Discussion with an Agnostic about God
and What he Means to Me

 

> There are two kinds of statmements in the world. One
> is evidendital, that is, "two plus two is four." It's
> always "four" and I can demonstrate that.

Actually, very funny you mentioned this, because this is one of my arguments when proving the existence of God, as I demonstratably can prove that 2 plus 2 does NOT equal four, meaning that one can never be sure of anything. And I will demonstratably argue my point now, as I am sure you will ask anyway. So, what is ten? Ten being the basis of our numbering system. Ten is the number of fingers we have on our hands, which is why we humans have chosen ten as our basis for our numbering system. Ten has nothing to do with the universe. Three does, as in the trinity. Four does, as in the four corners of the earth, or a square. Pie is a natural number, and we can go on, but ten is essentially nothing more than a means for a little child to count using its fingers.

Now, in our simple little human brains, we count with our fingers in a linear pattern, as in two dimensionally. This concept has been brewing in my mind forever, until one day I read an article of how a genius, Buckminster Fullerene, a genius mathematician and who designed the geocentric dome and all sorts of other things, argued for the very same numbering system which I have been postulating, which is a three dimensional numbering system. Do we live in a two dimensional world? Then why is our numbering system, which we use to describe the universe and apply it in all our science and technical descriptions, have to be two dimensional. Furthermore, with a two dimensional numbering system, the natural number pie is 2.7174398439824938… or something retarded like that, which is only further proof that a two dimensional numbering system is flawed. I have always imagined that it would be something like 1, and then 1,2,3, and that it then branches from that somehow. What Buckminster proposed was that the one could be an equilateral triangle and making one side of a perfect pyramid. Then, if you add one plus one plus one of these two dimensional triangles, you get four, which are the four sides of the this pyramid. When mentioned to children, most of them understood and immediately accepted this concept, unlike old farty adults who are jaded and set in their ways, as they are. Well, I don’t know if his is the correct approach either, but after this, I believe I can argue that 1+1+1=4, and hence one can never be sure that 2+2=4. Maybe on a linear level, like two oranges plus two oranges makes four oranges, but you would first have to state that you are counting on a linear, two dimensional plane.

> The other kind of statment is one of conviction or
> faith. "God exists." But where is the evidence?

I believe I can easily prove this. Harder of course to someone who doesn’t believe, but that’s probably because they are denying his existence and are being rebellious. I believe everyone deep down admits there is a God, but choose the convenience of denying his existence so that they can do what they want, serve their selfish selves, and justify themselves in the process. When I used to read a lot of philosophy, I fancied I was an aethiest, following a childhood when I naturally believed a God. After almost a decade of this, I managed to come full circle back to believing, against my will, and still some ten years after that, after reflecting much and digging into my memory and the deep confines of my brain, I realised that the whole time I fancied that I was an aethiest it was actually a protest against God, and why I was dabbling in all these philosophies. Now I can’t say with certainty that everyone is the same, but I believe they are. I mean, when the shit really goes down, who does everyone instinctively call in first? When someone is near death, I’ve seen how they quickly fall down on their knees and express so much sincerity towards God that it’s funny. Only to be embarrassed later when they are miraculously saved, and immediately start to deny it all so that they can get back to their selfish lives.

I feel I can prove God’s existence in many ways, but that a rebellious unbeliever will always be able to find some (bullshit) argument refuting mine.

> All of the most important things in our lives are
> intangible. Love, hate, fear, sadness; Faith. They
> exist in our hearts and minds.

Don’t have a computer dictionary or am not online now, but what is intangible? Something you can’t touch? Can you touch the sun? The sky? Will you argue it is not there? Will we argue that love does not exist just because modern science is incapable of measuring and quantifying it? Then we can always get into a Decarte argument that perhaps nothing around us exists and that it is all some fabricated electrical impulses duplicating feeling and visual perception, etc.

> Is war the only outcome for those who disagree about
> how we should interpret things that we feel but can't
> proove?

I believe I answered my hypothesese for the reasons of war yesterday, and that it has little to do with different people having different outlooks or perseptions on things.

Now to get to you email this morning.

I believe God clearly says in the bible and the Qur’an that we should love our neighbours, turn the other cheek when slapped, be giving and forgiving, etc. etc. But it is always the evil human who distorts things for their own greedy purpose. When down here in Turkey, like the other countries I travelled to, I like to read up on local history and culture. Did you know that the Islamic faith is an Abrahamic one? Meaning that the Islamists worship the same God of the Jews and the Christians. Sure, they do not believe in the Trinity, or that Jesus is the son of God but only a prophet, and they even accept koshur food prepared by Christians if they can’t find their own priest, but are these subtle differences really a reason to kill ourselves over? And then there is this big Sunni and Shia rift I recently read about. Basically Mohammed croaks one day, and immediately you have two factions developed arguing who is supposed to continue on after Mohammed. One faction says it should be his blood offspring, while another argues that it should be one of his educated colleagues and the choice should not be made based on blood but rather education and spiritual qualities. So now in Iraq, for example, you have these two factions killing each other and hating each other with venomous intensity over such a stupid issue. Only stupid humans can come up with something like this and I rather resent it when humans point their finger at God, like he has anything to do with this. I’ve heard there is twice as much food on this planet to feed everyone. So it becomes a matter of distribution, and all those lazy assess in the west sacrificing something from their selfish lives to make sure people in other areas can live a decent existence. Or we can branch this discussion into the forever, talking about how free trade is benefitting the rich and screwing the poor, with the IMF and all that, and how people behind the "new iron curtain" (that just popped in my head), fed disinformation by the media, increasingly controlled by the government, and live obliviously in their comfortable lives while the people at the top screw the poor disadvantaged countries over to make themselves and their own population poorer. But of course the average layman will point their finger at God, blaming him. And using this as a basic argument that he therefore does not exist. But the bible explains in rather great detail why such injustices exist. It is because man is a vile and selfish creature, and he will pay for his life. People do what they do because they believe they can get away with it. God helps out where he does and in his mysterious way, but if one person walks up to another and punches them in the face, it happens precisely because of that and the punched in the face one cannot blame God. Sure, in his mysterious way, God can influence the events of person’s B day to steer him away from A, so that the incident does not happen, but how can God steer us if we do not listen to him or are so absorbed in our own agenda, and distracted by the billion things around us, that we couldn’t even listen to him if we tried, or wanted to listen to him. But the common argument will be, "I got punched in my face today for no reason of my own, therefore God does not exist". As far as I’m concerned this is an easy copout argument of the masses, but that they deep inside know it is a fallacy.

And lastly, you asked me what does God mean to me. That’s a pretty heavy question, but I’ll try not to blab about this forever and just make as concise a response as possible.

God is always there when I need him.

God is a Spirit of love that keeps me going. If I start to drift away from him and do things that hurt his living spirit within me, I will feel emptiness return to my life, but because God loves me he will discipline me and teach me a better way.

God is an integral part of my awareness. I constantly talk and pray to him. Sometimes he turns his back on me, it seems, but I feel his concern. There was in fact one point in my life that I had to question my own existence, because I found myself doing something I did not plan for, now was really conscious of. I’ve often reflected on this and have to believe that our thoughts are put into our heads, where we simply make a choice between various alternatives. Sometimes I come up with master genius plans, but I don’t remember ever sitting down and actually devising any portion of it. In some simple and logical manner. No, the entire master plan slowly comes into focus for me, in all its beautiful entirety, coming into focus based on the limitations of my brain to comprehend. Then, when I finally perceive the big plan or scheme or design in its full entirety, I have to marvel at it, and I credit myself for being such a genius. No, now I understand and am aware of the ideas that constantly flow into my brain from outside. Like on TV when there is a little devil and a little angel above someone’s head, feeding them different ideas. The person just makes a choice between them. And this is on a constant level. Sure, someone can argue that our consciousness only takes up about 6% of our brain’s capacity, and that the remaining is some murky zone where all sorts of wonderful things happen, but I do not credit the murky zone for all these idea. And you can include dreams, through which the bible says God tests us, or sends us warnings. One only has to analyse one’s dreams to understand that it is not some random repeat of daily events but that they are actually being tested.

So God is the summation of all spiritual energy in the universe. Nature is God’s body. It is a fundamental law of physics that everything moves towards disorder, meaning lawlessness and randomness. I certainly do not see randomness in nature, so some force is obviously steering things. And I see it in the amazing ways animals cooperate with one another, and nature, and how nature is perfectly tuned within itself on a mathematical, musical, and geometrical level. All these things have been proven in the past. So for me, all matter is the body of God which was created from the big bang on one thought. God the spirit force and energy before the big bang, and who decided, "Let there be matter and let’s start creating things". As far as I’m concerned, there is life out there in the universe. There are one million times one million stars in our galaxy, and one million times one million galaxies in the universe. In our own galaxy we are on the outskirts and a very young star, and very early in our evolution/development, so it is logical that there are much more developed civilisations towards the centre of the galaxy. And anyone who thinks that, out of one million times one million times one million times one million stars (that’s 24 zeroes, if anyone can comprehend that figure), we are the only life force out there, and that just because we do not get a response from any of those lifesources from our piddly developed radio signals confirms this is so, such people might as well believe the world is flat and that all those stars in fact revolve around us. This, after all, is the simple perception of a vain ignoramus who looks out from the confines of their little brain and perceives and judges everything according to how they themselves see it.

So from my understanding of the bible, and one might argue my quaky self, we are in the barbaric stages of development of planet earth, and God has handed us over to ourselves.

Everything was made perfect, and people were allowed to eat from any fruit of the garden of Eden, except from the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. "If you shall eat of this fruit, you will certainly die [die means to fall away from the living Spirit of God], because you are not a discerning enough creature to be able to handle such knowledge. You will not be able to manage yourself if you do not heed my advice." But people are curious, and easily deceived. So God was one day walking among the people, like he often liked to, but could not find them (of course, he knew where they were, but this is figurative, for our little brains). He called out for Adam and asked where he was, to which Adam replied, "Hiding behind this bush sire, for we are naked." "And who told you that you were naked? You ate from that tree, didn’t you?" Of course, there is neverending symbolism I can get into here, as the bible itself says it is written with symbolism and code, on purpose, and due to the limitations of our brains.

So God covered man’s shame and gave him clothes, ‘to cover his shame’.

‘And since man has eaten from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, we must not also let him eat from the tree of eternal life, otherwise he will become JUST LIKE US.’ So he banished us from this paradise, etc. etc. And we learned pride, our big downfall. And we said in our hearts that we want to be like God, to be God.

REV 12:1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. [2] She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. [3] Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. [4] His tail swept a third of the stars <angels and heavenly beings> out of the sky <heaven> and flung them to the earth <turning them into demons, who are constantly at work around us>. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. [5] She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will <as in future> rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. [6] The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

REV 12:7 And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. [8] But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. [9] The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

REV 12:10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
"Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.

REV 12:11 They overcame him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.

REV 12:12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea <the people of the world>,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short."

So we must go through our painful evolution until we have matured and until the conditions are ready for Christ’s second coming. He first came at a junction in our history when we were starting to organise ourselves enough to be introduced to such a concept, so people have argued.

And once we have matured and reached the point when we are ready for the next stage?

REV 20:11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. [12] And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. [13] The sea <the living people in the world> gave up the dead <those who are without the Spirit of God living within them> that were in it, and death and Hades <those who have died according to the human definition> gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. [14] Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. [15]

REV 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea <people living as they do now, without an awareness of God and in the present order of things>. [2] I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. [3] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. [4] He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

And this is when, I believe, we will become a part of the federation of civilisations throughout the universe. We will be aware of them, and I’m sure aliens could be active on our planet. Sure, many could argue I am sniffing too much glue, but it just makes logical sense, and to argue that us, such a young planet and in such an early stage of our existence, is all there is out there, is as vain and ignorant as believing the world is flat (because that is the way I, little ol’ me, perceive it when I open my eyeballs) and that the stars rotate around us.

So this is basically all that God is to me. Everything. All powerful, all loving, full of grace, absolutely amazing. Difficult to put into words, and no words or creativity of their order is worthy of describing him. He’s in my head, he’s in my dreams, and when he comes through and performs a bit of "God action" in my life, as I like to call it, it is unbelievable and I haven’t even written any of them down because I cannot believe anyone would believe me, hence it would be a waste of time. And it is difficult to explain.