And some of them, pretty uneducated or downright dodgy.

A

Meaning what? Hinduism; Islam; Theosophy; Transcendental Idealism; UFO's; Simulation Theory?? — Tom Storm

Any theory will do, they're just theories, after all, just educated guesses.

I've rarely thought that existence is meaningless in the sense that this idea would be unsettling. Meaning is found in daily living, relationships, caring for others and hobbies. I can't imagine that it is any different for people who believe in god/s. I've certainly met numerous suicidal Christians, without any purpose and this was not owing to a lack of faith. — Tom Storm

Well, aside from subjective meanings any of us is free to derive, there may be a general purpose for which the whole system was put in place, and which would be quite difficult to guess.

So, yeah, it's a kind of distraction.

Read your post too quickly.

Sorry, I mean in the same category.

Absolutely. Distraction is the only way as I see it.

When you build your life around passion(s), you tend to be too busy to notice that there's some meaninglessness running in the background. In other words, it stops being a problem. What if you don't have passions other than a passion for drinking? In that case, you might have a problem.

I fear you're asking the impossible here. It's like saying: "I'd very much like to believe in square wheels, I challenge anyone to show me one!" Nope, mate. Can't be done.

If only Dodo could be resurrected, I'm sure it could share some valuable insight into these problems. But first we'd need to learn to understand the Dodoan language.

I fail to see how humans are possibly 'made in the image of God'. — enqramot

I'd like to understand that better, in case I might have wrongly assumed why. Could you please explain? — Serving Zion

It's hard to infer a consistent image of God from the Bible as God of New and Old Testament seem to differ quite a lot. What I see though as a major difference is God's infallibility. No matter what challenges at hand, he just has this inbuilt resilience that rules out any mistake on his part. Humans, on the other hand, are like poor quality end product, constantly suffering from failures. If God designed us to be like him, then it seems he failed miserably. And yet he's supposed to be perfect. It just doesn't add up. How could a perfect god create such obviously imperfect world unless on purpose, but what on earth could that purpose be and how could it be any good?? How has this idea of God being perfect even cropped up? Also people come with different abilities, let's call them talents. You can have singing talent, you can have beyond average ability to avoid paths in life which put you out of sync with the godly way of life prescribed by Jesus, which is also some kind of talent. Uneven distribution of such "talents" is unfair. So how can God be perfectly just? Rather than humans made in the image of God, I think it's Bible's God being a distorted image of humans resulting from limitations in imagination department that Bible's authors, being merely humans, suffered from.

Do lunatics need any proofs? That is the question.

But suppose rather than satan being a 'being' that (does not) exist(s), satan is a 'state of being'. — A Gnostic Agnostic

I would rather consider such 'state of being' in psychiatric terms, without adding Satan to the mix. Holding unreasonable position and acting upon it doesn't have to have anything to do with religion. But religion often unites and galvanizes such abnormal individuals. Now, what is considered normal and abnormal is confusing because majority by definition cannot be considered abnormal. Which means that if the majority is insane, the sane minority will be labeled 'abnormal'. So in a society where the majority is insane, a person officially certified as insane could be perfactly sane. Everything is relative, as they say. So given the mass appeal of religion across societies one might be justified in his suspicion that insanity is nothing out of ordinary among people.

This is why I find the implications of proving:

"Belief" is not a virtue.

as necessarily true, of immense gravity. — A Gnostic Agnostic

Convincing people who "believe" rather than think to anything can be problematic. You may construct your proof only for it to be unreasonably rejected. What's your plan B?

It occurred to me, that a human in their natural state of being without sin (ie: made in the image of God), they have charity and grace. — Serving Zion

I fail to see how humans are possibly 'made in the image of God'. Where are the similarities?

If satan requires "belief" would not avoiding "belief" entirely be the preferred state to avoid being bound by satan? — A Gnostic Agnostic

I think it's safe to disregard Satan. There is no proof that such a thing exists. The same applies to God.

People are obviously exploited through their emotions, which further leads me to suspect that guarding against being subject to ones own emotions is the closest thing I can find to "obedience" to any god. — A Gnostic Agnostic

You don't need to guard yourself from your emotions. All you need to do is understand them and not let them take control over you. Emotions are like silly children - you need to show them who's the boss.

Placing the actual existence of god aside, even if granting true, might the "disobedience" come by way as a product of dwelling in negative emotions? As in: one must first be dwelling in negative emotions in order to "sin", regardless of the god(s). — A Gnostic Agnostic

IMO best way to repel negative emotions is to analyze whether they are justified. If so, take action aimed at resolving the problems that gave rise to those negative emotions. If they are unjustified, just disregard them and focus on other things.

I've never believed in free will. To me, life looks rather like a multidimensional movie. Apart from the usual sound and vision, we get in the bargain pain, taste, memories, feeling of cold, warm, you name it. Imperfect beings cannot control anything. Our plans are bound to misfire from time to time. Moreover, we don't even control our thoughts. For all I know, they can be served by a foreign agent. How do they come about? Can you invent a thought? Sometimes there's a clear trigger for our thoughts, that trigger not being part of us. Humans are very prone to manipulation. Our feeble minds wouldn't stand a chance to see through such manipulation. The moment you stop believing you're being manipulated, the manipulation becomes 'perfect'. Now, is the future predetermined? It's hard to tell. Another possibility is: it is predetermined but it's not possible to find out what it's gonna be in advance. The truth that cannot be proven or disproven isn't any less true. I can't even imagine a situation where free will would be possible or make any sense.

Human thinking tends to be convoluted and lead nowhere in particular. I prefer computer thinking, like:
"if(//condition to be met) sin=1; else sin=0;" and everything is clear.
For example, there could be a program taking 2 parameters: criteria for something to be considered a sin, and then an item to be checked for sin-like qualities. It would return bool (1 - sin, 0 - no sin).

We suspect as much, but this thread's OP ignores that kind of literal, Biblical 'God', since it is disproved by contradictions and science. — PoeticUniverse

That's ok. But why even use the word "God"? Words should mean something, have some definition, whereas "God" is just a placeholder. What if we were created by some entity itself created by another entity that was created by yet another entity. Giving "God" any attributes is completely mad IMO. Possibly the only way to find out about the nature of the Universe is through direct experience (idk, meditation? drugs? lucid dreaming?) Scientific exploration for as long as it takes before we destroy our world and put a self-inflicted end to all our ill-conceived efforts.

Still, it gets one to thinking about alternatives and what can and cannot coincide, philosophically, beyond the Person-Hood Mind aspect that gets abandoned, such as deriving Existence to be here all at once, as ever/eternal, and what that would further imply, as I've hinted earlier, such as it having to be an everything of no information content, as not anything in particular, for it seems to have no inputs of cause that can go into it, due to its no beginning, and so the effects would be as random. — PoeticUniverse

Not sure what you mean there :)

For example Johnson simply needs to meet the EU leaders and insult them in person and they will find it difficult not to respond with an insult and to then grant the extension which he doesn't want. — Punshhh

Frankly, at this level I would like to expect EU politicians to be above such cheap tricks.

Remember it is only about a third of the population that has been brainwashed, another third is looking on in horror and astonishment. — Punshhh

Yes, I bear that in mind, and I apologise to that "third", I didn't mean them.

Well, populism once again reared its ugly head. Now, thanks to all the social media, it's easier than ever to brainwash people (the so called 'hoi polloi' :) ) Empty phrases, like: "take back control", "unelected bureaucrats" etc. put the masses in 'frenzy mode'. Some people need to learn things the hard way in the absence of any sort of insight. I think EU will be better off without UK, as long as UK is stuck in the past thinking they are a great empire. Just let them sober up and then we can consider letting them in again but without all the undeserved benefits they are enjoying now.

I'm sure God would love to show up and put an end to all the speculations once and for all. Alas, he's facing one insurmountable problem - his own inexistence. Poor chap to this day hasn't invented a way out of this conundrum.

There is no point talking about God. Anything we could possibly come up with would be pure speculation. I personally never experienced God (or, for that matter, any other god, gOd or goD). He (or she) never talked to me and never directly manifested its existence to me in any other way. There are some who say: how else would the world and the whole universe come about? Sure, simple-minded people crave to find a simple explanation for the unexplicable. But humans cannot even solve chess. Just think about it. Do you think understanding how the world came about is easier than solving chess? To put it bluntly, people, even the wisest of them all, are morons. Not at all mentally equipped to deal with very complex problems. In any case, we should only rely on facts. And it's a fact that we don't know how the universe came into being. Long ago, when priests were the educated ones, they took advantage of simpletons (the hoi polloi) by claiming to be in contact with God, their proof being the ability to predict
eclipse of the sun. When the eclipse came exactly when predicted, the simpletons had hard time reaching any other conclusion rather than the one the priests wanted - i. e. that they indeed are in contact with God. (if you don't bring me gold, the God will punish you!) Who are priests anyway to claim any sort of expertise when it comes to God? Well, if you believe anyone without exercising critical thinking - you're in for trouble. There's a whole lot of money to be made on the naive masses. God is just one of the tricks. Some people are even clueless enough to kill in the name of God and not seem to be aware that they're violating a major commandment. To sum it up: we just invented God that is like us: emotional, vengeful etc. , just because our limited imagination couldn't do better than that. Frankly, I think it's pitiful. I think we should focus on practical matters and things that we are able to grasp. And accept, that some things remain unexplicable. At least for now.