On the Existence of "God"

I’ve seen that Protestant services are more of a celebration of God and life. Alot of singing and such. Catholic services deal with ritual and ceremony. The sermons however, do present a moral lesson or a New Testament event.
thesquire- Is your fiance’ Catholic or Protestant? A digruntled Catholic moving to a Protestant arena may enjoy Church more…

I’ve seen that Protestant services are more of a celebration of God and life. Alot of singing and such. Catholic services deal with ritual and ceremony. The sermons however, do present a moral lesson or a New Testament event.

yeah thats what i noticed too, and thats what made me change. im “evangelisch”, which is protestant, in germany, been baptized too and all, but at school and pretty much everytime i dealt with it it was catholic (i was on a catholic school).
my fiance and her family are going to the baptist church and it is alooot different from catholic, not as much ritual and ceremony.
i like that and i think if it were more like that here in germany, alot more people would actually go to church.
.Christoph

The Protestant Reformation was born in Germany, but it sounds like you may have grown up in a strong Catholic area anyway. Where I grew up in New Jersey was like that as well. If you are still searching for a more agreeable Christian group to join, Germany should have various groups such as the Lutherans or Calvinists to check out hopefully within a local area…

no atually both my parents didnt raise me into any religion , altho i was baptised protestant. i went to church on christmas (catholic) and i went to a catholic private school, with religion class until year 13.
the only thing i did “protestant” was catuchemen(spelling?) classes when i was like 14,they were protestant (and i liked it alot better already than catholic, but still not enough), and i only did that cos of the money u got afterwards from all ur relatives.

@Field:

The Protestant Reformation was born in Germany, but it sounds like you may have grown up in a strong Catholic area anyway. Where I grew up in New Jersey was like that as well. If you are still searching for a more agreeable Christian group to join, Germany should have various groups such as the Lutherans or Calvinists to check out hopefully within a local area…

don’t forget the Mennonites :)
we spent over 100 years in Germany and most Mennonites i know still speak some high AND low German (plautdiesche).
Also many of us are very pleasant . . . .

nuh uh!! dont tell me ur a mennonite!! Theres a family working for my fiances dad that are! and they speak low german!! unfortunately i dont understand much of what they say, just a few words here and there. guess its like a mix of alot of different languages.
but they are very nice people!
.Christoph

Seems like you are more from the south of Germany then :)

Seems like you are more from the south of Germany then

excuse me?! no im not! stupid bavarian ppl :D
im from western germany….

grins that’s southern for me :)

u have a bad sense of geography then :roll:
hehe! :wink:

Tsss…… everything south of the Elbe river is south :)

uuuh…NO!
(postcount go up yipee!)
:D

How can you be not sure whether you believe in God or not?
Not believing in him doen’t claim that he does not exist, it simply states that there’s nothing which made me believe he does. So if I’m not sure whether he exists, I do not believe he exists.
Nobody can prove God does not exist, nor can anybody prove Dragons do not exist or Mickey Mouse, but it is very unlikely.

@Meijing:

How can you be not sure whether you believe in God or not?
Not believing in him doen’t claim that he does not exist, it simply states that there’s nothing which made me believe he does. So if I’m not sure whether he exists, I do not believe he exists.
Nobody can prove God does not exist, nor can anybody prove Dragons do not exist or Mickey Mouse, but it is very unlikely.

are you certain that you’re not really FinsterniS in disguise? 'Cuz if you were, you forgot about the toothfairy.

FinsterniS? toothfairy? I don’t know any of those.
Though FinsterniS is German meaning DarknesS.

I just wanted to point out that “I don’t know” does not mean, “I don’t know whether god exists or not”, but “I don’t know whether I believe or not”.
And the last sounds pretty strange to me, unless you didn’t talk to you recently.

@Meijing:

FinsterniS? toothfairy? I don’t know any of those.
Though FinsterniS is German meaning DarknesS.

I just wanted to point out that “I don’t know” does not mean, “I don’t know whether god exists or not”, but “I don’t know whether I believe or not”.
And the last sounds pretty strange to me, unless you didn’t talk to you recently.

FinsterniS was a poster here previously. Fairly logical and very antagonizable (is that a word?). He used the same logic as you - i.e. "just because i can not prove that the tooth fairy does not exist does not mean that it does . . . ".

first of all, i’m glad this hasn’t developed into something far worse than it could have. most wars ever fought have had some type of religious component, so obviously there had better be something to this. personally, i believe that whoever tries to be a good person and believes that there is a god, will get their version of heaven. if you don’t, no big deal. it can be argued either way, i guess maybe i shouldn’t have started in on this, but really, let’s just all agree to disagree. i’m too tired to be thinking straight, so i’m just going to stop before i ramble too much more.

The funny thing is:
If god exists, does it then matter what the people “personally” think?
If god exists, does a divine truth exists? Does that include universal laws of adoration?
So, does this “i believe in God because it does me nothing bad, and just in case i will then be on the safer side” count as true faith?

That’s not it at all. That was simply a response to someone who thinks that believing in God is a waste of time. :(

believing in god is not necessarily a waste of time, because i know plenty of believers who dont practice in any way. i think what it is is a false hope. like many false hopes, its not necessarily a bad thing, but it can prove to be one of the worst things there is.

Grigory said:

most wars ever fought have had some type of religious component

how true it is. one of many examples is the crusades, which cost thousands (im sure more, but i dont want to overestimate) of lives.

the islamic terrorist groups are examples as well. true, they are not the true representation of an islamic person, as it is a peaceful religion, but they are acting in the name of god (or allah) none the less.

ill leave with this thought.

while religion can be a very good thing, bringing joy, wonder, and meaning to people’s lives, and inspiring them to be good, honest people, it can also be a terrible thing, bringing pain and suffering, and inspiring mass slaughters, and countless “holy” wars. while you can see this as a regretful occurence, but think the benefits outweigh them, i think that religion of any kind, when practiced on any kind of large scale only leads to problems, and i think that belief in god is one thing, while religion is something truly different. if you choose to believe in god, that is all well and good, but it should be a private thing. if there truly is a god, i seriously doubt that it would require sacraments and rituals to be considered a “good, decent person” who belongs in heaven, or your belief equivalent. i think that religion should be abolished everywhere