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What are your views on religion?
So far I haven't participated in very many religious debates, mainly because I am a little bit confused in whether I believe or not.
I think the belief of atheists make totally sense, it has logic and reality. But at the same time, I can't help but think, that logic and reality may only exist in this world. If there is a higher power, than it can't be compared with logic, science or reality.
Atheists make a great point when asking me if I believe in unicorns - I think that is the main question that made me ask myself who the hell I was talking to when praying at night.
But deep down in my heart, I can't help but think that this all came from something, that everything has purpose of some kind. I can't see very much logic or reality in believing everything came from .. no one, if I could say it like that.
People feared death and the unknown so they made up stories and passed them down from generation to generation, and as time went on these 'stories' changed... blah, blah, blah.... BINGO! Religion was born!
I like your debate, my views on religion is that half of our brain has to deal with spirituality/irrationality, so it makes up half of our reality. What you are praying to, is cosmic energy, you are connecting to the cosmos when you pray. Praying and meditating are pretty much the same thing, others will tell you they are very different, they are very similar, ive had better experiences when i pray (i rarely, ever pray lol) but i think that is the position of your hands, as they are right near your third eye, they open it up, you can meditate with your hands close to your 3rd eye also, your pineal gland (for those of you who refute the 3rd eye, the pineal gland is proven to be an undeveloped eye, its our physical connection to the divine/cosmos)
I hope you dont allow these atheists to usher you into believing there is nothing to believe in, i find that sad. Im not trying to usher you into religion im trying to tell you, youre on the right track dont lose what makes you a human being!
You should look into shamanism and shamanic journeying, and read about our chakras too!
my views on religion is that half of our brain has to deal with spirituality/irrationality, so it makes up half of our reality. What you are praying to, is cosmic energy, you are connecting to the cosmos when you pray.
There is no evidence that supports that one half of the brain deals with spirituality and irrationality. How does praying, otherwise known as neurons firing electrical signals to each other in a certain pattern, somehow influence cosmic energy? By cosmic I assume you mean space energy, or energy that is not of this earth. If our thoughts were that powerful to influence energy outside the atmosphere, surely it would be detectable.
(for those of you who refute the 3rd eye, the pineal gland is proven to be an undeveloped eye, its our physical connection to the divine/cosmos)
No, the pineal gland has not been proven to be an undeveloped eye. At least, according to my google search. Do you have evidence to back up your claim? Also, even if it were an undeveloped eye, how would this eye somehow have a connection to the cosmos/divine? What special properties does it possess that gives it these special abilities that you claim?
youre on the right track dont lose what makes you a human being!
Religion makes us a human being? Come on...that's nonsense.
I will take your chakra test though feelingtruth. Here's the results:
And the right hemisphere looks at the big picture of thing, the goal in the end, humanitys goal is world peace, the majority at least, and we can achieve world peace through spirituality, i accept that there may be no afterlife but this is not helpful to attaining world peace and working together and plus spirituality, although it cant be measured, it sure as hell can be observed.
its our connection to the divine because it produces dmt and seratonin which bring about extremely spiritual/divine experiences, and no religion doesnt make us human, spirituality does, because we are not human beings having a spiritual experience we are spiritual beings having a human experience, this is what i believe and if you dont want to believe it then dont but dont ask me for proof because this is all a matter of belief and belief is powerful. It doesnt matter if its not based in reality, i, and many others, produce real results through it.
Let's be more specific than that. At least quote what you want me to look at, otherwise you're just throwing a big article at me to read thoroughly. Show me the relevant information supporting your position.
Specifically: Broad generalizations are often made in popular psychology about one side or the other having characteristic labels such as "logical" for the left side or "creative" for the right. These labels need to be treated carefully; although a lateral dominance is measurable, these characteristics are in fact existent in both sides,[1] and experimental evidence provides little support for correlating the structural differences between the sides with functional differences.
You're merely begging the question. How do we know dmt and seratonin are "gateways" of some sort to spiritual/divine experiences? What evidence do you have to assert it is something divine?
What real results have you produced through your divine experiences that could not have been produced through normal experiences?
I highly doubt your divine experiences and beliefs have produced anything that a normal experience and normal belief could not have produced.
Im guessing you have never done drugs in your life?
DMT and seratonin are what creates our life, seratonin breaks down into melatonin at night which causes us to become tired, and the sun restores our seratonin levels. DMT is the most powerful hallucinogen known to man, but hallucinogen does NOT mean hallucinations, there is a HUGE difference between hallucinations and altered perceptions.
If you ever meditate/pray/smoke dmt, you will know that it is indeed a very divine experience. What real results have i produced? well i cant prove them but telepathy, premonitions, telekinesis, instant materialization... they happen randomly, but ive had them happen before and its extremely mind boggling, ive seen a little bowl slide at least 8 inches across a table all on its own, which shocked the hell out of me...
Its hard to explain what the experiences entail, because its not like im out defying gravity everyday... I dont believe in coincedence, i believe coincedence is all planned, i believe there are beings on earth who have mastered their own merkaba, and can step out of time and do things we cant even fathom in our waking consciousness.
Every experience is unique to everyone, like ive stated before reality is subjective to an objective experience.
Both sides of the brain can be used for spirituality, but you cant understand the divine through intellect and logic, you just cant, its literally impossible and would make your mind snap if you tried to understand it in human terms, human logic and intellect. We have access to higher consciousness, and paradoxically, reason is the largest obstacle we face in achieving a higher state of consciousness...
I have no clue how the pineal gland is the physical connection to the divine, im left handed and highly right brained, i just know it is, i cant give you details but i can give you answers about life that science cant, not because its just all "fairytales and myth" but because i have this knowledge ingrained into me, just like all of us, except i was exposed to it in the womb because my mother did heroin and cocaine throughout her whole pregnancy with me, and i had to be weaned off of heroin for 2 weeks when i was born. And if you hjave never done drugs, then you will never know what i am trying to get at.
If you have an experience, and it makes you unconscious due to the sheer intensity of it, the knowledge, and we're not talking scientifice knowledge, i know you hate that but youre going to have to deal with it, science doesnt hold all the answers, the knowledge is ingrained into your subconscious.
People are right, god is like a drug, it increases dopamine and seratonin levels, but like that article says "But most of all, dopamine is a key element in identifying natural rewards for the organism" so since i was exposed to soooooooo much of it through my birth, i know the secret to life, i know the happiness to life, and it isnt drugs, but it isnt material either.
Im guessing you have never done drugs in your life?
You would be correct.
DMT and Seratonin are not what create life, they are merely a component of a large number of components that all contribute to create life and consciousness for us.
If you are seeing things that are not there, then why would that not be called a hallucination? What justification do you have to call it just altered perception, and not merely a hallucination?
If you ever meditate/pray/smoke dmt, you will know that it is indeed a very divine experience.
No, it might make one become especially enlightened, but different people experience it in different way. Regardless of ones personal experience, evidence is necessary to confirm it was a divine experience. I'll give you an example. You claim to have done meditation, drugs, pray, all that stuff and you "know" it works. Look at Sam Harris, he has a B.A. in philosophy and a Ph.D in neuroscience. He studied meditation with Hindu and Buddhist teachers. He's done several drugs, including ecstasy, and has spoken of their powerful psychological effects. But he didn't come out and start saying the nonsense you are saying. Nonsense such as "telepathy, telekinesis, instant materialization". And then your reason for lack of evidence is "well, it happens randomly and I can't control it". Come on...this is just a cop out.
You can believe in a lot of things, but your belief has no influence on the truth.
How do you know you can't understand the divine through intellect and logic? One thing that you cannot do is say "you just can't". That's not how it works. You need to be able to explain why someone can't.
And no, you do not know that the pineal gland is the physical connection to the divine. You only believe that you know this. You have no evidence to support your conclusion. If you have no evidence, how can you be so certain that your conclusion is true? The only way you can be so certain that your conclusion is true is if you use blind faith to get there.
What answers can you give me about life that science cannot? What knowledge do you have ingrained in yourself that is so sacred and important?
Apparently even if a Ph.D Neuroscientist does drugs, and comes to a drastically different conclusion than you did, then he also will never know what you're trying to get at.
I don't hate "regular" knowledge, it's just how can it be called knowledge if you cannot be certain that this knowledge is true? The only way to be certain is to employ the services of the scientific method, skepticism, and logic. You don't have all the answers either.
Please tell us the secret to life. Or is the best answer you can give just "something else entirely" ?
Right, but when you are in a different state of mind, like with DMT, you can visualize objects that you can NOT visualize mentally in a waking consciousness. Altered perception is alot different than hallucinating, hallucinating is seeing things that arent there and then they disappear, altered perceptions still have a valid basis in reality because they mean something, maybe not to the rest of the world but to you specifically.
And all that matters in this universe is YOUR personal reality, YOUR experience, YOUR existence. Nothing else matters at all.
You can not understand the divine through HUMAN logic and intellect, you need higher forms of logic, logic that defies logic... I believe consciousness creates our existence, not the other way around, I believe we are consciousness at our purest form, and that would explain the afterlife and everything else because in higher consciousness, your personal higher consciousness, it knows everything, it knows every outcome of every choice you made and were going to make for all of time, in all universes of all possibilities. This is not logical in the usual sense, to me its extremely logical because it explains existence, to me, pure energy, is consciousness, and since energy cant be created or destroyed, it has always existed, for eternities upon eternities.
Ya, that guy in neuroscience is doing one thing wrong: hes trying to explain it, you dont try to explain the unexplainable, this is what religion tried to do, and look how that turned out. Now its sciences turn to try to explain the unexplainable and we have a complete disregard of the experience that we are trying to explain. Which is completely backwards. Science and religion are 2 sides to the same coin.
Thats the secret to life, is just experiencing, we have no need for explanation, because we can experience every possibility, every universe, imaginable.
Check this out: Think about authors, or screenwriters. I bet some of them astral project/lucid dream, which would allow them to experience the reality the write about. Let's just use lord of the rings or star wars as an example. I bet they actually visited those realities, the experience to them would be just as valid as we see the world now. Tolkien and george lucas would have actually, literally LIVED their worlds that they created, and who is to say those experiences are not valid or not?
The secret to life is simple to understand, but nearly impossible to explain.... i'll try though... We are just consciousness creating conscious experiences. We did not evolve from dead inorganic material, or even from germs, or bacteria, or amino acids, and then all of a sudden we became conscious. No, thats not how it works. It takes some degree, no matter how minute that degree is, of consciousness in order for everything to operate. We do not create consciousness, consciousness creates us. That is all that god is, and that is all that we are. Simple as that. Choose to believe it or not.
Oh and also, in a state of pure, aware, universal consciousness, anything is possible.
I understand your point now about altered perception. But I disagree with the assertion "altered perceptions still have a valid basis in reality because they mean something, maybe not to the rest of the world". How can they have a valid basis in reality, if only you can see these things, but the rest of the world cannot? It would imply something wrong with you, not the rest of the world. Perhaps a mental illness of some sort causing this altered perception, or hallucinations.
I need higher forms of logic that defy logic....? This is a meaningless statement. Consciousness does not create existence. You existed before you were conscious, therefore consciousness must be a by product of your existence. Consciousness is not pure energy, it is a phenomena we are only scratching the surface on attempting to understand. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but that doesn't mean our consciousness will last forever. Our brain allows us to have consciousness, once the cells and atoms that make up our brain cease to live and are scattered about the environment, our consciousness disappears with it. Parts of us are made of energy, particularly the electrical signals between neurons, but that does not mean we ARE the energy itself.
No, feelingtruth, you are the one doing things wrong here. Resorting to logic that defies logic, and resorting to explaining the unexplainable, this is absolute nonsense and can hold no grounds in a conversation.
Feelingtruth, if the secret to life is just experiencing with absolutely no need whatsoever for explanation, virtually every piece of technology that we have today would be gone. All because you consider it a "virtue" to not need to explain anything and to just experience things. Why do you glorify people who lack curiosity? You seem to want to go back to the ancient times when the overwhelming majority of people (with exceptions to ancient philosophers such as Plato and others) just took everything based on their experiences. These people had no desire to understand anything other than how to get food, find a mate, have children, and live as long as possible. Without humans who actually sought to explain things, there's a fair chance neither you or I would be alive today due to the lack of medical advancements. This is what your philosophy preaches: "Explanation is pointless. Value the experience." But experience is totally subjective, people can lie, people can distort the truth or events about what actually happened. This is why science and evidence is so important, because it is a reliable means to the truth.
Astral projecting is nonsense. I don't know of any credible authors who do that. Lucid dreaming is a real phenomena though that is perfectly within the realms of science and explanation. Assuming they did lucid dream the experiences, what are you trying to say? It was nothing more than a dream in which they had virtually total control over. Pretty cool if you ask me, but nothing supernatural.
Your last paragraph didn't make any sense at all. You made 7 assumptions in that paragraph. I say assumptions because you have no evidence. Occam's Razor slaughters it, for there are other theories that make far less assumptions.
As for your last sentence, it is impossible to understand what you mean by "pure, aware, universal consciousness".
Well in my beliefs, it actually fits because when you incarnate into a physical body, you are entering time, from a dimension where time did not exist, so technically you incarnate from an eternal experience. Just like scientists say before the big bang there was nothing, that would imply no time either, and thus an eternity passed before the big bang came into being. I dont think i have ever explained my beliefs fully but allow me to now since i think it would clear alot of things up.
I believe we all incarnted onto earth for a reason. We have to remember what it was though because incarnating from an eternity, its like waking up from a really, really, long dream, and its hard to remember but you remember bits and pieces. I believe the universe is teeming with life on other inhabitable planets, and i believe there are a multitude of lifeforms who are interdimensional. So this is my logic that defies logic. Or at least our understanding of it as it sits.
Yes, i do want to go back to how ancient times were, like with ancient greece, but only because if the only thing we worry about is focusing on connecting with nature, then thats all we ever need to worry about. I mean space colonization should be a must, but not all of this other measly, meager bullshit that we have, we should only focus on things that matter: meditation, and exploration.
Through meditation, we can create our own universes, can you imagine how fun that would be? Instead of playing in a already precreated reality, ala, video games, we could create our own damn universe. Or go explore other universes. And other dimensions.
And then there is the physical experience, which we should only focus on space exploration and colonization. Nothing else matters to me.
I dont glorify people who lack curiosity, i glorify people who have unlimited curiosity and are not bounded by any knowledge. If this classifies me as mentally ill, then so be it, but im way smarter than most everyone i meet, and i dont mean that in a condescending way, i say that so that i hope you realize i incorporate my "fantasy" into reality, and i attract people like flies. Literally. People are drawn to me, they have been my whole life. People who are in their old age have talked to me and told me they were astounded by the wisdom i shared with them. People always come to me with their problems, people i dont even know on the streets come up to me and want to talk to me about life. Idk what it is, but im pretty sure it has something to do with my beliefs. I impact people around me, in very profound, life changing ways, and im only 20. I have 80 years, hopefully, left to keep peoples faith strong, because to me, when people lose faith, it hurts me, it really, truly does hurt me.
I dont give 2 shits about knowledge, to me, life is about wisdom.
Isaiah 53:4-6: Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Who is this talking about?
How did you know it was talking about Jesus?
It was written hundreds of years before He was on earth.
This is but one of the prophecies of the Old Testament fulfilled by Christ.
I believe in the God of the Bible. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: mono-tritheism. There are only two options for where our soul goes after death: to heaven, where God is, and to hell, where God isn't (in a sense). However, we have already earned the destruction of hell because no one can be in the presence of God without being perfect and holy and no one is capable of being perfect and holy. It is an absolution. The only way for any person to go to heaven is to have someone or something die in our place: to take our debt to themselves. It cannot be done by another human because no one is perfect and everyone deserves the destruction of hell. Animals are nowhere near as valuable as a human life, so they too cannot take our place. To be able to go to heaven, this being must be perfect and holy and good enough to be able to take our place. "Because the only person who meets God's criteria is God, He sent Himself as Jesus Christ" to die in our place. He did this not because we deserve it but because He loves us. God in all His wonder willingly was mocked, spit on, tortured, flogged, crucified, and delivered over into the hands of sinners. Then He was forsaken by His own Father, God. He suffered an eternity's punishment on that cross so you could live with Him in love. He understands that we fail. He understands that we cannot be perfect. He understands that no matter how hard we try, we cannot earn eternal life with God. This is why He only asks for faith. It is as simple as that! Repent ("change your mind" about sin) and trust in Jesus Christ our only Lord and Savior and you will be saved.
Watch this video, I took some quotes from it because I like it that much and it portrays the gospel perfectly!
There are incredible stories in the bible, that made me think there MUST be a God.
But like you said - there are only two ways for people to go. To Heaven or to Hell.
Why would a loving God send someone to hell, that he created himself. If God is all love, then he is literally incapable of doing evil. But if putting someone to be burned forever is not evil, then I don't wanna know what is.
If he is incapable of doing evil - then he is not all powerful either.
Why would a just God not send someone to hell? He isn't just loving but righteous! He would be everything but righteous if He didn't punish the wicked.... He has to, otherwise His love would be worthless... If a just judge let a murderer go because He forgave him, does that justify either the murderer's actions or the judge's? It is the farthest thing from evil to send someone justly to hell who has already done evil. Is it evil to send a murderer to prison? Is it evil to send a murderer to death? Plus, is it not so that we would not be able to understand the riches of God's love if some were not sent to hell? How would His love be displayed? It couldn't! Being rescued from hell is the greatest displaying of love! If Christ had not suffered and died equivalently to the eternity's length of punishment (because He is God and is capable of doing that in a finite time, while humans are not) but instead simply said that He forgives everyone, He would be evil. And if He wasn't evil then none of His love would be shown. John 15:13 - "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." God died to show His great love for you. He took our place to do so. If there was no hell to be rescued from and Him replaced by, then nothing would be displayed. Next, you mentioned that if God is incapable of doing evil then He is not all-powerful. There are multiple possible answers to this:
1) God is capable of doing such but chooses not to because He is good.
2) God is good. Evil is the absence of good, like dark is the absence of light.
3) Being an omnipotent and omni-benevolent being, He cannot be not that. He cannot make a round square or a married bachelor.
If you have any questions just ask! I'll be praying for you! :)
So far I haven't participated in very many religious debates, mainly because I am a little bit confused in whether I believe or not.
That's one of the best ways to learn though.
I think the belief of atheists make totally sense, it has logic and reality.
Atheists don't believe in anything, that's what atheism means.
A - not or without (non takes the place of A as a suffix perfectly here.)
Theism - belief in god
Atheism - not or without belief in god; non-belief in god. In other words, a LACK of belief.
But at the same time, I can't help but think, that logic and reality may only exist in this world. If there is a higher power, than it can't be compared with logic, science or reality.
Well if we are going to speculate on what is outside of this world, or other worlds, we might as well throw logic and reality, and all known science of this universe out the window, because outside of this world exists the flying spaghetti monster, and because he is not of our world, it's perfectly reasonable to believe there is a flying spaghetti monster because all the logic against it doesn't matter cause he is not of our world, reality doesn't matter cause he is of a different reality, and science doesn't matter because we have no science to understand the world of the flying spaghetti monster. The thing you have to understand here is there is science of everything, even other worlds, and the science of other worlds assuming that they exist would be utterly and completely different, and we would have no understanding of them, therefore we have no reason to believe anything about other worlds because if they existed we have no understanding of them and therefore do not know enough to say that they contain a god, and the same thing outside our world as well. We don't even have any reasons to think there are other worlds yet. To say that we don't understand what is outside our world therefore we should assume god exists outside of it is like saying we don't understand what rules the neighbors house has therefore we should assume that there are both a mother and father and they let there kids do whatever they want. We can't say anything about outside our universe because we have no understanding of it, that's assuming because we don't understand. I could make up all sorts of ridiculous stories and say they make perfect sense because they exist outside our universe or in other worlds.
Atheists make a great point when asking me if I believe in unicorns - I think that is the main question that made me ask myself who the hell I was talking to when praying at night.
Why can't unicorns exist, they just exist outside our universe. It is good you understand the problem about credibility otherwise you wouldn't have been able to understand the analogy.
But deep down in my heart, I can't help but think that this all came from something, that everything has purpose of some kind.
Of course, we just don't have any reason to think that, that something is necessarily a god, and not just a long stream of cause and effect. There is definitely going to be a long stream of cause and effect because even if you put god into the equation you have to ask, where did god come from? Thus god doesn't help with the mystery of where the universe came from at all, except take us one step further with something that has no credibility, where there are probably infinite steps.
I can't see very much logic or reality in believing everything came from .. no one, if I could say it like that.
Why does it have to come from someone? Why not something? we don't know if this came from someone yet.
depending on who you are religion is a trap in some reilegons if you dont believe in god you are disowned by the family and have to have as many children as you can than those children are not aloud to make contact with others or have a pet in my opinion this is not right