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Do you feel like your designed?

idav

Being
Premium Member
Well, all living things on earth have to die, friend - this is not evident of "poor design".

Is a flower, designed poorly? It too, dies. Yet we think it perfect in its beauty and fragrance, its' purpose to bloom, no matter how brief, is proof of its' perfection... but come the long winter - it too must die - this is not proof of poor design, It's only proof of mortality.

Humans too, go through a bloom, it's called puberty and adulthood - and lasts up to approx the age of 40, beyond which it all goes south.

Prepare for your long winter, coz its' coming... GoT fans, this one is specially for you :D

Peace
Is like what the mechanics tell car owners, well all cars gotta die sometime. They sure don't make them like they used to. I don't expect humans to design perfect machines but God, did he design us to fail eventually?
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Is like what the mechanics tell car owners, well all cars gotta die sometime. They sure don't make them like they used to. I don't expect humans to design perfect machines but God, did he design us to fail eventually?
I think we are spiritual beings having all kinds of various temporary physical experiences for soul growth. The soul exists for many lives and experiences on the various planes. I don't think the grand play/design is to create permanent never failing physical life.

Cars have a different purpose as they are inanimate objects that are designed for long and trouble-free operation.
 
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YmirGF

Bodhisattva in Recovery
Au contraire, I like your answers :) humanity is interesting, I celebrate diversity, mines more than others :D
Spiffy

What if, This Being wants us to aknowledge HIM because we are innately disposed to be reliant on his mercy through the balance in our world, which allows for us to breathe easily, find food easily, and thrive... and thus, by way of extension - though nourished in the physical -find only our spiritual fulfillment of health through this silent, contemplative and meditative worship of HIM? If it harms no one and benefits the soul of the believer than it can only be a good thing. I'd say God doesn't require worship, but recommends rather, He has coded it into us so that we may find benefit in it. Another mercy, if you will.
That's one way to look at it, but the believer has no real idea if their life experience is actually improved by their inner appellations. The psychology behind this is much more complex than the average garden gnome might suspect.

That's an highly subjective statement to make, you must have thought about this for longer than I can imagine. Would you care to elaborate?
I've been a meditator for almost 40 years now and so are well past even the advanced stage. What I am trying to put into words is a non-dual perception. There is no way I can currently conceive to verify my perceptions due to the nature of the perception itself. In physical terms, it's like something just outside my field of vision. Like some you see out of the corner of your eye.
 

DavidFirth

Well-Known Member
It says breathes life into them in the Bible but you added "and gave them souls". Your not supposed to add to scripture. It says life and all animals including plants have life, remarkable the Bible knew it too. More specifically it says became a living soul.

What do you know about scripture? If you even believed one book of the Bible you wouldn't be a pantheist. There is only one God, not many.
 

SalixIncendium

अहं ब्रह्मास्मि
Staff member
Premium Member
If you even believed one book of the Bible you wouldn't be a pantheist. There is only one God, not many.

If you bothered to look up the definition of pantheism, you'd know pantheists don't view the divine as many gods.
 

Vee

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Given the many diverse functions and processes of the human body, coupled with the fact that there are independently functioning life forms that support and maintain your body as a living organism, do you feel there is any sense of design prevalent enough that would make or cause you to feel that way?

What is it?

I can't see any other possibility than design. Every time I see a baby and I think about all that happens from a biological point from from conception to birth I can't imagine that happening without the hand of a very intelligent entity. I just cannot believe that happens by chance and babies are only one example out of millions and millions possible. Every living thing is so complex that for me it couldn't have come to existence without design, purpose and creativity.
Even before I had a religion, for me God's existence was always obvious.
 

Altfish

Veteran Member
If I was designed, it wasn't a great design. Any half-decent engineer could have done better.
 

SalixIncendium

अहं ब्रह्मास्मि
Staff member
Premium Member
Whatever. Why don't you believe the Bible?

The reasons are many. Among them are the account of creation, references to the earth, sun and moon and their correlation with each other, the contradictions, the historical inaccuracies, the failed prophecies, and the fact that the Gospel was written via hearsay by man at least 40 years after the death of Jesus, and only certain accounts were allowed into the Bible.

ETA: I also don't view the divine and transcendent or anthropomorphic.

ETA2: I'll also add that as a youth, I gave my best efforts to believe what the Church taught me and what I read in the Bible. As I became more educated and more experienced, I came to a point (catalyzed by a nun) where I could not reconcile these teachings with my secular knowledge and began to seek elsewhere.
 
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LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
Given the many diverse functions and processes of the human body, coupled with the fact that there are independently functioning life forms that support and maintain your body as a living organism, do you feel there is any sense of design prevalent enough that would make or cause you to feel that way?

What is it?
No, I definitely do not. The notion always strikes me as rather eccentric.
 

Ponder This

Well-Known Member
Given the many diverse functions and processes of the human body, coupled with the fact that there are independently functioning life forms that support and maintain your body as a living organism, do you feel there is any sense of design prevalent enough that would make or cause you to feel that way?

What is it?

No, I don't feel designed.
But regardless of how we arose, there does appear to be interesting forms of natural order that occur.
From the apple that falls from the tree to ant colonies, there does seem to be a whole lot going on that we can predict will occur.
Even Hurricane Harvey, that hit Texas, was a thing that we could predict would happen - not in it's exact details, which would be unique to the particular occurrence of Harvey, but more generally and to the extent of our capabilities and lack of ignorance. I may feel like Hurricane Harvey was random, but I deduce that it wasn't random - that access to the right information would give us a more clear picture of when and how Hurricane Harvey occurs.
This is not because I feel like Hurricane Harvey was designed, but because there appear to be observable patterns to how Hurricanes occur.
As regards people, there seems to be a lot of observable structure. I feel confident that there are a lot of commonalities from person to person even as there are plenty of differences too. So the commonalities indicate to me that people are generally structured in certain ways not because that is necessarily the only way they could be structured, but because there is a pattern (a natural order) to how things work. It has nothing to do with how I feel about it.
And DNA shows that there is a blueprint. The idea that the blueprint can change doesn't mean the blueprint isn't a plan for how things go. By definition, DNA is a design and therefore we are designed regardless of how I feel about it. The question of how that design arose is surely going to be hotly debated on these forums, but I don't think there is any rational objection to the cold hard fact that DNA is a design, a blueprint for living forms. We can question whether or not this design is "intelligent", whatever that means. In other words, we need to agree on what constitutes intelligence.

Was Hurricane Harvey intelligent? Was it created by an intelligence? This is the real question that gets debated, IMO.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Given the many diverse functions and processes of the human body, coupled with the fact that there are independently functioning life forms that support and maintain your body as a living organism, do you feel there is any sense of design prevalent enough that would make or cause you to feel that way?

What is it?
No. I have never felt like I am designed. A designed entity is designed for some purpose or reason. I do not exist for any such purpose or reason. Beings are ends in themselves, the sources that generate purposes, reasons and meanings. They exist not because they serve some higher purpose or reason.
 

Looncall

Well-Known Member
I don't believe they (science and religion) are mutually exclusive.

The Islamic Golden Age did much to fuel the enlightenment period of Europe which took it out of its' "Dark Ages".

Why, it was Ibn al Haythm (known as Al Hazen in the west) who actually gave us the Scientific Method we have today - and he did this with inference to God through his investigating the Qur'an!

Peace


It's tragic that the muslim cast all that aside and opted for a dark age that has never ended.
 

Rational Agnostic

Well-Known Member
Given the many diverse functions and processes of the human body, coupled with the fact that there are independently functioning life forms that support and maintain your body as a living organism, do you feel there is any sense of design prevalent enough that would make or cause you to feel that way?

What is it?

My "feelings" are irrelevant to the fact that I am a result of evolution.
 

Mohsen

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
It's tragic that the muslim cast all that aside and opted for a dark age that has never ended.

If enlightenment only means scientific advancement then I'm afraid you are the one who is sufferring a true "dark age"!

The Muslim world has morally fortified itself while the modern west preaches YOLO and lewdity, mistakens hate speech for free speech and confuddles equality for equity, judges wrongful actions such as rape with leniency and takes the power of the family unit and gives it to the government, sells an "us vs them" and polarised everything into a black and white narrative, attacks nations in the name of peace and develops nuclear weapons in order to puff up its chest and egotistically starve you of any self worth unless you conform to a patriotic identity which seeks to send your sons and daughters to die in wars which they never wanted in the first place, where a million man march is ignored in a city with only 7million people to turn back a goverment decision to invade a third world nation, where lies regarding WMD's as scoffed at over a Mickey D's and obesity is the new norm, where CoD is desensitising your children and priming them into violence and all they know is how to "consume" it's a shame you don't know how to determine what a true dark age really is!

But since you're a good little scientist, maybe you can answer "how did this happen?" Coz let's face it, science is never concerned with the "why".

Peace
 
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Looncall

Well-Known Member
If enlightenment only means scientific advancement then I'm afraid you are the one who is sufferring a true "dark age"!

The Muslim world has morally fortified itself while the modern west preaches YOLO and lewdity, mistakens hate speech for free speech and confuddles equality for equity, judges wrongful actions such as rape with leniency and takes the power of the family unit and gives it to the government, sells an "us vs them" and polarised everything into a black and white narrative, attacks nations in the name of peace and develops nuclear weapons in order to puff up its chest and egotistically starve you of any self worth unless you conform to a patriotic identity which seeks to send your sons and daughters to die in wars which they never wanted in the first place, where a million man march is ignored in a city with only 7million people to turn back a goverment decision to invade a third world nation, where lies regarding WMD's as scoffed at over a Mickey D's and obesity is the new norm, where CoD is desensitising your children and priming them into violence and all they know is how to "consume" it's a shame you don't know how to determine what a true dark age really is!

But since you're a good little scientist, maybe you can answer "how did this happen?" Coz let's face it, science is never concerned with the "why".

Peace

By the way, I do not live in, or admire, the USA. Part of their problem is their religiosity. There are many Western nations, not just the USA. The less religious ones are the more civilized ones.

"Morally fortified"? It is to laugh, and heartily too. Muslim societies are the most backward, cruelest, most corrupt on the Earth.
 

Mohsen

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
By the way, I do not live in, or admire, the USA. Part of their problem is their religiosity. There are many Western nations, not just the USA. The less religious ones are the more civilized ones.

"Morally fortified"? It is to laugh, and heartily too. Muslim societies are the most backward, cruelest, most corrupt on the Earth.

Interesting opinion - Elbowed into the wall!

Peace
 

Looncall

Well-Known Member
This doesn't explain Anthony Flew and others like him. Your claim is a bit of a stretch!

Peace

Religion is a very sophisticated con game. It is not surprising that some people succumb to it as their intellectual capacities decline late in life.
 

Mohsen

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
Religion is a very sophisticated con game. It is not surprising that some people succumb to it as their intellectual capacities decline late in life.

Your blanket statements are notably quite telling of someone who suffers an existential crisis!

Peace
 
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