Who is God?

Noooooo JO4
God forbid.

The problem with posting, is that nobody can tell what your face is showing.
The facial expressions show how serious or jokey ones'comments are meant to be taken! This could prevent or provoke misunderstandings!

ELLA< ELLA , what are going to do with you !!!!! I don"t know C S L

Just laugh Nonu It was meant to be funny! lol!!

ELLA 46 --CSL Can"t stop laughing , geddit it ?

People are, and must be, free to believe whatever they like. BUT, once they express those beliefs, making extraordinary claims of supernatural, spiritual forces and the like, then they will be challenged. It's no good being offended when that happens - if you make extraordinary claims, you must be prepared to supply extraordinary supporting evidence.

It's no good, as so many Christians do, merely spouting chapter and verse from the Holy Book - that's merely anecdote, whether it be Bible, Q'uran, Torah or Bhagavad-gita.

Well said, feetlebaum.

Why would all the witnesses lie? There is no 'proof' acceptable to anyone who denies faith and no proof needed by those who have faith.

Well said Lilygran

Witnesses? What have they witnessed?

Lily - I don't think it is a matter of 'denying' faith - you either believe something or you don't . You can't make yourself believe in something because somebody else thinks you should.

The 'anecdote' as feetlebaum has it. Deny the authenticity of the information by giving it a dismissive name.

When I was studying research methods some years ago we were told that in order to test the validity of something using scientific/rational methods, it had to be falsifiable.

Faith is not falsifiable. It is not based on scientific evidence and so cannot be disproved.

Just saying

But, Lily, it would not matter to me what anybody called it, I just don't believe in any supernatural being. The written history of the Christian church is fragmentary and it is likely that much of it was not written contemporaneously, and there have been problems in translation. I don't care what anybody else chooses to believe, and it may be that parts of the OT and the NT are genuine accounts of actual events, but some are, to me, obviously myths, or simple explanations of natural phenomena which the people at the time did not understand.
For example, the crossing of the Red Sea could refer back to some time when there was, in fact, some type of earthquake which did create a tsunami effect giving the appearance that the sea had parted.
Other bits are clearly allegorical - Lot's wife did not turn into a pillar of salt, did she? Are there still Christians who do believe everything in the OT should be taken literally? If so, why are they not following all the rules about slavery, sex, marriage, diet, etc.?

Whatever you call it, 'Lilygran', unless you believe the literal truth of everything written in the Bible, the stories in it go back too far for their authenticity to be attested. The stories in the New Testament may have begun as anecdotes and in the course of the centuries it took for them to be recorded in writing, they achieved the status of holy writ.
I hope we can agree to differ as I have no wish to quarrel with anyone.

I am sure Lily is far too sensible to take any offence - she enjoys a good debate.

I'm not an atheist. I believe in a supreme being. He's just not particularly nice all the time and often gets it wrong.

However, having said that I also believe in the old spirits especially those in forests and wild places and the little people (fairies if you like) and leave offerings in wells etc (a few coppers into the water or a ribbon tied to a tree..not much).

Superstitious or hedging my bets....you choose

I think I would like to say that I have faith in and I believe in lots of things. I just don't believe in God (or gods or spirits) or any religion.

Your belief would scare me, VQ. I am not sure whether it is more scary to think that there are some other forms of life 'out there' or that we are alone in the universe. I was watching a science programme where they talked about eventually reaching the edge of the universe and I thought - but what is beyond the edge? Unfortunately, we have finite minds and cannot comprehend eternity. I suppose a belief in a loving god (not yours!) would be comforting, but which god? There are so many to choose from, and I suspect most people just go along with whichever god their parents chose.
How do the people of one faith know that all the countless millions who have a different faith are wrong?
Yes, you are hedging your bets, but if it makes you feel better, why not?

You sound more like a pantheist, VQ. When I was a teenager and reading Wordsworth at school, I was very much attracted to his kind of nature mysticism as expressed in the Tintern Abbey Ode.

And I have felt
A presence .....
...........................................................
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Authenticity and provability aren't the same thing. When I was doing research it always infuriated me that someone would tell me a story which had the ring of truth but because there was no "objective" support, it had to be treated differently from other kinds of evidence. Of course the Bible is a mishmash of different kinds of stories. I'm sure what seemed to our ancestors to be a factual account of some phenomenon is very difficult/ impossible for us, brought up on scientific method, to accept. But although science and religion are both trying to discover the meaning of life, they aren't approaching the question from the same point and through different processes. Quite right, Greatnan it's argument lively debate that keeps us progressing.

Just wondering , what do people who do not believe in God or anything , do when they are in dire straights or maybe coming to the end of their life , call out to , or don"t they ? Just wondering , you understand

I can only speak from experience of the death from cancer of my mother, an atheist. She said to us all that she didn't want to go, but she was content to leave us with our happy families and felt that she had had a good life. At no point did she speak of any fear or any need of a god.
As I have said before on here, my MiL a Christian, said "Dewsbury, Dewsbury, Shoeburyness. Poor Old St Swithun". Make of that what you will; it certainly had us puzzled.

Nonu, I expect I'd reach out to people I love and who love me. What matters is not where I'm going (I believe that would be nowhere) but where I've been and the richness of my experience in this life as well as - I hope - any way I've been able to enrich the lives of others.

As I said just wondering , I do think I have enriched the lives of those close to me . I"m curious about everything and I personally find it very very interesting to hear other"s points of view