I've jumped around depending on my current mood or life state. My position on God is almost completely self-contradictory. I'll find myself both praying to him and doubting his existence at the same time. The only belief that really stays constant is that God wants you to do things for yourself. Prayer is for offering thanks and asking for guidance, not getting an A on your bio exam or winning the Super Bowl.
God for INTP's
Hello lovely people,
Does anyone on this forum believe in God? I am curious.
I'll start. I found God very recently and this is very new to me. I have never met Him, or "found" Him before in my life, and I did a few days ago in a moment of temporary internal chaos. Our family has a Catholic background, but we have not been going to church for the past six years and I was almost considering myself to be an atheist. But for some reason, I feel like He was in me and with me my whole life. I am so grateful that I've finally found Him. My God is all-loving, comforting, and knows everything about me. He calms me down when I'm being carried away by dark assumptions or misleading thoughts, and He always has His arm around me. Although this is very personal, I want to share it here...
I wasn't sure how to call Him when I first knew about Him--I thought it was just "my Superior Self" or even my wise intuition, but after some time seeing Him, hearing Him, and getting to know Him, I know that I am always with God. And I love Him very much.
Does anyone else have a God? And is this common for an INTP to experience?
Does anyone on this forum believe in God? I am curious.
I'll start. I found God very recently and this is very new to me. I have never met Him, or "found" Him before in my life, and I did a few days ago in a moment of temporary internal chaos. Our family has a Catholic background, but we have not been going to church for the past six years and I was almost considering myself to be an atheist. But for some reason, I feel like He was in me and with me my whole life. I am so grateful that I've finally found Him. My God is all-loving, comforting, and knows everything about me. He calms me down when I'm being carried away by dark assumptions or misleading thoughts, and He always has His arm around me. Although this is very personal, I want to share it here...
I wasn't sure how to call Him when I first knew about Him--I thought it was just "my Superior Self" or even my wise intuition, but after some time seeing Him, hearing Him, and getting to know Him, I know that I am always with God. And I love Him very much.
Does anyone else have a God? And is this common for an INTP to experience?
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I believe that movie is Men in Black.Reminds me of a movie of a name I forget where the camera suddenly zooms out... and out... and out... through the universe and out into a room where there is a boy playing with a marble shaped like a planet. He is flicking it at other marbles at the floor also shaped like planets.
It also reminds me of a theory on these forums a while ago about our civilization being just a game played by aliens and we are all just characters in it. Like a super-massive game of The Sims.
This could be total crap, but I believe the origin of that line of thinking is that the early Christians, wanting people to leave their pagan beliefs behind and convert to Christianity, started to associate pagan symbols, like the ones used in Wicca for example, as being Satanist. Well at least the ones that weren't borrowed for Christian celebrations (Christmas anyone?) It's all part of the propaganda machine.I still don't get the "satan" association though :\
I believe Cartman was pining over an Okama GameSphere.There was a SouthPark episode about Atheist religions in the future. Anyone know which one I'm referring to?
I know there was a time when faith really did mean you couldn't try to prove the existence of God, positive or negative. Admittedly, I think that was like 400 years ago. I'm glad you have a much more mature sense of faith.
It was only a matter of time until someone brought that up.I'm sure glad you don't have the ability to prove his existence, INTJ.
Before I say anything, I want to point how ironic it is that I am about to play devil's advocate for God.Researched some religions. Tried to make sense of what I read and match what I saw of human existence and know of human character to the teachings of those religions. That match just wasn't working out. Tried even harder. Entered a period of cognitive dissonance where I have devoted a lot of my thinking and research on free time to topic of religion. One day just decided that I am an atheist and cannot lie to myself any longer. Felt really good because I no longer had to make sense of what made no sense and only way around this was to take it up on faith. Apparently religion was not satisfying any psychological needs in me as I found it really easy to step away from it. I've read on some atheist forums that some people have significant trouble with it.
I also figured alongside that if god existed then he wouldn't want us to know about his existence anyway because then people would just do good things to please him with hidden hopes of rewards of some kind or to score points for the afterlife. A lot of prayer really sounds like trying to make contracts with god ... "have mercy on me and I will be do x for you" or "i love you god, so please give me this or that in life". So even if god existed the only proper way to live your life is as an atheist who does good things simply out of kindness and innate goodness of your heart, not because there is this overarching father figure above your head ready to punish you for your misdoings, not because you have been told to do so, and not because you want a better deal for yourself in the afterlife. And as long as you have a belief in a god there is always temptation to do exactly this.
I think the mind set you'll find in many, though not all, religious people is that morality is derived from God. That God is actually in their hearts and is the cause for both their moral principles and their drive to make the world better. Without God providing that moral compass people are left to decide on whatever morals they want, and there's nothing stopping them from deciding to, say, kill someone just cause they don't like them. Honestly now that I type that out, it seems a little silly. Perhaps I'm not capturing the argument correctly.
And of course there's always that question of whether anyone ever does a good deed for it's own sake. I'm generally nice to people because I want them to be nice to me, or because it makes me feel good to make someone happy. Does this make these deeds selfish in some way? I'm not necessarily arguing against your point. I just think it's an interesting thing to ponder.
Well morality and law don't necessarily have to coincide. I used a pretty extreme example obviously, but there are certainly a lot of things one can do that are good or bad without breaking any laws.
I guess I'm also just cautious about lumping all religious people into one group of ignorant jerks. I'm reminded of a part in the movie Religulous where Bill Maher is interviewing priests in the Vatican Observatory. He brought up a lot of the BS that some Christians will say and the priests essentially said that it (the BS) was stupid.
There are a lot of people who really use it as a tool to be a better person. Depending on how they define better and how they use this tool it can be very dangerous, but there are certainly plenty of people who are genuinely better human beings for having "found" religion. It's a shame that the overly vocal assholes have perverted it to the state it's at now.
Hmm, I seem to have wandered off into general musings, as opposed to directly addressing your point though.
I guess I'm also just cautious about lumping all religious people into one group of ignorant jerks. I'm reminded of a part in the movie Religulous where Bill Maher is interviewing priests in the Vatican Observatory. He brought up a lot of the BS that some Christians will say and the priests essentially said that it (the BS) was stupid.
There are a lot of people who really use it as a tool to be a better person. Depending on how they define better and how they use this tool it can be very dangerous, but there are certainly plenty of people who are genuinely better human beings for having "found" religion. It's a shame that the overly vocal assholes have perverted it to the state it's at now.
Hmm, I seem to have wandered off into general musings, as opposed to directly addressing your point though.
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