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If God spoke directly to everyone...

Spirit of Light

Be who ever you want
That's not what my world looks like. I am surrounded by beauty, love, and friends. Would you call me spiritual on that basis?

Probably not if you mean by the word what it seems most people mean - a kind of vague combination of beliefs in things transcendent, and a focus on other worlds with a dash of magical thinking, and an aversion to distinct ideas - ideas called higher consciousness, but not by me.

You also seem to think that the higher human values that cause some to eschew war, killing, etc.. constitute spirituality rather than qualities like integrity and compassion
The downfall i speak about is the lack of morality in humans now. And the lack of understanding of the spiritual lifestyle. And the things i listed are a sing of lack in morality from those who do wrongdoings.
Higher consciousness (Gods, Buddhas Daos and so on) are at a so high level of insight and wisdom spiritually that no mundane human can understand it. Those people that can understand some of it is are those people who cultivate spiritual teaching. That is my understanding is the only way to realize what God is and to become one when realizing enlightenment.
A person who has heightened awareness of morality and higher moral standards will of course not committing killings because they understand what it does not only to the one who gets killed but to themself in karmic retribution and suffering for a long long time.
A person who focuses mostly on the spiritual life is a person who looks within them self and sees what is needed to be changed within the removing of all bad words, actions, and thoughts is only the first step. Secondly is study the scripture and gain insight to understand what is needed to actually gain spiritual growth.
But this thing is not changed in one day or one year it takes time to take away every bit of human attachments to this physical world. Freeing oneself from physical life spiritually is a 24/7 cultivation and should not be taken lightly in my understanding
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
Why assume that “everyone” wants to hear from God? There have to be some people who would not want to hear from God. God is All-Knowing so God knows that. God wants belief to be a choice and that might be one reason God does not speak directly to everyone.

However, that is not the main reason why God does not speak directly to everyone, because hypothetically speaking, even if God spoke directly to everyone, people could still choose not to listen or hear.

Imo, the main reasons why God does not speak directly to everyone are as follows:
  1. God wants us to seek Him out and use our innate intelligence to decide if we have found Him. God rewards true seekers.
  2. God does not want to make belief easy to acquire. God wants us to exert an earnest effort in order to believe.
  3. God wants us to have faith that He exists without absolute proof. Those who have faith will get the proof they need.
  4. Last but not least, nobody except God’s Messengers can comprehend God. Messengers act as mediators between God and humans, communicating what we would otherwise be unable to understand.

Why assume that god is capable of speaking to anyone?
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
The downfall i speak about is the lack of morality in humans now. And the lack of understanding of the spiritual lifestyle. And the things i listed are a sing of lack in morality from those who do wrongdoings.
Higher consciousness (Gods, Buddhas Daos and so on) are at a so high level of insight and wisdom spiritually that no mundane human can understand it. Those people that can understand some of it is are those people who cultivate spiritual teaching. That is my understanding is the only way to realize what God is and to become one when realizing enlightenment.
A person who has heightened awareness of morality and higher moral standards will of course not committing killings because they understand what it does not only to the one who gets killed but to themself in karmic retribution and suffering for a long long time.
A person who focuses mostly on the spiritual life is a person who looks within them self and sees what is needed to be changed within the removing of all bad words, actions, and thoughts is only the first step. Secondly is study the scripture and gain insight to understand what is needed to actually gain spiritual growth.
But this thing is not changed in one day or one year it takes time to take away every bit of human attachments to this physical world. Freeing oneself from physical life spiritually is a 24/7 cultivation and should not be taken lightly in my understanding

Why have you jumped to the unsubstantiated conclusion that people were somehow more moral in the past than they are today? By virtually every measure I can think of human beings behave in a more moral fashion today than ever before in history.
 

Spirit of Light

Be who ever you want
Why have you jumped to the unsubstantiated conclusion that people were somehow more moral in the past than they are today? By virtually every measure I can think of human beings behave in a more moral fashion today than ever before in history.
I have not jumped to that conclusion :) That is something I have understood during my cultivation of spiritual teaching for many many years. It is not difficult to see that morality is low now. More alcohol that leads to more drunk young people, especially in cities. Moe swearing in our language. more hate toward others (yes there was hate before too) Media spreading much immoral on TV, movies and so on. Schools do not teach proper respect for teachers anymore, parents are to busy working so they do not have control over what kids do. Very few families have some form of spiritual education at home from the early age of the kids. All this leads to less spiritual humans and more immoral spread in society.

You maybe disagree with me and that is ok. we look at the world differently
 

Bob the Unbeliever

Well-Known Member
That is an assumption you are making, but God does not want us to know He exists whether we want to or not..

How do YOU know what god wants or does not? I fully expect Superior Morality from any being worth the title "god".

Your god? Is demonstratively evil, and immoral.

But you are right that everyone will know that God exists in the future just like gravity, because it will be obvious to everyone..

When? Apparently your god cares not in the slightest for people alive today...
It is not that way yet because humanity has to evolve in stages, but God knows we all all believe in the future so it is not as if He is a bad God..

Excuses, excuses. You continue to paint a picture of an evil god...
 

Bob the Unbeliever

Well-Known Member
God is real so the time is coming when there will be only one religion, and there will be no more religious wars, because that is what God has ordained..

So, everyone alive today gets Bupkiss? And your god is too inept to correct that situation?

Sounds like you are just making up excuses for a Dead Beat God.
Unfortunately, you won't see it in your lifetime because it takes a long time for people to be willing to relinquish their older religions and unite under a new religion.

Riiiiiiight... so your god is NOT all powerful and worse-- NOT all knowing? In that it cannot manage to Get The Job Done...?

Sad. Evil and/or inept too.
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
I have not jumped to that conclusion :) That is something I have understood during my cultivation of spiritual teaching for many many years. It is not difficult to see that morality is low now. More alcohol that leads to more drunk young people, especially in cities. Moe swearing in our language. more hate toward others (yes there was hate before too) Media spreading much immoral on TV, movies and so on. Schools do not teach proper respect for teachers anymore, parents are to busy working so they do not have control over what kids do. Very few families have some form of spiritual education at home from the early age of the kids. All this leads to less spiritual humans and more immoral spread in society.

You maybe disagree with me and that is ok. we look at the world differently

With all due respect you REALLY need to educate yourself on human history. Throughout the vast majority of human history the owning of people as property was seen as perfectly acceptable throughout almost every society. Today slavery is universally condemned as a grossly immoral practice, even though it's sadly still practiced far too often. Women have gone from being second class citizens worldwide who couldn't vote and in many cases even own property to being seen as having equal rights in most of the developed world, while societies that still restrict a woman's right to vote or even drive a car are seen as backwards and oppressive. Alcohol has always plagued human society and today it's actually a little less popular than it was back in the 70's and far less prevalent than it was in the late 1800's and early 20th century. Violent crime in virtually every category is significantly lower than it was in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Sadly most people don't think that's true, but that's not because violent crime is happening more often today that it did 50 years ago, but simply due to 24/7 news media and social media we hear far more about what violent crime there is than we ever heard about back then.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
It's more than knowing God exists. It's knowing God. See the difference?
Absolutely, and I could not have said it better. :D

My husband asked me just last night, does this atheist (the one I have been posting to for about six years) care if he knows anything about God or God's Will, or does he only care about knowing that God exists. I am not really sure, but I think that this atheist just wants to know that God exists. But what's the point, if he does not know anything about God or God's Will for humanity? It seems rather obvious to me that God is not going to speak directly to everyone and reveal all of that to everyone. :rolleyes:
 

Spirit of Light

Be who ever you want
With all due respect you REALLY need to educate yourself on human history. Throughout the vast majority of human history the owning of people as property was seen as perfectly acceptable throughout almost every society. Today slavery is universally condemned as a grossly immoral practice, even though it's sadly still practiced far too often. Women have gone from being second class citizens worldwide who couldn't vote and in many cases even own property to being seen as having equal rights in most of the developed world, while societies that still restrict a woman's right to vote or even drive a car are seen as backwards and oppressive. Alcohol has always plagued human society and today it's actually a little less popular than it was back in the 70's and far less prevalent than it was in the late 1800's and early 20th century. Violent crime in virtually every category is significantly lower than it was in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Sadly most people don't think that's true, but that's not because violent crime is happening more often today that it did 50 years ago, but simply due to 24/7 news media and social media we hear far more about what violent crime there is than we ever heard about back then.
All i speak about is the lack of spirituality and moral in more people today, to me, morality is within truthfulness compassion and forbearance, If you think of living standards as morality then yes people do have more fancy houses and are richer from money, but that is not morality to me.
A lot of the so-called better for people and the more "open society" are definitely not good moral seen from a spiritual being.

So it look like we are not agree about it, but i did not expect others to see it the same way as i do :)
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
This is problematic, considering except for the very rare instances where something likely rather traumatic happens in one's life to make them question their beliefs, the normal pattern is for everyone to be programmed with beliefs from their culture, through your parents as the first programming agents of culture. The beliefs "choose them" in other words, not the other way around. Most people see the world through the set of eyes their culture's belief systems program them with, and will never truly question any of them, including their programmed beliefs about God.
That is true for most people, as most people are raised with a religious belief, and even if they were not, they are immersed in a culture that is predominantly one religion or another. It is still a choice where to retain or choose that belief, but it is difficult to resist doing so and strike out on one's own and easier to follow what others are doing and "just believe."
So, what is it exactly God wants us to "believe"? Does God care how you believe? I don't believe so at all, personally.
I cannot say I know what God wants or cares about, but I think that God wants us to know He exists and I think that God wants us to get the messages He sends through Messengers because otherwise there would be no reason to send them.
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
All i speak about is the lack of spirituality and moral in more people today, to me, morality is within truthfulness compassion and forbearance, If you think of living standards as morality then yes people do have more fancy houses and are richer from money, but that is not morality to me.
A lot of the so-called better for people and the more "open society" are definitely not good moral seen from a spiritual being.

So it look like we are not agree about it, but i did not expect others to see it the same way as i do :)

If you think of living standards as morality then yes people do have more fancy houses and are richer from money, but that is not morality to me.

With all due respect, where the heck did you get the idea that my definition of morality has anything to do with people having fancy houses or get richer from money? I talked about people no longer being owned as property. I spoke about people being judged on what they can do and not on what there sex is, their skin color is, or who they're sexually attracted to, so that they have the same rights to vote, drive cars, own property, and do all of the things that other people in a free society are allowed to do. ALL of which deal with TRUTHFULNESS , COMPASSION, and FORBEARANCE.

How is abolishing slavery and allowing women to have equal rights NOT good morals, seen from a spiritual being?
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
Yes, if we want to believe. Not everyone does. And that's not their choice. Plus even if you want to believe, that doesn't mean you can or will.
If people do not want to believe – and I agree that not everyone does – then they can choose not to search. You keep saying that people do not have a choice, and I am not sure what that is all about. Just as a person chooses not to go to the grocery store because they do not want any groceries today, a person can choose not to search because they do not want any beliefs.

I agree that even if you want to believe, that doesn't mean you can or will.
I wasn't talking about me per se, just generally. I'd say my religious background has made me more interested in the subject than the average person. I know many people who weren't raised religious (or only nominally) who almost never think about this subject.
That is interesting, because what I have found is that most atheists who were raised religious are less interested than the average person, but that is because I talk mostly to atheists who were formerly Christians, and almost invariably they have rejected the whole idea of God and religion. However, since some of them talk about it a lot, I have to wonder if they have really cut all the ties.
Very well. I don't accept it at all, it makes no sense and makes people responsible for things outside their control. Whereas your god is allegedly omnipotent.
I think that it is within our control because we can choose to search for God or spend our time doing something else. What we end up believing is not in our control because we will only choose what makes sense to us; so for example, I could never believe that Jesus rose bodily from the grave because my mind cannot accommodate that belief.

In order to understand where I am coming from on what we can and cannot choose, you can read this short chapter on free will: 70: FREE WILL

God being omnipotent has nothing to do with what humans choose to do. Just because God can do anything that does not mean it is God’s responsibility to make anyone believe in Him. Free will is what all human behavior is predicated upon. If God did everything for us we would just be puppets on a string.
No. It isn't their choice to want to search. We've been through this.
That is debatable because what we want to do is determined by many factors; some are within our control and others are not. The same can be said about what we choose to do, but Imo people have more choices than they think they have.

If you think people are responsible to do x, and they don't, that implies a moral failure. That's why you're insisting on couching everything we're talking about here as a choice - because if you admit that it's not, your excuse for why your god is hiding falls apart.

I said nothing about a moral failure. People are only responsible to do x if they want y. If they do not do x, they are not going to get y. If I do not go to the grocery store I am not going to get any groceries. If I do not go to college I am not going to get a degree. These are choices I make.

God is not hiding anything but His Essence. An omnipotent/omniscient God does not need to make any excuses to humans, for obvious logical reasons.
I don't know what "free choice" means, but okay.
Read that chapter on free will I linked to above and then you will know more.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
How did you rule out that the main reason gods don't speak to us is that they don't exist? I've been unable to rule that idea out.

The problem with your argument is that is begins with an unshared premise - the existence of a god. Nothing that follows can be accurate if that premise is untrue.
For purposes of the OP, the premise is that God exists. Nobody has to share that premise, and it is hypothetical.
Obviously, if God does not exist nothing I say about God is true.
You say that "God rewards true seekers." I was a seeker once, which is how I came to Christianity in the first place at about age 20. I did finally find what I was looking for, but only by leaving Christianity and embracing what I later learned was called secular humanism. This is where I found meaning and satisfaction. My search was over.

So perhaps you could say that some god actually did reward me for truly seeking truth, but I found it outside of religion and god beliefs, which tends to speak favorably on the decision to leave religion.
This is a difficult one to answer, because you think you are being rewarded because you are happy with secular humanism, but that might not be a reward. It might be that you just found something you like, not what God wanted you to find.
One thing I learned in my journey was that faith was a poor method of deciding what is true about our world, and not to trust those that say, "Just believe me" when they could have provided evidence if they had any. People that can demonstrate their claims do. Why would gods be different?
Faith is certainly not a way to find truth; I would only say that we need faith in order to embark upon a journey and search for truth, faith that there is something we might find. If we have no faith that there could be a God, that is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As I have said before, I can present evidence for what I believe but I cannot provide proof, because nobody can prove that God exists, except to themselves.
You said that god wants us to use our innate intelligence, and I agree that we should do that whether gods exist or not. My mind tells me that there is no reason to believe in any gods, and that faith cannot be a path to truth, since any idea or its mutually exclusive, polar opposite can equally well be believed by faith, even though at least one such idea is incorrect. And even if you happen to guess correctly, you cannot know that you have until you acquire evidence, anyway.

So any call to believe by faith is rejected and the source discredited for requiring it.
I never suggested anyone believe on faith. Belief on faith alone is blind faith. An informed belief requires evidence. I consider the religions and their scriptures as evidence that God exists. Christians have evidence; that is the Bible, the fact that you might not consider it evidence notwithstanding. What is evidence? It is whatever indicates to you that a belief is true or valid. What is evidence to one person is not evidence to another person unless they agree it is evidence.
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
Why assume that “everyone” wants to hear from God? There have to be some people who would not want to hear from God. God is All-Knowing so God knows that. God wants belief to be a choice and that might be one reason God does not speak directly to everyone.

However, that is not the main reason why God does not speak directly to everyone, because hypothetically speaking, even if God spoke directly to everyone, people could still choose not to listen or hear.

Imo, the main reasons why God does not speak directly to everyone are as follows:
  1. God wants us to seek Him out and use our innate intelligence to decide if we have found Him. God rewards true seekers.
  2. God does not want to make belief easy to acquire. God wants us to exert an earnest effort in order to believe.
  3. God wants us to have faith that He exists without absolute proof. Those who have faith will get the proof they need.
  4. Last but not least, nobody except God’s Messengers can comprehend God. Messengers act as mediators between God and humans, communicating what we would otherwise be unable to understand.

I'm glad for you that you were able to contact your god and get a list from him outlining his desires.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
I have to side with @Left Coast on this one, namely, that belief is not a choice to certain kind of mind, which suggests to me that people who can choose what to believe have different kinds of minds from those who can't. You don't seem to acknowledge that this other kind of mind exists. But I assure you that it does.

This kind of thinking - critical thinking - may have been a choice to pursue, but once made, there are no further choices, just the valid analysis of evidence and tentative belief commensurate in strength with the quality and quantity of the relevant evidence.
Apparently, you are assuming that only nonbelievers can think critically and look at evidence, and that all believers believe on faith and emotion. I disagree, because some believers believe on evidence.
Do you think that that is a fair comparison? These human beings are making every effort to be heard and believed, because that is what reasonable people do that want to be understood and believed.
That is what people do, but God is not a person.
You mentioned earlier that we are expected to use our intelligence. I don't know about expected, but I will rely on my wits whatever its origin, and my mind tells me that if there is a god in this orderly, mathematical, reasonable, comprehensible universe that it expects me to use the faculties I was gifted with, which means that if there is a god, those are things it admires, and so do I.
That completely concurs with Baha’i beliefs. We are expected to use our intelligence in all matters.
You seem to use the words choose and choice differently than I do. For me, there has to be two or more options all available to the chooser to call it a choice. In fact, when we only have one option, some people call that having one choice, but I would call it having no choice.
I think there is always more than one option available, so there is always a choice.
Free will is an interesting topic. It appears to be essential to Christian doctrine, but there are good reasons to question whether any of our choices are indeterministic, and whether the feeling of being free to choose isn't an illusion itself generated deterministically.
I do not think we are free to do anything we want to do. Humans have the will/ability to make choices based upon their desires and preferences. Our desires and preferences come from a combination of factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. How free they are varies with the situation. Certainly what we refer to as “free will” has many constraints. However, we have the ability to make choices. Otherwise, we would just be at the mercy of our past experiences and our heredity.
Except that no two got the same message. The reason I trust reason and evidence over faith is that the former is tied into physical reality, which is why there have been thousands of gods reported, but only one periodic table of the elements. If the scientists used faith rather than observation, they'd each have their own table, and none would be expected to be correct.
It makes logical sense why no two got the same message, because different messages were delivered at different times throughout human history. Why would a God keep revealing the same message, when the conditions of the world and humanity keep changing over time? The periodic table of the elements might remain the same but the world changes as do people.

Just as science evolves over time and scientists make new discoveries, in order to be useful religion has to evolve over time to keep up with the times. A religion that is static is not very useful because it cannot accommodate any change. I think the reason more people cannot understand this is because they are so emotionally attached to their older religions and also because they consider religion separate from life on earth. Baha’is see religion as a dynamic process that evolves over time and it is vitally connected to the world we live in, not just to a spiritual world to come.
I can agree with that. I did seek truth about gods and think I found it, although I doubt that you would find my conclusions useful to you. The world makes more sense without god beliefs. I no longer need to ignore evidence that contradicts my former god belief. I no longer need to wonder why little girls are allowed to die of leukemia. I no longer need to find endless excuses to justify the internal contradictions, unkept promises, moral and intellectual failings of a deity, failed prophecies, and errors in science and history. The world makes more sense.
I fully understand how the world would make more sense to you without god beliefs, especially the beliefs you held, but I would still have the same questions without god beliefs because I would wonder why things are the way they are. I could never just be happy because my life was happy, I would always care about the suffering of others. I would want to know why. Although religion does not provide a complete answer, it does provide answers that make sense to me.

I do not need to wonder why little girls are allowed to die of leukemia; it is because they contracted the disease. Because I do not have unrealistic expectations of God, what God should be doing because God is omnipotent, I do not expect God to do what it is the responsibility of humans to do, like finding cures for disease. This is why I do not have the conflicts you apparently had. I believe that both science and religion are necessary; like the two wings of a bird, humanity cannot fly and make progress if either one of them is not strong. Each has its own domain; religion deals with humans and moral and spiritual issues, science deals with making the material world better for us to live in.
You seem to assume that seeking a god mans finding one. I can assure you that that is not always the case. After a sincere and prolonged effort to sort out what's what, I arrived at tentative conclusions that have served me well and which I have no incentive to modify, or as others say, no incentive to continue seeking.
No, I certainly do not assume that seeking guarantees finding. All I was saying was that not seeking pretty much guarantees not finding. It is like if you do not look for a job you will not find a job. Of course there are exceptions; someone could tell you about a job they heard about, but that is not how one usually gets a job. Some people have to seek longer and harder, others not so much. I think some of that is determined by fate.
It's interesting how seeking forever is considered a virtue by many. My guess is that if one is still seeking, he has an unsatisfied need, and if he has been seeking for decades and decades, he's going about it wrong and will never find what he's looking for. like a man searching for his keys for decades. What is desirable is not to seek, but to find.
I agree that if one has been searching for decades and still has not found anything they are going about their seeking incorrectly; either that or there is nothing to find.

Of course I am biased but I think we all have a need to find out the truth about God.
Now, let's look at your comment again, but substitute keys: We all have a choice whether we want to spend our time seeking our keys or doing other things. Eventually, we should choose to stop looking for them. There is no virtue in spending sixty or seventy years unsuccessfully looking for them. Likewise with gods.
No, certainly not that many years. That reminds me of my husband who is always losing things around the house. Recently, he lost his only pair of shoes and I told him it would just be easier to get another pair.
Trailblazer said: We cannot blame God if we did not make any effort to believe.

Then we can blame God if we did make that effort, but still don't believe?

I suspect that you would say no, that we can never blame God for anything, but once again, I would disagree, even though I don't accept the existence of this god, which I must discuss in the hypothetical. With omniscience and omnipotence comes omniresponsiblity, which means that all praise and blame go to such an agent. If a person makes a sincere effort to find a god and fails, either no such god exists, or a god exists that is indifferent to us, incapable of communicating with us, or unaware of us.
Why does someone have to be to blame? If someone makes a sincere effort and still does not find God, I do not blame them or God. I write it off to fate. Sincerity and effort is all God requires of anyone.
Belief is very easy to the faith-based thinker. He simply chooses to believe, and voila, it is done.
I guess I must not be one of those faith-based thinkers then; but I know what you mean since I listen to Christian radio all day long while I am on the computer…. It is as easy as accepting Jesus into your life. Often it sounds attractive to me but I could never go for that kind of emotion-based belief because I am very analytical and I need to have a belief that makes sense to me.
For the reason and evidence-thinker, belief is easy if given the evidence. It is irrational to posit that a loving god that wants to be known, understood, loved in return, obeyed, and worshiped would withhold convincing evidence.
Then I guess I must be one of those thinkers, because I go with what there is evidence for, not for what is emotionally satisfying or easy. I have never been one to take the easy way.

I believe that God you described does provide good evidence, but it does not convince everyone.
"If there is a god, that god should know exactly what it would take to change my mind...and that god should be capable of doing whatever it would take. The fact that this hasn't happened can only mean one of two things: 1. No such god exists. 2. Whatever god exists doesn't care to convince me, at this time. In either case, it's not my problem and there's nothing I can do about it. Meanwhile, all of those believers who think that there is a god who does want me to know that he exists - are clearly, obviously, undeniably... wrong." - Matt Dillahunty"
I agree with Matt -- Whatever god exists doesn't care to convince me, at this time.

But that does not mean that there is nothing he can do about it. He assumes that if God exists God would want to convince Him of that but that is dead wrong. God wants us to use our own innate intelligence. Otherwise, why would we have evolved with a brain that has these capabilities?

God does not want us to know that He exists but God does not want to be the one doing the convincing. God wants us to become convinced by doing our own homework, but only if we want to. It all goes back to free will.
 
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