Poll: Why are we?

Holodeck stop program. Authorization RikerDeltaSigma5

i'm not smrt enuff for philisophical discussions, so i'll just say how much i adore that song. the end. :)

I have my opinions, but FHDC can only get so theological before I shut up.

It's a benevolent loving God who created us. Anyone believing anything else will go straight to frickin' hell and burn in damnation!

Or not.

Ack...you got Midnight Oil stuck in my head.

*Goes straight to Hell and burns in damnation*
:-)

.oO How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our hell is burning Oo.

I voted for the "reincarnation" bit, although I don't think it's necessarily a matter of karma and reincarnation in order to get to Nirvana.

I guess "I dunno" would've been the most honest answer I could've given, but I really think that reincarnation makes a kind of visceral sense to me. I mean, *some* kind of afterlife is the only way I can reconcile the injustice and inequity in the world.

But what, exactly, does that look like? ::shrug:: I'm waiting to see that, myself.

how about all of the above?

we're created by a loving God who would have no existance otherwise, our souls are created from the entropy of the universe... living life either consigns us to heaven, hell or we're reincarnated to live again if our soul wasn't clearly decided. each of us is the only person that matters in our universe, but we're judged based on how we treat others, given that we do not *have* to treat others well.

of course, accept that jah is among us as a living man. and surrender all your earthly desires, material possessions are a passing thing. jesus died in horrible pain to save your soul, you are worthless, pathetic and weak and need to repay him through a life of quiet survitude with many children.

of course maybe it's all about the nhl playoffs this year, maybe i've been living my lifetime just to witness montreal take another cup (oh please, oh please...)

I have my opinions, but I can only get so theological before FHDC shuts up.

I am a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

LOL.

we're created by a loving God

or god is created by a loving Us.

:)

darn! nate beat me to it!

I'm most closely aligned with Buddhism, and my best guess is that we're here as a result of a bunch of random coincidences. I have no idea, so I guess that makes me agnostic. I don't believe in reincarnation in the traditional way, but it's the same atoms that are floating around, and if atoms are what make sentient life, we'll reincarnate into trillions of things in the future.

I don't know who I am
But life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

We were definitely created by something. Because there can be no beginning of time, no cause for the Big Bang except for a God. If time is infinite, our lives cannot be happening in a finite time span. Our existence is a paradox. But still we exist, or at least we think we do, so there must be an all-powerful being in charge somewhere.

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

I dig the latter...

*blink*
Wow... that's actually really close to something I've been toying with in my mind.

If there is infinite time, then everything that can ever happen will. If it's possible for atoms to split apart from a larger whole (say, when your body decomposes into soil, to make more worm-parts, whatever) they could someday come back into contact with eachother. Eventually (once again, this is going with time never ending) every atom in everyone could form together again after billions of billions of billions of years apart.

I guess that would be the Million Monkeys Typing form of reincarnation ;-) I don't think this is quite what I believe, but the idea has been bouncing around my mind for a bit.

Why can't there be?
That's always been one of my things. There isn't a really good scientific explination for why/how things began, but God doesn't solve that either, because then you have the same questions of why does God exist, and what started him (her, it).

Then who created the God?

Or did he "just exist", whereas you leave no possibility that the universe "just existed"?

>I guess that would be the Million Monkeys Typing form of reincarnation

So, you're going to be reincarnated as a script for Hamlet?

!! *heart* :D

"Well, That About Wraps it up for God." :D

42. That's all I have to say on the matter.

Because, something in there has to be all-powerful, as our existence is a paradox. The existence of the universe is a paradox. As you said, the existence of God is a paradox. Everything is. Either nothing can possibly make sense, or there is something so all-powerful out there that can make it through the fact that nothing can possibly exist.

The universe could have "just existed", but then, if time exists, there couldn't be a present, because time is infinite. Maybe we don't live in the present...there's a weird thought...

oh, thank you SO much for finishing Starfox' dirty work and absolutely guaranteeing it's�stuck in my head for eternity, Michael.� ;)

why�does it have to be either/or?�

I think creation goes�both ways, and�renews itself continuously.�

that sounds like Jurgen, but i'm too lazy to look it up ...

which is to say, all of the above and a few other options.

i am stardust. i am memories. i am a cupful of elements charged with electricity. i am an existential accident, and i am a specific manifestation of a collective consciousness that holds expression of the highest potential of existence as its timeless goal. The collective consciousness' popularized western name is God, but it can just as easily be Goddess or Allah or Ceridwen or Ralph.

And all of my experience is illusion, filtered darkly through the glass of my� infinitesimal bit of consciousness that has been set to work in one tiny area of creation. All attempts to define it in larger terms are metaphor and myth, testimony to wanting to feel (re)united with the big picture. To know one's individuality, to be conscious of the "I", is to know alienation. It seems to me that everyone in their own way, no matter what they believe or don't believe religiously, is striving to reach a consciousness broader in scope than what they can sense and feel in their head and heart and body.

ooops. rambling again. time to go to sleep. ;)

Actually, there is a lot of evidence that points to time being an illusion...

Yes, I've noticed that...what i can't figure out then is, why do clocks run? etc. Maybe I'm just dumb on that one.