It's amazing how difficult it seems to be to get happy with these things and it always just lasts for a few moments. Whereas God can make one happy in a much deeper sense without all the effort. Also it can last much longer (until you neglect the relationship with him)
I don't see how this is relevant. Having a god in your life doesn't exclude you from the benefits of trying and conquering new things in life. Also, a relationship with god probably won't give you sweet quads.
Can't tell if you're trolling, but are you suggesting that riding a bike requires more effort than having a deep relationship with God? I suspect your local religious leader would disagree.
Exercise is good for your body and your mental health. Any sane religion would not discourage it.
Ah right, I should have known that saying something about the effort was going to be taken like that. What I meant is the effort is completely different. The story about biking makes it very obvious that it's just a very temporary happiness that can be achieved by something like that. It's not reliable in any way. You fight for one moment of happiness and you don't even know if it will even come. Wonderful.
Existentialists spend their whole lives chasing fleeting moments of earthly happiness. It's all we got. Don't take it away from us.
If you've managed to find God's love, all the best to you. Still, even if this is your permanent, reliable source of serenity, it does not mean you shouldn't seek happiness in this mortal world as well. Your comment is completely irrelevant.
As if your way to brighten up your life was not a delusion. If you insist on the material worldview everything is a delusion, that means me and you (the ego) included. None of that is real.
It's sad how much you hate God around here. I hope for you that he's not real.
It's sad how much you hate God around here. I hope for you that he's not real.
The god delusion, awesome. Being a student of philosophy for a long time, and avid cyclist for longer, and someone who's shed the childish notion of the vengeful god, I can say for certain there is no god and therefore, there's no reason to worry about 'him' being 'real'.
However, if you round a corner on your bike and slam into an oncoming car, THAT is real. God will not magically make your molecules pass through that car and leave you unharmed. God will not fill up your energy when your climbing those hills nor will he fill up your stomach whenever you want. You have to do that, because THAT is real.
Yes, we live mostly by the ego. So it is and we continue forward finding happiness here and there (sometimes all over - the universe to me is far more beautiful than the notion of a vengeful, side-taking god), just 'living' the human experience. People let 'god' ruin that, always have, (sadly) always will.
Cycling helps us produce endorphins. If our body holds out and we don't feel like puking after that one or many hills, we can feel elated. That's brain chemistry. There's no magic switches and god has nothing to do with any of that. He saves no one from accidents, stops no wars, does not magically wave his hand/wand and turn that homeless guy into a 'cured' millionaire. Just like he will not magically lift me up so I can fly thru the air to the top of a nasty hill.
No, he's definitely not real, nor does he need to be. When I was young and realized organized religion was a sham, a veil was lifted over my eyes. Human existence has so much beauty (and sure, plenty of pain and suffering, just ask the Buddha) and I'm just happy being a part of that. I only have one shot to experience all of it. So, for me, cycling is a part of that beauty, just like the OP said. Stop robbing everyone of their experiences with beauty just because you believe in a hypothetical, invisible, vengeful, biased, super being. Leave us mortals who have to deal with reality every day to enjoy our postings in peace.
You keep talking like what you experience would be real. I would like to remind you that in your worldview everything you experience is brain chemistry, also the notion of self. You are not more real than the dream that you had last night.
>However, if you round a corner on your bike and slam into an oncoming car, THAT is real.
The pain isn't real. The notion that you are on a bike is not real. The only thing that is real is that matter slams into matter. Everything else is a product of consciousness which in materialism is nothing but a fluke of nature, but certainly has nothing to do with reality.
> Stop robbing everyone of their experiences with beauty just because you believe in a hypothetical, invisible, vengeful, biased, super being. Leave us mortals who have to deal with reality every day to enjoy our postings in peace.
Oh, I didn't know that the only thing you want is people patting you on the back so that you can enjoy your happy life. Sorry for waking you up and question your existence. Dream on then.
Yeah, and how did you learn about this god of yours? By reading a material object - a book - written by material beings based on ideas generated in their "brain chemistry," that's how. There's no special metaphysical basis for a knowledge of god, despite your stupid rationalisations.
And we don't "hate God" here - we don't hate any of the imaginary deities invented throughout human history. All of those ideas played an important role in early human culture, even if they are now all firmly past their best by date. Anyway, how can you hate something that doesn't exist? Your claim that we hate your god makes as much sense to us as a Hindu telling you that you hate Ganeesh and Shiva would to you. You would make similar arguments to a Hindu as to why their silly superstition is false, while preserving your own superstition from the same equally-valid critique. We simply observe the most logical and efficient explanation of the many competing ancient superstitions and surmise that they are all equally ungrounded in reality.
We are simply irritated by people who refuse to quit clinging to ancient, irrelevant superstitions, refuse to accept the cutting edge of human knowledge, refuse to accept and take charge of our position in the universe and advance the human story, refuse to accept our true ignorance of the nature of the universe (implicit in claiming that ~3000 year old ideas made up by people orders of magnitude more ignorant than us still have any relevance or signal any absolute truth) - and worst of all refuse to keep their irrelevant ignorance in their pants and instead run around trying to criticise intelligent, enlightened, superstition-free people.
