[evilgenius]

When you get right down to it, the whole story of God, as told in the bible, is probably one of God deciding whether He can stomach to live permanently around human beings or not. The tale that is being told is that, yes, He will decide to. But, look, it was the fact that God only visited man in the garden occasionally, according to the myth, that laid the groundwork for the fall. Imagine leaving a four year old alone with a dangerous toy.

When you look at the Jesus story have you ever wondered at his amazing endurance for dealing with people? He used to stand around for hours dealing with damaged people. You get the idea he never complained or sought a way out of the duty. He did complain that they only followed him because He fed them. Most of God's complaints concerning man seem to have to do with man not listening to the transformative things He had to say.

If we are made in God's image, then I can certainly see how God could look down on man at the same time as acting so compassionately. The actions are His act of faith. He will be with man. The thing is, there is a lot of other stuff in the bible that says how he feels about it, in the sense that He is having to wrestle with Himself in order to achieve it. I don't think God is two faced. I do think this take on Him reveals Him as a sort of person who has to go inside themselves in order to find the resources to deal with everything else. You can see this confidence, in that the outcome, eternity, is declared long before it can be observed. There is this fire and brimstone toughness, but it may be nothing more than a need to satisfy certain of His internal notions. God can be interesting.

[Ibon]

I have mostly been respectful of people who adhere to structured religion. Then again I was most fortunate to have a father who was on the way to being a Mennonite minister when he became born again as an atheist and I was brought up with his constant message that religious people are primarily self delusional and fakers and Hypocrites. I honor my father who kept the agrarian hard work ethic and morals of the religious teaching he had as a Child and then the more enlightened secular thought he had when he broke the shackles of his religious background.

I will make a pretty clear statement here that folks who follow organized religion are content to have a road map in order NOT to really think much about their existence and the meaning of life.

The core message of being awake and conscious breeds rebellious souls and organized religions tend to burn such folks to the stake. As they did Jesus by the way who was not a christian and did not follow an organized religion. He was more a rebel and secular atheists who renounce materialism and find reverence in mother earth are the most christ like folks we have moving about the planet at the moment

Each age and epoch follows this awake and conscious path that breaks the consensus paradigm which inevitably reaches a decadent point before collapse. That is where we are right now and Christians who use their religion to promote their individualism to consume without regard for the commons are the very definition of Hypocrites. I know those are fighting words but I like to call a spade a spade at times and not give too much credence to hurting the sensitive feelings of religious people who tend to be first to condemn and then the first to always feel like victims when their Hypocrisy is exposed.

Islam? About as Fxxked up as you get at the moment with 50% of their population treated like dogs and chattel.

[SeaGypsy]

The orthodox position is that Jesus was in every way an Orthodox Jew, of the Levites. His rebellion is within Judaism, his conversion is of the world towards Judaism. His reinvention of the Law is prophecied in Judaism, (not one jot nor tittle of the Law shall fall). His controversy was within Judaism, offering Holy Baptism to all comers, in the footsteps of his initiator- John the Baptist- at a time when such ritual was only available to Jews of impeccable reputation- very much a local community concern. The first thousands of 'Christians' were in fact Messianic Jews, then what would eventually become Muslims, the last continental Christians were Northern European, many hundreds of years later- by which time the religion had been thoroughly cooked- centralised in Rome, hundreds of Papal edicts regarding what eventually became 'the Bible'- built on the bones of Martyrs- Personality Cult death worshipping Paganism with a Jewish concept of prophecy, mature strategy meets witchcraft, spawning a of years of conquest & genocide- now Demanding our Respect, Capitalising their God, ignoring the hideous brutality of the war they or their ancestors succumbed to.

Disclaimer- my personal view is it is never clear a person's spiritual path is invalid. We all have our crosses to bear & much of the language around these topics is loaded with meaning from generations of use & interpretation. Often when language grows by adopting words from others, it reinterprets, losing the deeper original meaning. These processes make genuine open spiritual communication thoroughly rare & difficult. Drugs sometimes help, but bring other dangers. Be true to yourself, respect others, believe whatever you want to believe, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater- no-one has a monopoly on the truth, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

[onlooker]

From my own personal experience seeking inner peace will then lead you to be a person who seeks harmony within him or herself and with others and with all the world and Universe around them. I found this inner peace not via any religion but by simply wishing for it for myself and others. Atheists or Spiritualists seem to me the same in so much as they do not look for others to give them meanings but find it themselves.

[ralfy]

In light of various global crises, one can probably consider books like Armstrong's Great Transformation:

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books ... 385721240/

[Rod_Cloutier]

Rupert Spira argues, quite logically that it is always 'Here and now', as such time and space don't exist:

https://youtu.be/kJbb8uBnnWs?t=1s

Consequently, God (which he calls pure consciousness), is always here and now, for there is no place else for God to be.

[SeaGypsy]

What a boring fart of a man. Space & time, without which there would be nowhere to be nor no time for 'now'- exist. If God exists, God existed & will exist. Pseudo intellectual spiritualism not withstanding.

(Seriously these guys prey on mental weakness, p#sses me right off)

[Shaved Monkey]

Australians just got back their latest census results about 1/3 dont believe in God.(another 10 % refused to answer too )
Im a bit worried about the other 2/3rds

[SeaGypsy]

For the first time the biggest religion is none. Also by far the fastest growing. Must really upset some people. Most are just born into it, adhering to precepts on an ad-hoc basis.

[EnergyUnlimited]

In the past I was of a view that God *rather* does not exist.
More recently I am of the view that God *rather* exists.
As per Hawking views, he is a great scientist but one can contend that he is rather pondering specific religion and not a science.
Lets take an example of Black Holes. There are plenty of objects which at current level of tech would look from far away like BH but might well be something else.
MECO, fuzzball or gravastar between many similar objects are candidates supported by good reasoning.
Yet BH is chosen somehow as "the beast", probably as a result of politics in scientific establishments.
What about Multiverse?
Load of nonsense, even in principle not falsifiable by observation/experiment.
What about String Theory. Predict everything and nothing at the same time, not verifiable by any currently conceivable experiment.
What about Cosmic Inflation? No, contrary to some claims CMB is not an evidence of inflation era being real.
It seems that for last 30 years or so our greatest brains are busy inventing loads of nonsesnse, which is mathematically brilliant but yet unphysical and Hawking is between those.

To prove that no sort of God need to exist physics would need to prove 2 things:
#1. Time is eternal and there was no beginning of it (so no need for creation as everything was *always* there).
#2. Information necessary to assemble life as we know it was always there and available to atoms which then *acted upon it* and organized themselves in complex structures capable of replicating themselves and also perform immense number of other useful tasks.
Chances of this happening by luck are comparable to monkey striking randoms keys and typing all Hawking's books and all other books of 20 cetury physicists just by chance, to the letter and with no mistake.

Alternative to #2 is to prove that Universe is extremely large, say 10^^^^^10 times larger than an *observable* one or truly infinite - then everything and anything can happen by chance sometimes, somewhere. Including one randomly assembled monkey typing all these books correctly, just by chance
BTW, if any matematician is reading that, he knows *how large* numer specified in notation above would really be...

So no, Hawking didn't prove #1 and didn't prove #2. Neither has he proven that Universe is infinite or absurdly large.
His statements about God are *religious* and not scientific.
There is also a possibility that during his career he was investigating properties of hypothetical but yet *unphysical* objects (BH).

[SeaGypsy]

Of course it's infinite & Hawking worships the big bang, same like you- an illogical position in infinity.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Problem with infinite universe is that the concept is unprovable one way or another due to existence of cosmic event horizon related to observed expansion of space.
So any statements about this topic are *religious* in nature.
As per Big Bang, assuming that expansion was from the zero dimensional point, the idea is stupid.
Zero times infinity still equals zero, so no amount of expansion of zero dimensional point like object would deliver anything.
So initial singularity could not actually exist.
It had to be *non zero dimiensional something* for expansion to be possible.
Now the question is from where this something came at the first place?