who here believes in god?

[ShyCharla]

I hate those Matrix movies, and most end times movies they don't end right.

I think of God as a personable God who has gotten me out of some really rough and dangerous spots in my life. He is the one who first let me know about himself and is the one who chose to defend me whenever I called on him even though I'd been the one to have myself in the danger I knew I shouldn't have been in. I couldn't never let him be dictated to me by an organized religion who only claims to have him bottled up into their own rules. However, I do love Christianity and Judaism. I try to do the things in my life that would make God happy with me. But in the end I know for a fact that I'll never get it right and I'm just a foul up born and raised. In fact the foul ups in my family go way back for generations, centuries even.

[Madeline]

I hate those Matrix movies, and most end times movies they don't end right.

I think of God as a personable God who has gotten me out of some really rough and dangerous spots in my life. He is the one who first let me know about himself and is the one who chose to defend me whenever I called on him even though I'd been the one to have myself in the danger I knew I shouldn't have been in. I couldn't never let him be dictated to me by an organized religion who only claims to have him bottled up into their own rules. However, I do love Christianity and Judaism. I try to do the things in my life that would make God happy with me. But in the end I know for a fact that I'll never get it right and I'm just a foul up born and raised. In fact the foul ups in my family go way back for generations, centuries even.

Welcome.
I guess we are called 'work in progress' because of our foul ups. Its something we all have in common, regardless.

[American4Israel]

I believe that the God of Israel, who calls himself "I Am", created the heavens and the earth and is precisely as described in the Bible. The atheist position is simply irrational: They believe in something coming from nothing; I believe in something coming from Something -- a "something" called "I am".

[Cellis]

Let me be an Atheist since I am less harmful than muslims. Being born in a former soviet country as an orthodox christian is not easy thing. I respect you Jews for keeping your religion and dialects alive for thousands of years. I'm afraid we have modified Christianity and divided it into too many branches.

[Sanket]

Why do we even assume god to be a Human like thing? Lets not forget that God has created the entire universe...not Just Humans & Earth.

[bararallu]

Who believes in dualism ?

[Madeline]

Who believes in dualism ?

I believe in duals, when people from NY ask too many questions.

[bararallu]

All that free time on our hands

[bararallu]

I'm afraid we have modified Christianity and divided it into too many branches.

There is a lot of variability in Judaism, many factions do not recognize each other as legitimate. It's the same as everything else. The only thing we have is our ethnic awareness over a very long period of time. There are other people that have this too. The Chinese for instance are very "ethnic", and have been for ever, yet mostly they are very modernist as well. As things are going they are going to rule the roost in 80 years, and there is nothing the Muslims or Christians or Jews or Hindus can do to absolutely change that. Individually or collectively (not that thats going to happen). I suggest studying Mandarin.

[Aliyah1995]

If I could learn a third language it would be Russian....Don't laugh Bararallu, but I would be able to practice it more than any other language here besides, well, Arabic....

[Sanket]

Who believes in dualism ?

What is dualism ?

[bararallu]

If I could learn a third language it would be Russian....Don't laugh Bararallu, but I would be able to practice it more than any other language here besides, well, Arabic....

I can teach you a word or a sentence everyday. Problem is that will only get you eating "white meat" and drinking pungent liquids more often .

[bararallu]

What is dualism ?

Indo-Europeanism imposed on Semiticsm . But in short here it is: Dualism. In the metaphysical sense it means that you can actually have a "soul". In ancient Judaism there was no difference between ones "flesh" and ones "soul" it was one and the same. That changed in contact with the Greeks and Persians. Descartes formalized it in his philosophy and there were many Christian theologians before him that discussed aspects of the idea widely in Scholastic philosophy. Some Christian theology per se is premised on the many "forms" of God, which is a variant of the same metaphysics. One assumption, like in Platonism, is that there is a "perfect form" of any object, and that is the optimal version of it, and what we have in the real world are bad copies. This thought had a lot of implications across all disciplines in Western thought.

[American4Israel]

Hamilton and Burr -- now, THEY were dualists. Andy Jackson was one too -- or should I say, "two"?

[BenKatz]

Hey forum!! I'm an atheist. No, I didn't wake up one day and decide I won't believe in god, I read history, especially the Israeli History and the Old Testament (and new testament out of curiosity), and I've also read books about other cultures (religions), and I've witnessed a few debates between believers and atheist (social-philosophical debates), thus ariving at the conclusion that there is no basis for any kind of God. There is no sens in the (literal) interpretation of all the biblical fantastic stories (because the non fantastic ones are more or less historical facts about ancient Israel), science has answered millions of questions we've had for thousands of years, and continues to give answers today.

That's the wonderful thing about science and scientific facts, it's that it evolves with us, almost every day scientists find out new things. We're getting closer and closer to finding out new things about the universe, like dark matter, and also closer to finding out more exactly how this universe was created, and all this is done on hard palpable mathematics, physics, theorizing, and laboratiroes, from small ones to the big colliders like the CERN one in Switzerland.

THAT my friends, will give us and continues to give us answers about a ton of things. Physicists, mathematicians, archeologists who keep on answering questions about ancient creatures like primevil vertebrates and invertebrates, dinosaurs, ancient mammals, and our related primates, biologists and zoologists and doctors who continue to find out new things about all living things, and how to use them and plants to help us with medical problems. No bible or alternative medicine with prayers has ever miraculously cured soemone from diabetes, AIDS, cancer or so on. Cancer and AIDS can be mostly healed today thanks to tens of years and tons of money spenti into RESEARCH, and a cure for diabetes is just around the corner.

However, unlike the general trend, do not mistake my atheism for indifference for my people, the jewish people, and my land Israel. I have chosen to not believe in any (fictional) god, just like the greeks one day stopped believing in zeus (addmitedly, they blieve in a Jew now ), however I am proud of my jewish ethnicity, country and History, because if you see our history for what it really is, which is in my opinion without god, our pride, power and ambition alone managed to defeat the seleucids during the Maccabiis, or the Romans (if only for a brief period, we were the only one in the entire empire at the time) under BarKohba.

So no, i'm not a "leftist self hating agnostic/atheist jew". As far as the economic part of politics go, i'm actually on the right, a capitalist. However, on most other generally accepted things that go on on center-right oriented political parties, I don't agree, like the adding of religion in the mixture.