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Comment by butILoveLife | Hacker News Reader

The God thing is only temporary though. At some point you will seek Truth and the world will collapse on you.. Not only will you have an existential crisis, but your friend group will begin to shy away from you.

But otherwise I basically agree. I think God is great for you in the psychological short term. Machiavelli to Dostoevsky agree.

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This is my personal opinion. I think it doesn't have to be a short term fix. If you are curious enough and open minded you can find a long term relationship with God that doesn't contradict verifiable truth as long as you are willing to question collectively accepted "truths". For me, Natural theology has been one of the main foundations in my path to get closer to God. Understanding that physics stumbled upon the Spirit of God (the aether / zero point energy) and decided to look away has been super important in this journey. If you look at the recent work from physicist Nassim Haramein you'll see that Creation was not an event in a remote past after which God retired to his throne (Haramein doesn't mention God, but he explains how zero point energy sustains all matter at all times). If you agree that there is a Creator entity and you approve Haramein's theory, then zero point energy is the active force by which the Creator operates, and then creation is happening everywhere, always, and the same force that created everything is actively sustaining everything, everywhere, forever.

I've read 9 years of philosophy. Its never happening.

It gets worse than you know. Not only is the doctrinal god not real... not even the Stoic thiest god more valid than agnosticism. (Epistemology)

It gets worse: There is nothing that says the words of human are more valid than looking to nature. There is 0 way to factually chose between them. (Epistemology)

It continues to get worse: Circles aren't real, they are a construct of human language. Even our knowledge of material things is subject to the same limitations. Organic molecules see the world, and different organic molecules turn this into logical thought. Then we vibrate some air particles as we explain to others. (Ontology)

Anyway, its much worse than you think. Do not read philosophy if you want to continue being happy like you are. All paths in philosophy lead to nihilism.

You will be better served investigating alternative definitions of God, such as the pantheistic god; the panentheistic god (encompassing not just the physical universe but the intellectual one as well); or simply the Aristotelian "first cause" proven (non constructively) to exist of necessity by various cosmological arguments, rooted in ex nihilo, nihil fit and rejection of infinite regress (preferring axiomatics in the Munchhausen Trilemma).

It should be noted that even the late Hitch was unable to defeat the Kalam version of the cosmological argument in debate against Dr. Craig at Biola University.

With 9 years of philosophy reading it should be trivial for you to prompt-expand this comment into its full ramifications.

I'm agnostic, not atheist.

There can be a God, but I don't see him writing any messages in the sky. I def don't think the doctrines given to us by old men are god.

(Also, I try really hard to stay away from contemporary philosophy because most people are academia, and academia is awful. I genuinely think they are subpar, but mostly because they are indoctrinated with platonic realism and that permeates/infects them.)

You should work on your reading comprehension skills. Everything you have written is a complete non sequitur.

It's useless to copy/paste words from an LLM when you barely understand what they mean, and you are fooling nobody with your self-professed "9 years" of knowledge.

Perhaps yesterday's commenters were right, and HN should just bar all new accounts from posting entirely.

You just mad that I already knew those ideas. I didn't even disagree. You know what the word agnostic means right?

Just go back to pouring my beers, please. I'll take a Labatt 50.

>All paths in philosophy lead to nihilism.

Well, I'd say any serious non-delusional thinker would be a nihilist to some degree.

This statement is based on a surface level (if that) understanding of Christianity. Machiavelli and Dostoevsky aside, whose criticisms are somewhat deeper but still misguided, there are many thinkers who question the existence of God but acknowledge the benefits of a God-centered society.

> God-centered society

Need not be Christian.

You're right.

But society where the basis has a liberal perspective, individual sovereignty is held in the highest regard, private property is protected, and the nuclear family is the underpinning of it, I'm okay with. Judeo-Christian societies have this, and maybe aside from Sikhs and some Buddhist sects I don't know of any other religion that does this.

I'd strongly disagree with this. Since becoming serious about my faith as a 15 year old from a non-christian background, my life and my friend group has gotten progressively better. I had an existential crisis that helped bring me to faith - basically what is the point of anything if there's nothing beyond this world of matter? I've not had one since, as I don't believe this world of matter is all there is.

Yeah... Don't read philosophy. Don't seek truth.

And if you do, you better have a new game plan for happiness and your friend group.

How about the truth that most communities are built around some kind of nonsense, and maybe you can deal with a bit of nonsense to enjoy the benefits of community?

I can't think of a way to feel more hollow like the OP describes. Not making any claims or suggestions for others just pointing out how different that would make me feel compared to the suggestion. Different strokes for different folks apparently.

I would say that the empirical data of the number of people who die with a belief in God may contradict your assumption. I'm not religious but I have many religious friends and family members.

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