Religion

It's supposed to be an analogy not literal.

Sure, it doesn't prove meaning because it can't be logically tested due to humanity's incompetence.. according to a christian viewpoint. This may promote "ignorance", yes, but it's the belief that a person must rely 100% on the deity in order to transform according to complete truth -- God. It's a pretty simple concept and there's almost no way to talk a Christian out of it because it can result in hell (among other reasons). So this is an intimidation factor that I don't quite agree with.

I can see why many people are atheists because many of them see religion to be manipulative and dishonest. However, that's often what theists say about atheists.

I personally can see the logic in atheism, in a basic sense. I can see the logic in theism, in a basic sense. Although I believe that there is some sort of a deity and the thought that God's plan is seen to be incomprehensible is something worth acknowledging in my mind.

Good point, but according to a christian standpoint, there isn't intrinsic meaning because it implies meaning is essential to nature.. not god, if I'm correct.

You can refute all you want but I don't have much ground to stand on. I can tell you what Christians believe, in a basic sense, but I myself can't disprove any atheist or agnostic standpoints. Having said that, I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a "state your beliefs thread", not "refute one another" thread so I'd prefer not to debate anymore... although anyone can PM me if they want to know about Christian beliefs.

 

...wait what

Maybe people like Richard Dawkins or Bill Mahr who believe if you aren't atheist you are a waste of space but that isn't true of the majority of atheists who just don't care, if your religion has missionaries then the goal is to "manipulate" others into joining...because that's their job.

For an atheist what makes it so hard to accept anything about religion is because studying the etymology of it leads to further doubt over its point. As others in this thread have pointed out as well as people in the various videos, religion was very useful when no one understood anything. If I don't know how the sun works, it would be far easier for me to say its a god (like the Egyptians did) then to find out what it really is and how it relates to things. In modern day as we understand our world and the universe in general the need for a god grows smaller and smaller to the point where religion is only useful in one way: What happens after we die? Atheists believe we're here for the time we're here and that's it but that is a scary and uncomfortable view point and human beings don't like being faced with their own mortality. Religion's niche as it were would be this area and as long as people believe that there is a place waiting for them after they die they are content. Sure you can go with the wise creator point of view in which god started the big bang but that's just a lazy way to continually find ways for god to be a part of how the universe works and why it is there.

Just as a side point, if the dark ages didn't happen and the Enlightenment period happened 500 years earlier, just think of where the human race would be as a result.

 

If you can see logic in theism you certainly do not understand atheism. You can apparently see logic in supernatural claims that provide or even brag to provide no evidence.

 

Well, that's stark, but what I mean is that christians believe that god transcends all understanding. It sounds like it promotes ignorance, but like I said above, it's part of a larger plan.

I admit, I don't know much about physics, etc. But from a philosophical standpoint, I believe that the fact that there is anything must show there's some kind of superior being.

For the rest, I hope we can agree to disagree. I've said what I believe and I tried to clarify here, hope that helps.

 

I understand you know nothing about physics, but the 'something from nothing' argument people try to use to support supernatural claims is just rhetorical bullshit that abuses the scientific information. I brought this up before, perhaps you might not have read it. It is impossible to disprove the idea of a celestial deity or prime mover, that may be responsible for our universe. That still leaves you with all of your work still ahead of you in trying to use this to reinforce Theism. Theism says that not only do you know there is a god, but that you know him personally, and he knows you personally. Nowhere else ever is such an extraordinary claim produced without any evidence.

 

A larger plan that is reliant on ignorance. It doesn't promote ignorance, it forces it upon us. You could well parallel this with, say, how a parent sometimes just has to make a choice for their child regardless of whether the child understands or not. However, one could argue that parents didn't actively decide to make the child incapable of understanding these things, it's the nature of a younger human mind and why we're reliant on parents, just like any animal. Theoretically, God was in full control when he decided this plan, and decided that it inherently involves our ignorance. Yet we can't ask why, because that's fighting against the forced ignorance in itself. Surely you can see why people consider this a bit of a get out clause.

I'm not saying you shouldn't believe it, I'm just saying that it does rely upon ignorance, and saying that it's a part of a larger plan (even if you're OK to follow that plan) doesn't change that.

Isn't that just putting the question of why things exist off one stage? Why can a superior being's existence validate itself, but that of the universe can't?

 

IDK if somebody posted this already, I just take this into consideration...

Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus || Spoken Word - YouTube

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by zeppfloydsabbtull
I didn't read every post, so I hope that I'm not repeating anyone here,
but I don't see how thinking that someone is right and another person is wrong is bad. You wouldn't say "I respect your opinion" if you had everything in your life suggest that you had good eyesight when someone said that a table was right in front of you that you didn't see. Isn't it better for people to try to find truth?

Pegasi:Within the context of sight as a means of perception there's not much scope for discussion, or at least very little that we haven't addressed in pretty simple medical/scientific/whatever terms.

Response to Pegasi: I noticed that by using sight in my analogy I forgot to emphasize the importance of using our 5 senses’ complement- logical, rational, reasoning, which I think is just as objective. I hope that I didn’t imply that one could either see god or not, and that if they didn’t see god, there was no reason to believe in one.

Quote:
The existence of an all-powerful god isn't subjective, it can be supported by evidence or not- it's not like finding the most pleasing color or best music.

Pegasi:That's a pretty simplified view, imo simplified to the point of being incorrect. You can't empirically disprove the existence a god or gods, and the existence of one or many isn't predicated upon validation through observable evidence in the terms you're talking. My rough definition of religious faith, or even general spirituality (though again this is reliant on my reasonably rigid definitions for what are pretty vague words) would be treating emotion as means of perception, rather than an entirely internal phenomenon. In a completely different way from, say, sight, but with a comparable weight given to it within the conscious mind when assessing the nature of the outside world. I feel this is, at least for me, the root of the divergence between my own understanding of existence and perception of the world, and that which I perceive to be at the root of religious faith. I do not feel emotional perception to have a strong enough sense of self validation (in the long term, subject to reflection, obviously in the moment it can often be the very definition of self validating) within my mind for me to trust it, nor does it provide reasonable proof of reliability through cross-referencing as other senses or methods of perception do. However, I can understand that such a trust in emotion as a form of perception is not only possible but even defensibly reasonable (if only because, at that stage, you have no real context in which to consider what is and isn't reasonable) from an analytical rather than practical perspective.

Thus, in these terms, there is "observable" evidence by the bucketload, otherwise what is a believer perceiving when they feel faith (since to feel in this profound way is to perceive)?


Response to Pegasi: I agree; I did not consider emotional perception as evidence for the same reasons that you did not think that it was self-validating. Most people think that there is enough information to suggest that we are all perceiving the same thing, as in, what exists (I know that it’s possible that my perceptions are illusions and whatnot, but it is not useful to think about that). Any single person’s discrepancy in perception most probably does not mean that what exists is itself subjective, but that we should use all available information to determine if that evidence is outweighed or not (I thought that people’s emotional sense of the presence of god was so outweighed that I didn’t consider it evidence, thus maintaining that). Emotion is a reaction to other perception, perception including senses, the information obtained from them and thoughts based on that information. If someone wasn’t taught that god existed, though, does anyone think that that person would have an emotional perception of god? Certainly the early humans who created religions perceived god emotionally, but not every religion has the same emotional perceptions, and atheists don’t have them at all, including those that were taught religion at a young age and those that weren’t. Children are afraid of the dark- an emotional perception that seems to come from nowhere, much like emotional perception of god has no basis in anything but a group’s heads. These thoughts by themselves are not meant to convince anyone that emotional perceptions aren’t reliable simply because I do not feel like typing a full argument on that, nor do I think anyone wants to read that. I’m surprised that any humans are still at the “stage [at which], you have no real context in which to consider what is and isn't reasonable”.


Quote:
Theists who I have talked to completely abandon the idea that we should try our best to find out what actually exists. The only reason why people don't want to find truth about religion is because it would destroy the beliefs that their family or community gave them from birth; it would make them feel better to say that anyone who thinks they know better is unkind. I wouldn't talk to someone who didn't want to talk about it, though.


Pegasi:The only reason? Aw hell naw. Plenty of people (some of them very
thoughtful people by all accounts) come to religion not just later in life, but quite drastically, even abruptly (though how much such things may actually lend weight to your argument rather than hurt it is debatable). As above, I cannot identify with trusting emotional perception as a principle, but plenty do, and exactly why they do is much more complex, and involves stripping back how you understand things way more than you're accounting for.


Response to Pegasi: True. Converting to a religion is not the same as ignoring the argument of agnostics/atheists, the latter of which I was referring to, but you are completely right; they wouldn’t have long held beliefs once they heard arguments, and so long held beliefs would not be the only reason why they would ignore those arguments. Other reasons include the promise of eternal paradise after death for some religions, and help in this life in the forms of moral guidance and answers of prayer.


Quote:
What I'm interested in is how people came up with religion, specifically morals, in the first place. Tribal societies may be superstitious, but how did monotheists end up thinking that something supernatural taught them morals? We know that we have governments set up laws for our common protection; were people back then so stupid that they needed to be told not to murder only because they would suffer after death? Still, the bible did not discourage warfare, so people grasped that if you killed for any reason, you need not fear unless someone can enforce a law- that is, unless another human provides the disincentive. I have not read the bible myself, but people today and those who have interpreted it in history (i.e. crusaders) think that the murder commandment only applied within a society, much like any society that instigated war has civil laws against murder. Why? Because the people who make the laws agree that they do not want to be killed, but if they think that they can win a war they throw away the concept of the sanctity of human life. In other words, religious societies' morals reflect civil goals of communal self-protection, and are devoid of morals. If I thought about the Iraq war with the same conscience and respect for human life as Christians pretend to have, I'd go insane with misery.
Pegasio you not think that having such a staunch opinion on a book that you've never read is at least somewhat comparable to a creationist who refuses to try and understand the theory of evolution before dismissing it? I'm not saying it's going to convert you, I've read it and clearly I don't believe it, but I'd argue that your attempt to understand it is coming from the wrong direction. You seem to be working backwards from a position based on the assumption (however correct) of religion already having been proven wrong, redundant or whatever. I'm not talking about whether this is justified or not, I'm simply saying that if you're attempting to understand something, coming at it with a predication of it making no sense isn't going to yield a greater understanding of another perspective. The idea of working up from base principles to try and reach the point where religion was deemed to not only make sense, but be the only explanation, is the only way of attempting to both discern the difference between it and your own understanding of the universe, and also see more points of identification between the two (the nature of the human mind that you can see in both). I know your paragraph begins in this vein, but you don't seem quite committed to it.


Response to Pegasi: To your question, I don’t think that it is comparable at all. First of all, I did not pull that information out of thin air, and it is not an opinion. As for why I have not read it, I came to the conclusion that Christianity couldn’t be correct without anything more from the bible than the common knowledge that I got from catholic catechism classes once a week and mass once a week, including Genesis and other well-known stories; most of my thoughts while becoming an atheist were related to Christian teachings not focused heavily on the Bible text itself. For example, I knew about god’s (including Christ’s) miracles, and how they defied the physical laws that describe anything that has ever happened outside of the bible without reading the entire context of every single one of them. I’ve read passages and heard sermons there, I just didn’t read close to the whole thing, instead I have heard from others who have read it, including catholics and atheists (but you’ll notice that catholics are very selective about their passages- I didn’t hear catholics emphasize that the no murder commandment was only tribal). Are you implying that I haven’t read it because I am afraid that it will overturn everything I have been taught?

I agree about the rest- I have certainly failed to understand why religious people have had to make up supernatural stories to justify reasonable self-protecting civil laws, or why people believe in sacred morals that they abandon when they no longer serve self-interest, and I have failed to understand how religion was deemed to be the only sensible explanation- I do not take pleasure in thinking that what most humans have believed is nonsense, but this is what I think, and I am always searching for more information and analysis to get closer to truth.

Pegasi: EDIT: As for the wider argument of how religion (more specifically, organised religion, ie. spirituality extrapolated to a social structure) works out in practical terms. Humans are assholes, a scientist knows this and also knows why. I suppose if you consider original sin in the 'evidential' terms I mentioned before, then so does a creationist. Them having faith doesn't necessarily change that, especially since emotion is a) often self contradictory, inherently so and b) even if you trust it, a lot easier to ignore at your own convenience than the agreed forms of perception. People who fall prey to this are, in my experience, less prone to introspection and, if I might hazard a guess, working more from emotional perception being self validating, in the sense that they've barely (if ever) reflected upon it with doubt. I find them easier to argue with, if less likely to actually listen. But honestly, this is just humans being human again. Can you honestly look at the majority of the atheist/agnostic population and say that they're any less lazy or instinctive in that understanding of the universe? It's 'normal,' in a similar way to the root of religion in many people that you talked about above, and it's only going to get more so.


Response to Pegasi: Yes- I don’t find in my personal experience that self-proclaimed agnostics/atheists are as lazy or instinctual in that understanding of the universe. I’ve met a lot of people who want to ignore the whole topic of religion and go about their daily lives. Someone didn’t even have the courage to make an intellectual decision about calling himself an agnostic or not and said “religion:blank (underline)”. Agnostics and atheists tend to willingly think about things more, in my experience.

Pegasi:I mean look at it like this: if religion is baseless than it is inherently borne totally out of human nature, any appreciation of it being formed or even influenced by an outside force inherently proves some kind of spiritual validation. Therefore, such atrocities are manifestations of nothing more than human nature as, I think, can be nicely understood in scientific terms. As for the practical differences between how said laziness/manipulation of the laziness manifests itself (ie. how much worse they tend to be in religious cases), as ever I feel that saying "look what religion did" is over simplifying. It's really more of a historical and social question.

Response: I agree, my analysis pointed out an instance where humans just act like humans in spite of the ideals/morals of religion. The Crusades were just another of the land grabs common in human history. The Inquisition is one example of how people react to religious difference amongst other nonviolent scenarios, such as the condition of the multi-cultural U.S. It is also one of the instances of violent response to differences in anything, including ethnicity, nationality, culture- not just religion. And even these conflicts were sometimes fueled ultimately by greed of resources.

Oh, and without having to quote PacMonster1, where did you hear that Dawkins or Mahr consider non-atheists a waste of space? They simply think that they’re wrong. That is no sign of disrespect. They are not arrogant enough to think that people have value, because that would involve an entity valuing people. Many religions, however, hold that people who are not following a god are not doing anything meaningful, and some Christians, as we have been reminded of in this thread, believe that non-believers are going to hell.

 

Some people are atheists because religion is provably manipulative and dishonest. But all atheists are atheists because they see no proof of any deities, because no evidence exists.

Likewise, some people are theists because their parents spoon-fed their beliefs to them from a very young and impressionable age, and some people are theists because it fit their mindset, whether because they fear death, or suffer from a mental illness, or the simplicity of the theistic world-view placates them.

 

the problem i have with atheists is that they all seem to be so determined to prove that there's no god.

if you have a problem with someone's beliefs being shoved in your face,
is the solution to shove yours back in theirs?

idk. i dont believe in god. i dont consider myself an atheist. i am not any ism, i am just me.
its funny to me that atheists are sometimes just as zealous as the people they refute

 

I'm an atheist. I don't really care what people believe in. I have never had Christian beliefs forced down my throat like many other atheists say. I wouldn't hate them if they did try to force it down my throat because I would just decline. I would listen, like I always have, but I would most likely decline. I don't go out of my way to disrespect a person's beliefs because I don't care. For me, atheism is the lack of caring. For others, it's more scientific.

 

the problem I have with theists is that they all seem to be so determined to prove that there is a god.

yeah, not really.

But, yeah, I completely agree with the parts of your post deleted due to subtracting from the humor. I hate atheists who preach their stuff just as much as I hate theists who preach their stuff.



I believe in relativity; whatever you believe to be the truth inherently is, even against all proof and logic. Enter; Schrodinger and Descartes.

 

heh, i like that.
and i agree, it goes both ways.

 

If you dont believe in a deity, you are an atheist, just saying, and for most people, it is a 'pushed, pushed,pushed, until eventually you snap and push back" for atheists, as you cannot believe the hate we can get just for being atheist; called immoral, being constantly told we deserve to burn for all eternity for not believing, called idiots, berated, attacked, it is hard to put up with at times, and many people snap when they get all of it.

Also some believe that, oh, I dont know, maybe minorities shouldn't be treated like dirty trash that oppress the majority, and that someone has to draw the line and fight back against the bigotry. We are the minority as atheists, and theists are the majority, not the other way around. We don't get representatives on government, we don't get any of the leeways even smaller minorities get. We are all round treated like crap, and we get freaking tired of it.

I dont shove my atheism on people for exactly that reason(the reason you had said, not what I just said) titmar, however if people push theirs on me, I will not be afraid to bite back. In this particular case, I am talking because it is the subject of the discussion, so take what you want from this....

 

this is one of the most retarded videos that ever went viral. if somebody actually finds inspiration in that guy's empty words that rhyme sometimes then they may want to go read into something with substance for once. or continue watching jingling keys, their choice.

 

Wow, I didn't know that some atheists would try to talk to people when they don't want to talk- I didn't expect them to be so irrational as to seem aggressive for no result. That is what you mean, though, right? You didn't just hear an atheist refute religion when nobody asked him to stop talking and consider that "shoving it in faces", right? But there is a reason why atheists might be zealous- Christians have a political agenda against birth control, abortion, and gay marriage. They also want "Intelligent Design" to be taught as if it were as credible as the theory of evolution. Birth control is not really contested so much because of its popularity, including amongst self-proclaimed (not as orthodox) Christians. By "Christians" I don't mean all politically active Christians, of course. To you, religion might just be something that people argue about from time to time to no real effect, but it can influence policy if enough people support it. Interestingly enough, those issues aren't really related to core Christian beliefs, but peripheral ones. If Christians wanted the same legal status with the same rights and same name as a right between members of the same sex, if they wanted people to be able to prevent pregnancy much in the same way that it is not a sin for someone to decline sex in the first place, or if they thought that killing an organism not much more conscious or capable of suffering than livestock so that it won't grow up without being cared for properly didn't disregard the sanctity of human life, Christianity would not be much different.

Reflex Ion- If someone believes that there is a benevolent god to pray to, such that it exists, wouldn't there be a god to answer those prayers? Wouldn't everyone who has done such a thing be filthy rich? Oh- even against all proof and logic. That should be a religion!

 

Well that's the point, depending on the level at which you're considering it, use of our accepted senses isn't truly objective. You can either consider Cartesian Doubt and his idea of a deceitful god, or just watch the Matrix. I don't think active deceit is even necessary for doubt in everything but your own existence, a hallucination gestures towards the idea of arriving at such a point through chance. Don't get me wrong, I do accept the validity of these senses beyond reasonable doubt, but there's a difference between reasonable doubt and trusting them as objectivity (because it's just that, trust, when you get past accounting for it only to be reasonable doubt).

Past the point of reasonable doubt in accepted senses, which I am in the practical sense but think it's important to be open to in philosophical terms (even if only to increase understanding of other perspectives), I agree. I think it's way to easy to look back even vaguely at the development of religion alongside and not smell a rat as to where it's come from. The key questions are, as you say, how much it's changed, the different standards and rules of each, and just the fact that 'religion' as a human trait is so fragmented and disparate.

But I guess it's easy to look at religions as one when you're on the outside, rather than on the inside of one where that's inherently correct and others seem as senseless to them as they all do to us. Once you get in to literal truth discussions as well, then the observance of how religion has developed to show itself as nothing other than a manifestation of our human nature and emotional aspects of our psyche kinda falls down too, just like using evolution to argue with a creationist.

I think the most important point you've raised here is, however, why someone would trust emotional perception, especially in the context of doubt which exists in the world around us, and moreso in today's society as not inherently religious. Getout clauses are key, such as dogma tying doubt in to evil influence, and reinforcing faith by those around us (it's always easier to just see the confidence in another and not their doubt, generally because it's the bit they want others to see). But the core is how emotion acts within the brain, something that is very dependant on the person.

There are those who, in the context of religion or not, are largely guided in their conscious thought by emotion. This is true of all people to a certain degree, it's who we are (and if you want to get in to it, probably the reason we're so successful, or at least a large part of it). I used the example of how consuming anger can be, but that's not the best example for these purposes because that's a thing of the moment for most people, and generally comes in swings at least. Love is the much better example here, and is by far the closest emotion to faith, since faith is essentially love for an idea (even if that's an idea of a distinct being) rather than a person we can see and touch. It can define the way you live your life, and how often do you see people ignore logic in a situation for the sake of love? God may not exist, but he doesn't beat you, yet still people go back to people who hurt them.

I do not trust emotional perception, but I know I can feel love and I sure don't want to actively reject that through logic. The difference is that you can be enjoy love whilst still accepting the fallibility, even senseless of it, whilst organised religion has this inbuilt sense of infallibility. But then "can" is the important bit, because even in the case of love plenty of people don't, "they love me really," "they really are a good person" etc. Basically, whilst I may never be a person who sees faith as self validating, or doesn't see enough reasonable doubt within it to disregard it, but instead hold a point much further back along the scale, I think it's important to see myself on that scale at the core of my being, because without my place on that scale life wouldn't really be worth living. How much do you let emotions (be they faith, love, or just happiness at a given moment) guide or even rule your life? Very tricky, and the distinction of faith is, I feel, a little too concrete to account for it being an extension of what makes life worth living for spiritual or non spiritual people.

Rather soppy, I know, and the main problem with this idea is that it can't really act as a bridge in discussion since it involves accepting religion as a fallible. It's basically impossible to be religious because it may be wrong but it makes me happy, as that in itself isn't really faith. One cannot hold this view from inside faith, and so it generally comes off as either wrong, or even condescending, just like a look at religious development within human society. Therefore this is where I personally run in to a bit of a brick wall in discourse.

Neither did they. I see trusting dogma as trusting another person, they see it as trusting God, neither equates to "making it up." As for how the bible was written, that's actually a very interesting discussion, and one that isn't even as damning (no pun intended) of those who 'made it up' as it may seem. The idea of literal interpretation is actually a relatively recent one, however reluctant people are to accept or even examine this.

Your last question directly disregards what I said. It didn't convert me, based on what little I know of you I can't see how it would convert you. But it seems like you're attempting to understand religion a little further without taking some of the obvious steps towards doing so. Hell, even if the aim is arguing against something, a greater understanding of something can help this too. It can help you zero in on the key points of divergence between you and the religious perspective, which generally offers an increased understanding of your own perspective.

Isn't the stage by stage nature of embellishment and development pretty obvious? Generations. The Bible may not have been written literally, but it only takes a few generations to forget that. Imagine what thousands of generations can do for changing, shifting, diverging paths of spirituality which started off as nature spirits to understand **** that we just didn't even close to have an answer for.

You're not accounting for the difference between theism and atheism/agnosticism. The former is inherently active, the latter is not, and so only considering 'self proclaimed agnostics/atheists' isn't a fair comparison for this discussion. Ignoring the discussion is, in arguable terms, agnosticism, an unconscious and passive form albeit.

Precisely.

I like the way you think, btw, even when we disagree.

EDIT:

One point: consider your use of "they." I know plenty of christians (in fact pretty much every christian) who isn't at all in line with the frankly batshit insane GoP christian approach. Again, much of this is actually relatively recent. Don't fall in to the trap of grouping all christians, picking the most abhorrant examples of acting upon said beliefs, and then coin that as "they." Resentment of religion is often present in atheistic argument, for exactly the reasons you said: the horrible things that some people do under that banner. But letting this resentment cloud your view, you're forming a subjective view of the other side, hell even seeing 'the other side' as one group that can't be separated on these particular issues.

This is exactly what I talked about with militant atheists (something I feel Dawkins, Sagan and some others are sometimes guilty of, but not the majority of the time by any means) and how I, if anything, dislike it more when they resort to such wide, sweeping points. Your entire position in this discussion aims to base itself on objectivity, the rejection of emotion guiding your perception and thus reasoning, this isn't true of a religious perspective, so in doing this you're being hypocritical in a way that they aren't, even in doing the exact same thing.

And he didn't hit on other's beliefs (also, hit on? lol) with that statement at all. Discussion and criticism kinda go hand in hand, it's inherent in disagreeing with such a base philosophical point, but I don't feel he crossed the line in to insulting at all. If it's your belief that it's not only your right, but duty to actively push your beliefs on people then fine. In many ways I see the love you're displaying by trying to help me, and appreciate it, but that's dependant on case and some people clearly just like to push their minds on to others and have been given righteous justification to do so in their own eyes. If this is your view, you have to put up with people getting pissed off at you for it sometimes, you just do.

 

True, it sounds tantalizing, but, the way I see it, it's God's measure to humble humanity. And it's only through freewill that it could happen. Why? Because it creates growth, I suppose. It's debatable, of course, that's why I think people are given freewill.

Yes, but I'm trying to say that that isn't the point, exactly. It's about creating a connection between god and oneself.

To me, you need a reason to create anything. There has to be something to create something, and it doesn't seem logical that a universe could appear from nothing. On the other hand, that could go against a theistic argument as well, but it ties back into the incomprehensible tidbit... so.. it's hard telling.

I enjoy debating but I don't want to keep this up because it seems this isn't the right place to debate.