Guest Valk0010 Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 I have heard it said a lot, that unbelievers should be totally unhappy without god. I am not normally a happy person, so I could potentially be proof of that. However, there is so many things in this world that are just simply better then church and better then religion could ever provide. My prime example of this is music. No sermon, no prayer, can replace the peace that music gives me. I may have a song on repeat and listen to it twenty times straight through, because of how great and meditative it is. Here is the one I am currently listening too, for that purpose. Now its your turn. I want this to be a list of things that make the world beautiful according to you. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaiser01 Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 The universe without God is a place of wonder. when i tried to go back to religion i couldn't do it because the universe became boring and meaningless. I couldn't do it, it felt worse than any guilt, any pain when i looked into the stars and saw no beauty, it was painful. This song is a christian song ironically but it reminds me of existence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcdaddy Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Just thinking about the size of the universe, and the potential that the universe could be the size of the earth in another larger universe. Infinity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
openpalm45 Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Opening my mind to new ideas. Discovering the world, people, and life. Genuine moments with other human beings. Emotion. Edit: I put emotion because I used to not let myself feel, thinking that my own emotions were invalid, unimportant, and something to "overcome". Now when I experience emotion or see another experience true emotions, I see the beauty of humanity. I feel connected to the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
openpalm45 Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Great thread, btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serendipity Rose Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 I have heard it said a lot, that unbelievers should be totally unhappy without god. I am not normally a happy person, so I could potentially be proof of that. However, there is so many things in this world that are just simply better then church and better then religion could ever provide. Our world is beautiful whether you believe in a god...or not. Recognizing that it is up to us to take responsibility for it is priceless. Photo credit: Trey Ratcliff, http://stuckincustoms.com CC license non-commercial 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
London Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 What is beautiful to me is all contained in this series, Planet Earth BBC. Everything they share just makes me realize how much is going on in places I may never visit, and I am but a speck in time. It just amazes me how the planet functions. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryper Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 "I am made from the dust of starsand the oceans swim in my veins" - Rush Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryper Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 This one is just cool. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeCoastie Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 A true believer preached to me as I walked to the market. He asked if I believed and I told him I didn't. He asked me why and I said what I've seen and learned from the world has shown me that there is no personal god. The believer rattled off some Bible verse about the world being evil. I pointed to the snow covered mountains surrounding the town and said, "THE WORLD IS AWESOME!" I take great pride in my travels. I've seen rain forests, deserts, coral reefs, beaches, ice burgs, glaciers, whales, canyons, gators, elephants, volcanoes, and much much more. Your book and its petty god were written by tiny men who hardly ventured beyond the horizon. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarahlee Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Sometimes, I just like to sit down and think "what was here before this house? What was here before that? What was in this exact spot 500 years ago? 5000? 5billion?!" It's definitly a humbling experience, and for some reason is fascinates me to no end! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wester Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Music and Art - yeah baby - Music and Art --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvSr_N3aV0I&feature=related 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaiser01 Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 I am blown away by beauty in general - art, music, nature. There is so much we still have to learn about nature, too. Right now I am inspired by the mission to Mars (another thread). That human beings can actually explore other planets is always a thrill. I still remember when Neil Armstrong stepped off onto the moon. I hope that I can learn a lot more about the planets in the next 30 or so years I have left. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Babylonian Dream Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 I hear people say "Earth is hell" and people say living life is so horrible. I just think, yeah its hard as hell, but believe me, its a paradise you have to struggle to survive in, but its beautiful and I couldn't imagine a better world to live in. I can definitely think of ways to improve how we live in this world though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onyx Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 "Et in Arcadia ego." is a sentiment I can believe of Earth as much as I can believe that, "Mundus horribile est." but the former wins out in the end because once you get past the leg worms and the harlequin fetuses, you have the Amazon, Mt Everest, the blade of the grasses, consciousness itself, the sky, the sheer enormity of the universe and then you cannot see the world of the Bible as envisioned ever again the same. Fuck the Bible and the religion riding on it. I like the actual world better, ya megalomanical genocidal foreskin slicing bastard if you ever feckin existed, that is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ ficino ♦ Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 Hey Valk, I agree about the beauty in the world. It's so easy to overlook when the wounded parts of the world impinge upon us. Your post inspired me to look up the lyrics of When I Ruled the World, and I discovered that what I had been hearing as "I know St. Peter will call my name" is "I know St. Peter won't call my name." Ha ha! When I thought I was hearing about St. Peter calling someone's name, I used to get tiny glimmers of kinda sorta wishing I could believe the way I did when I was a Catholic... I like the song anyway. JoeCoastie - yes, awesome, isn't it, the world. Onyx - "et in Arcadia ego" - love it! Have you read Brideshead Revisited, in which that expression is used? I like the cat on your icon. Just a quibble: it should be "mundus horribilis". BTW there's a kiwi in the National Aviary in Pittsburgh PA but the fucker didn't show when I was there. Things that make the world beautiful for me-- my lover my friends my cat in nature, places I remember all my life: Hawk Mt. Pa, Martha's Vineyard, the West Branch of the Delaware, the Rockies, Delphi, the marshes near Agadir music and art so much of my religious experience was experience of music and art, from when I "was born again" listening to someone play the organ in the chapel at college and thinking that the music went beyond the material world. Some things that make me kinda sorta wish I believed: Bach's B Minor Mass, the chorale from his Wachet Auf Faure's Requiem Piazzetta's ceiling fresco in S. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, showing St. Dominic taken to heaven. One nun looks down from the rim of heaven at the viewer and beckons, as if to say, 'come up here with us'. The last real prayer I prayed was in that chapel, and even then I was praying to God, if you exist. Caravaggio's David holding the head of Goliath, looking at his enemy's severed head with a mixture of stern justice and pity. David's face is painted from a real guy, Ceco de Boneri, whom Caravaggio used as a model, and I suspect they were lovers. The severed head of Goliath bears the face of Caravaggio himself. I get tears in my eyes every time I see this painting in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. the vast expanse of the heavens and thinking of the universe as eternal a horse running 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Margee Posted July 13, 2012 Moderator Share Posted July 13, 2012 Sometimes, I just like to sit down and think "what was here before this house? What was here before that? What was in this exact spot 500 years ago? 5000? 5billion?!" It's definitly a humbling experience, and for some reason is fascinates me to no end! I was going to say something like this myself sara. I am in amazement right now, as I watch the human species with such compassion for the effort, fight and the spirit, we have to survive. Humans deserve a medal! It is leading me to have a very compassionte heart. We are one hell of a fantastic species !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
owen652 Posted July 14, 2012 Share Posted July 14, 2012 this. sometimes i just stop and think, 'holy crap! we walked on the moon!' (and drove too!) still blows me away. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onyx Posted July 14, 2012 Share Posted July 14, 2012 this. sometimes i just stop and think, 'holy crap! we walked on the moon!' (and drove too!) still blows me away. That. is. humanity's. crowning. moment. of. awesomeness. so. far! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onyx Posted July 14, 2012 Share Posted July 14, 2012 Onyx - "et in Arcadia ego" - love it! Have you read Brideshead Revisited, in which that expression is used? I like the cat on your icon. Just a quibble: it should be "mundus horribilis". BTW there's a kiwi in the National Aviary in Pittsburgh PA but the fucker didn't show when I was there. Oh Ficino, that's one of my cats! I have three cats. Actually no, I haven't read Brideshead Revisited but I got that from a poem somewhere. Either way, mundus horribilis or world's horrible, it's not ultimately overpowering. A predictive definition of goodness is that it is something that ultimately would benefit us or whoever is remaining at the end of all things. In other words, goodness is let in in at the utter end. Badness has a way of truly self limiting as devastating as it may be. I'm just glad that we have the concepts of remorse, grace, forgiveness and regeneration because I don't want to imagine how horrible it would be otherwise. Besides, there are great things remaining to be enjoyed and done. If only we all could get through our problems in one piece to do that. Awesome that there is a NZ connection in your world! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.W. Posted July 14, 2012 Share Posted July 14, 2012 The magic of our world. The strange awkwardness of how alien we really are, only discovered as we sit far from society, in nature with wild animals, in our neat little clothes, eating food like bread, prepared in a way you will never just find laying around. How did we come from that empty desert, forrest, or jungle to live in the city? Only to discover that much of what we think of our world is our own creation. Its god like really. The most amazing patterned design can not top the beauty of a pluming cloud. No modern art can capture the chaotic beauty of a mountain. No instrument has been able to replace the beauty of the voice-- even when sung in a different language it can stir someone to tears. The magic. No candle lit spell. I mean the magic of our orderly chaos. How contradictory yet obvious it is. Try to pin down the pattern of what it is to be cloud in words. You can't. But you can see it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted July 15, 2012 Share Posted July 15, 2012 My prime example of this is music. No sermon, no prayer, can replace the peace that music gives me. AMEN! This is a wonderful song you shared and I get what you get from it. It expresses freedom of spirit alive in the hearts of humans. It's that freedom, loosed from the chains of religious dogma and set free to be the beauty that it is in an incredible universe full of wonder, mystery, love and joy; to find that in ourselves, to be that in ourselves with the universe in us, to breathe, to give, to live. It is life. Through things like music, poetry, dance, song, we express that liberty in ourselves which reaches to flow and explode in creation. We are God. We are that Life. And the religious need to hear our Song and be freed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wndwalkr99 Posted July 15, 2012 Share Posted July 15, 2012 I have heard it said a lot, that unbelievers should be totally unhappy without god. I am not normally a happy person, so I could potentially be proof of that. Forgive my quibble, please, but that does not constitute proof by any definition. A piece of evidence, yes, but poor at best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
par4dcourse Posted July 15, 2012 Share Posted July 15, 2012 Nivek posted this on facespace. I'm still in awe. Looking at Earth, Jupiter, Venus from Mars, what a concept. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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