries can further delay inevitable changes), kick up a world-sized hornets nests, so they’ll be too busy killing and being killed to change anything at home or do any GOOD where they are. God, when he she or it exists anywhere outside of the individual (none being an island) in question, is fatally flawed concept - so please, pull your warm, fuzzy heads out of your ass, quit the blathering, and get over it! It won’t be until we break down the the world cultural divisor of religion that we will be able to heal the philosophical rifts which make it easy to sell war over global cooperation.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I love the way you word this, Remoy, and you’re so right about making your own purpose. Your own purpose is whatever your life means to you, and if that includes any unselfish good, than you’re a qualified and evolved member of the human race.
Social good is encoded in our genetic program (just as is, in most cases, a healthy amount of selfishness). It’s what defines our species as social. “Mike” is a moron to say that good can only come from an outside deity, when our very existence and everything that can be observed about it screams that both God and Satan exist, albeit in variant amounts, in each of us, as part of our core, chemically coded behavioral programming. At the heart of it all is a single point of pure energy which dispersed itself every which way through space, formed the universe as energy condensed into elements of matter and so forth, but most significantly is that every single life form on planet Earth has a role in the redistribution of matter and energy, which may be all we’ll every know, and is all we really need to know. Just be be the best as you can, survive, and evolve. This is ultimately easier for humans to do socially, (no surprise?) and will likely be done more effectively without obsessing over any fantasy-based nonsense. If this was understood by the uneducated population of the Muslim-ruled Middle East, there wouldn’t be any theocratic mullahs there with the power to rally desparate, starving young people to kill “infidels”, and then there wouldn’t be so many starving, uneducated and violent morons there. It’s only when the source of good exists outside of the individual (much less the community) that a pied piper can lead a whole generation down whatever alleged path of righteousness suits that piper, which they believe to be in touch with that source. Certain social practices, such as mutilating one’s own offspring, would never exist in a world without religion, as it violates the very core of our humanity - it took manipulation by powerful, and severely jaded guys who had the weapon of a feared external deity, and no love of women to created such societies. So, Mike, please stop trying to steal the good from those who have it, just to replace it with whatever garbage makes you feel good.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Well said Dave G, although I think you’re wasting your time in a forum like this where there’s bound to be plenty of believers. What annoys me about god botherers is their claim to the high moral ground based on hand me down stories of an era past, while they live their own lives conveniently ignoring the bits that highlight their own immorality and hypocrisy. My Dad had absolutely no religious belief and in his relatively short time on earth helped many more of his fellow beings as a volunteer first aider and in his business, and all with no promise of an eternal life. We don’t need God or a religion to live a good moral life. Better we care for the friends and family we have now, than promising to be a good boy in exchange for the promise of eternal life by some imaginary figure later. Still waiting for the inaugral first hand account of “heaven”.
We live, we die and like the cartoon says “that’s all folks”. Make the most of life while you have it for you never know when it will be over. Now don’t get me started on God choosing those who die or not!!!!!
April 24th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Remoy,
Welcome to the real world. A world of wonder, truth and light.
The notion of a ‘god’ was created by those who wanted power to control an ever increasing population of potential thinkers.
I’m glad you have released yourself from the antiquated shackles - now you can really live a true and noble life.
Jess
April 25th, 2008 at 11:54 am
What a great discussion. Sorry I’ve been away from it. God and good are similar words in English and German (and I think Dutch), so one doesn’t want to make *too* much of it. Nevertheless, I think one is led to contemplate that the emergence of moral law and altruism from non-sentient, non-social levels of nature might have something to do with—not God having planned things to work out this way from the Beginning–but God “himself” coming into existence as an idea, a force, a reality-of-sorts inasmuch as he/it is embodied in and as the good we do. God is an activity, on this view, dependent on us for his continued existence.
Now, traditional religions would not use the word “existence” in the last sentence, of course. For many it is heretical. They would want to say that God (who preexists everything) commands or expects us to act in the cause of improving and extending all forms and instances of life, including our own, which is His will that we do and for which He will reward us. This is an entirely acceptable–no laudable, and lovely–way to visualize the dynamic involved and to motivate its continuance. But one does not have to believe in the metaphor literally—any metaphor (including that “God emerges…” or that He is “in us” and so forth) in order for the force to be felt, the effect to be had: that life, all life, be honored and preserved. In the realm of religion and art and performance, poetry is also ‘poesis’: making.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
everyone who believes in god and stammers the fallacy to prove the existence of god is futile. non-believers do not have the burden of proof. so i ask you believers. where is your proof?
there is none. the end.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:00 am
The end of what? Surely there can be no end as such in this debate about the existence of God. Given that the faithful not only require no physical evidence, but often perversely feel that the very lack of evidence actually strengthens their faith. Where then is the scope for rational debate? I personally think there isn’t a God, not because I can prove it, but simply because the idea of a omniscient, omnipresent, supernatural being in my experience impedes my ability to think and reason clearly.
It is important not to mistake the human ability of being able to think about ones own thoughts with the notion that one is at in contact with a supernatural being. I think mistakenly investing a basic human mental process with a divine dimension is flawed, and therefore limits the scope of ones personal emotional and intellectual development, and consequently, over the history of mankind and into the present day, inevitably becomes a reactionary social force that impedes the growth and evolution of mankind as a whole.