Silvereye

Does God exist? First, what do you mean by God? The ground of all being? A Father in Heaven? Love? Light? Universal consciousness? Your own superconscious mind? A Force - (May the Force be with you)? Nature? An abstract ideal such as goodness? Sure, I worship goodness. All these concepts and many more are powerful, to be held in awe, and can be found anywhere.

I have ideals that I aspire to, though without much success. You could say I worship the ideal I aim for.

I am also grateful for the guidance I have found in my life, which I say comes from God, without having to clarify to myself what God is. I don't care if it comes through any other channel, whether or not I can identify that channel; or whether it is a channel or actually God. If your hand passes me a glass of water, I don't thank your hand, I thank the source, your mind.

anything

[quote=Silvereye]Does God exist? First, what do you mean by God? QUOTE]

This is of course just my stance.

Look at it this way, God is your method of coming to terms with life. When bad things happen you blame something deeper than just chance-it feels like there's a will behind the event. When something good happens you thank something more than just luck.

God's something that makes the link between what you know and what you want to believe. Anything more (the spirit in the sky or "the force" ) is just something you define it as.

Adopt this stance if you want to, you may be interested to know i'm aethiest though (work that one out! )

__________________
Hefyd 'n ddrwg

faraclit

When we think of concepts or things, we, human beings generally try to understand them with our knowledge which is the result of our perceptions and other factors (other knowledge sources).When we ask such a question, we ask it relying on what we know(I mean our concrete experiences).For example; we cannot look for a person who is been showed on tv in the device. We know that something happens in that machine and we donot find it ridiculus.And there is a fact that everything that have art value and has lots of purposes, shows a determiner. For example when we find a letter "w" on the sands, we first think of a person who wrote it.Just like this, every animal, plant, the ecological systems they are in, serves lots of important functions.And we donot attribute a dvd player to chance but to an excellent knowledge and technology which is a result of human inheritance of knowledge.First when we look at our eyes, we see an excellent visual system which provides a vision in higher quality than all the cameras which mankind managed to produce.There are lots of evidences like this such as other organisms and organs, solar system...And all these systems work harmonously.For instance in all biological cycles, we see a system which cannot be without a Wise Designer and Owner.All the universe is needed for the existence of a fly; because all the things needed in order for fly to exist are consequences of the huge system of universe.. If we turn to your question, your sentence (Can God make a rock so heavy he himself cannot lift it?) is not a paradox.We cannot measure electricity with kilograms and Allah/God is not a human-like masculine being that sits on his throne on the sky...
(2 days later) I think that I have understood your second question insufficiently. Because I think you mean that if He can create a rock so heavy that Himself cannot lift, there are some things that he cannot create and if "He can", I answer again you could say the above sentence again.But as you probably know,

INFINITE + ANY QUANTITY = INFINITE , INFINITE HAS NO DEGREE, YOU CANNOT MEASURE IT. INFINITE DOESNOT IMPROVE, IMPROVEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT NECESSITATES DEPENDENCE TO OTHER BEINGS AND THIS WOULD BE A PARADOX, I THINK. IN THIS MODERN WORLD, WE CANNOT ACCEPT JUST A CONCRETE THINKING PARADIGM ON BEING WHICH RELY ON TWO CENTURIES OLD WRONG ASSUMPTIONS (SUCH AS ETERNITY OF MATTER AND EVOLUTIONARY PARADIGM THAT ASSUMES THE CELL JUST A WATER BAG AND ATTRIBUTES ALL BEINGS TO CHANCE) In fact all beings have a perfect structure and art that even the most clever creatures, that is , human beings cannot create just a small part of it. This fact is depicted in Qur'an in this verse:"O people! a parable is set forth, therefore listen to it: surely those whom you call upon besides Allah cannot create fly, though they should all gather for it, and should the fly snatch away anything from them, they could not take it back from i weak are the invoker and the invoked.(Hajj (The pilgrimage)-73)

Jack young

God is exist. i am sure.

fael

If God exist, because the people suffer?<
If he exist, I do not can act in the planet.
Is my opinion.

Silvereye

Taking the traditional simplistic definition of God/Allah (or any other name), can we imagine that He has free choice, and has chosen that in dealing with this world He has chosen to abide by the laws of physics He has established here? Even though He doesn't have to?

faraclit

Dear Silvereye,
I donot know what you mean by "traditional simplistic definition of God" but I want to say sth about your question(s). When we look at the universe, we see a very well balanced and comprehensive system which mankind couldnot even decoded a small percent of the data in the creation or the universe.If we want proof, we donot have to look so far.It is enough for you to contemplate about your nervous system only, especially the brain. The brain has a very very complex system even human beings (the most clever creature in the world) cannot even understand comprehensively. And we human beings have a limited "machine" whose perceptions and comprehension is very limited with the universe (the material obstacles like hearing treshold, lack of data).And we cannot see the beings comprehensively.And this disables us from perceiving the Creator with all his qualities.But we can use the scientific method (we can understand some of His qualities.)

The real point about your question is that the world is a place of examination and people are the student (the subject, the adressee) in this world...I would like to explain that in a philosophical way, but unfortunately, I am not so qualified enough in English. But you can find good explanation and satisfying proofs about your question in "the Eleventh Word" from the collection "the Words" (which is available on the internet) by Said Nursi by reading critically.And you can find perfect (I think) information in Islam Answering | www.islamanswering.com.

thank you for reading the message

__________________
"Every village must have its headman; every needle must have its manufacturer and craftsman. And, as you know, every letter must be written by someone. How, then, can it be that so extremely well-ordered a kingdom should have no ruler?" Bediuzzaman Said Nursi"