Do you believe in God? Simple question

[BABY J]

You cannot live without hope and faith in other things. You pay taxes(for gov't services), you ask people for advice, you care or have love for people. all these things are conducive of not living for self and only self interest. In fact if you were living for self interest I don't know why you would care what other people put their faith in.

This is where you miss me, and where most people miss me --- this has plagued my relationships (romantic) as well as family. I TRULY do not give a shit about other people who are not on the ship that I am on at any given time. I can give 2 shits about who wastes their life assuming that they are going to go to heaven. There is only so much time and effort that I will give "helping" people understand why I think it's a failboat. IT'S ALL ABOUT ME!!! If MY life doesn't involve ME getting what J'SON wants when J'SON wants it then what's the point? There isn't one.

It wouldn't matter to you and you would believe that nobody should care or listen to what you have to say anyway because they should all be focused on what they want.

I like you already. I really DON'T care if any1 listens to what I have to say or think... you are describing me at my core perfectly. I can "play the game" to co-exist in society, but at the end of the day every1 I've ever known or ever will know can eat shit and die. LOL. It's not a choice I made one day --- it's literally how I view things by no fault of my own.

Life itself for all things depends on someone or something else doing its job. You just don't seem to believe that any of the infinite number of other factors relate to you. I believe they do.

I understand all of this... but your question wasn't about the dependencies of things on other things... or the dependencies of people on other people. Your question was "in a world with no religion what becomes the replacement for the personification of faith and hope?" --- yet you coutner my answer w/ topics that have no bearing on religion (taxes, asking people for advice, if i care if people listen to me). You're all over the place but you can't see that.

You went to basic, I am assuming you are in service or participated in ROTC or reserves. (Thanks for that BTW). If you did then you should know the importance of brother hood and how all parts of the military have to sync up in order for it to function properly. Without faith that one soldier is going to watch your back the marines would not have the incredible code of conduct that they have. The faith they have in one another is powerful enough to drive them to lose their lives for their brothers and their country. Is that wrong?

This is where you miss me again. I NEVER put trust in any1 the many times I have been to war. That's how you come home dead. I have pretty close to ZERO trust in some1 if the result of me being wrong for trusting them means I come home in a body bag. How did I remedy this when I was in the Air Force?? I learned MY job --- and I learned the job of the guy next to me. "I" watch my back... always have, always will. If you say you are going to pick me up for work at 7a, there is some1 else that knows to pick me up at 730 -- u show up, I cancel w/ my plan b and plan c, etc.

There are 6+billion people in this world. 6+billion people have different desires throughout. No two are exactly alike. Common faith keeps these people from becoming so individualistic that you don't care and you ignore the need for faith and hope in others.

This is pretty close to saying that religious faith is the basis for respecting your neighbors or having a sense of morals. If some1 needs to identify themselves relgiously in order to gain moral absolute then they have more problems than they know. Suggesting you have to be a Christian to have a sense of moral absolute, or that morality comes from the Christian God, is patently ridiculous. It absolutely ignores the majority of the world's population that manages to live a more peaceful and harmonious life than our Christian forebears and I maintain that's a superior "morality."

I agree, but I don't focus on the negative of that statement. because it can also be written.

You get some of the things you pray for, you get some things in life that you work for and "deserve", but if you never pray and never work for some of those things, then you never get them.

In this case... what is the point?? If the cards are going to fall however they want regardless... then why waste time praying that they will fall in your favor? You're setting yourself up for fail. And your logic is faulty here --- I don't pray for ANYTHING. I don't pray for sick people just bc some1 asks. I do "hope" that they get better... but I don't "pray" to a "certain" theistic entity (God) and charge Him w/ forcing that result... that's ridiculous.

For your tests in college, you didn't just say, I can do it. You put work into it. You prepared yourself. You can't do that without someone else giving you the information that you need to learn.

Again. I'm an opportunist. I learned Japanese ONLY b/c I lived in Japan and needed to barter and trade for the things that J'SON wanted to get. I "learned" information in college to get the grade that J'SON wanted to get the degree that J'SON wanted to get the job that J'SON wanted to get the money that J'SON wanted to buy the things that J'SON wants. But like you said "I prepared MYSELF". The information was available to the people that FLUNKED as well. I do not possess anymore aptitude for retaining information than they do. By your agument, the fact that the information is there should mean by putting faith in the INFORMATION that any1 could recall said information and pass. AT THE END OF THE DAY --- I PREPARED MYSELF. Thank you for agreeing... you're provingmy point perfectly.

My point is that you cannot only rely on yourself and completely drop trust in other things/people and live a happy life. unless you want to be miserable, but then you would still be happy because you wanted to be miserable and you got what you wanted.

Let's say that I agree w/ this statement -- what does this have to do w/ RELIGION and GOD?? I do NOT believe in either and I am in the top 10% of salaries (per careerbuilder.com) - I enjoy my life --- great health - healthy offspring - I could go on. NO WHERE in attaining this happiness is "believing in God" responsible for this.

I'll leave you w/ some food for thought...

All religions depend on appeals to authority as a justification for their beliefs and dogmas. Since there is no contemporary, unambiguous way to demonstrate the claims of supernaturalism, citations to prior authorities are used as the primary means of justification. Thus we get the words of the founders or prophets as well as commentaries from others gathered into various foundational books... some of which you have posted in this very thread SPORT. Modern religious leaders cite some special connection with the past as the source of their present "authority."

Difficulties arise from both the conflicting claims of competing contemporary religions as well as from discrepancies within the dogma of each religion itself. People who are dissatisfied with some aspect of their current religious affiliation often switch to another that they find more in keeping with THEIR own view of the world. (this is where personalization comes in... and how in the END you are leaning on YOURSELF and pulling from INSIDE just the same as I do and just the same as I explained above).

You basically say science sucks and is inaccurate. Yet you are WELL aware of the research, math and CONCISE efforts/tools used in any science... correct? Well.. given this degree of unknowability in the world of SCIENCE it seems unsurprising that you would take the statements of religious leaders or the writings of a-jabillion year-old "prophets" (who even at the pinacle of smartness had nowhere NEAR the intelligence of a simple college grad from today) trustworthy. By your own words... the rest of our world is too complicated for surety, so why not is the belief in the supernatural as well?? Why does the supernatural get the magic nod?

Religious believers should apply the same critical tests to all forms of authority and not let appeals to "faith" lead to unquestioning trust.