Do you believe in (a) God?

Do you believe in God?
If yes, which one? (The Christian God? The muslim Allah? The Jewish JHW? An ancient Greek goddess?)
If yes, do you believe in the same God as your parents? Why?

I was born and raised Catholic. I was a server also. However, I lost the faith in high school. I still have the greatest respect for Catholicism and religion in general. In class, I use religious references. I do the same when I encounter people who are religious. But I don't believe.

No. It inherently reduces the beauty and complexity and the beautiful complexity of our world, of our circumstance and hazard, to a mere superstition.

If that's not also inherently dangerous, then I don't know what is.

(Example: Bush, and the media around him, blaming Hurricane Katrina on 'God', and yet looking to the same entity for guidance through its aftermath. An absolute atrocity of intellectual crisis, and epitome of a large number of people's way of thinking.)

I say inherently to combat claims that there can be a reasonable overlap between theism and atheism, between a belief in a Grand Designer and natural science. We live in an age of moderate 'political correctness', wherein we must all bend over backwards to accommodate all beliefs, in the name of multi-culturalism, more often than not at the expense of genuine scientific (and therefore human) progression. It's very dangerous.

Can I assume that non-believers don't use phrases or words, like "god-damn" or "Jesus Christ!"?

In the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode entitled "The Survivor," there's a hilarious scene where Larry David and his wife Cheryl are renewing their vows in a Jewish ceremony. When Larry breaks the glass with his foot, he accidentally steps on the rabbi's hand, causing it to bleed. The rabbi hysterically runs out of the room, yelling "Oh my hand! It's bleeding! Jesus!"

You can if you want, the same way I could assume believers don't curse at all.

Both assumptions would be inane.

I wish I had a nickel for everytime I've used those phrases when I've hit my thumb with a hammer, stubbed my toe, saw my kid's grades, or viewed an interception or a triple play. When I die, if there is a heaven, I plan to use those references as my loophole to get in.

They'll send you to the other place. Did you forget: "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name."

Sorry, olivant.

No. It's not a misuse; it's an affirmation. At least, that's what I plan to argue.

Yes I believe in GOD.

Yes, I do, and always have.

I was raised Catholic, yet during college I became "smawt" and thought I was agnostic at the time. Youth and education are wasted on the young.

I had almost forgotten about the simple thing known as Faith, which transcends any argument on the contrary. And knowledge helps a lot, too. I don't have blind faith; I research now and then and find things don't conflict nearly as much as nonbelievers might think.

Merry Christmas*

*the celebration of Christ's birth; yet, not the anniversary of his birth, which scholars place around September. Nor were there "3 Wise Men" at His manger; they (number unknown, but probably well more than three) appeared a year or two after He was born. Not to mention the freaky, and scientific, coincidences pertaining to The Star of Bethlehem. It's ALL in The Book that nonbelievers refuse to read yet judge blindly anyway.

The only atheist I know personally who has read the whole bible am I.
I still don't understand the Whys I asked above.

Dare I say, not anymore. One way or another it doesn't matter if I do, or don't.

Uh-oh, I hope Capo doesn't read this.

'Religious faith' = devoid of rigour, of cogency; a big unanswered why, to which we must all bend over backward lest we 'offend' such philistinism. Meanwhile, those who don't believe are 'going to Hell', will have 'God to answer to' in the final post-death analysis. Absolute fucking crock of shit.

Many avoid the God hypothesis by substituting 'God' with 'Nature' or some sort of 'Enveloping Magical Force'; that's giving nature an agenda, an interventionist frame with which we might (and do) defend a number of things in the name of 'human nature' (what!?).

Faith is inherently blind. It doesn't refute any scientific endeavour; it stands in spite of such endeavour. Which is why it isn't progressive, which is why it's inherently anti-intellectual.

That God can or cannot be believed in ought to be enough to convince anyone of the high dubiousness of his would-be existence. (As a contrast, consider the clear meaninglessness of the following question: 'Do you believe that boys have penises and girls have vaginas?')

What happens to any reference to 'God' in The Bible if you replace it with 'Flying Spaghetti Monster'? It becomes absolute nonsense, but the logical approach as to whether or not flying spaghetti monsters exist is (and should be) the same as processes by which we answer the God question.

If I made a thread titled 'Do you believe fairies live at the bottom of your garden?' it wouldn't be taken seriously at all. Rightly so. I don't see why God should be treated any differently, when no more evidence points to his existence as it does to that of fairies.

But I guess all arguments against God are futile*, since 'faith transcends any argument on the contrary'...

* This is, in the context of this message board, probably true. I came by a useful quote recently, which makes me want to emphasise the significance of the idea of inheriting religion. Geoff's right to point out he was born and raised as a theist:

"You can't reason somebody out of a position which they did not employ reason to arrive at originally." - Jim McGinn

The problem is Capo, God can't be disproven either.

Then again, the OP's question is besides the point.

That's a fallacy and you know it. It's only a problem to the self-debilitating sceptic. Peeps make careers out of such irrationalism.

You can't disprove that there's a flying teapot orbiting the Earth, exactly halfway between Us and the Moon.

You can't disprove ghosts, fairies at the bottom of the garden, tooth fairies, and all other superstitions. But that doesn't mean the 'Yes' and the 'No' weigh the same amount.

Exactly. When you claim something exists or has happened, the burden is on you to prove it, not on a skeptic to disprove it. If a religious person claims there is a God and an atheist says there isn't, the burden is on the religious person (at least if the goal is to ascertain the truth as far as is possible).

The only exception to this is when the person affirming something has already been judged to have satisfactorily proven their case--then the burden shifts to the person saying it's not true or didn't happen. For example, if someone is convicted of a crime and there were no legal flaws in the trial (admission of tainted evidence, for example), if the defendant still claims to be innocent the burden is now on them to prove they didn't commit the crime.

...Or if somebody said that they don't believe that 'boys have penises and girls have vaginas'.

Again, all of this is moot because 'faith transcends any argument on the contrary'.

In passing, what the hell does this mean, and was it meant to sound so patronisingly sweepingly cynical? "I was raised Catholic, yet during college I became 'smawt' and thought I was agnostic at the time. Youth and education are wasted on the young."

How is youth wasted on 'the young'? The young what? 'Smawt'? Was that a dig at some sort of adolescent pretentiousness that us uneducated youths can only hope to transcend with age?

FUCK. THAT.

Mick, I think you misinterpreted what I said -- I was talking about myself, not generalizing -- but it's been a long day and explanations will have to wait for now. I don't pass judgement on anyone, you should know that by now...

Capo, take it easy.

I think we've hit a nerve here with a couple Board members. Their virulent posts are way out of proportion to the posts which engendered them.

The existence of God or lack thereof is not a function of one's belief in God or lack thereof.

And I can't disprove that you're a pretentious wanker at times. The question is once again, besides the point. And you know that, so quit wanking me.

Atheism is, in spite of its own logical trappings used to differentiate itself from the "superstitious" faiths, still in all words technically a theology. One just doesn't believe in God.

I despise the religious people who claim Atheists lack morals because they refuse to believe in the supernaturalism, and I despise the idea that maybe believing in an invisible guy in the sky is necessarily an insult to intelligence or rationality.

Science and religion are two different systems of knowledge that can't replace and fulfill the needs of either. Which is why I get pissed when people talk about that bullshit Intelligent Design. Really, man tits. What's so smart about that design, Mr. God?

And I don't think Agnostics are "atheists without balls" or "the faithful without conviction." They just don't know, which is an appropriate answer on such a question.

oh i am thanks lol

youve got to stop using that word if youre going to keep using it incorrectly you cant 'wank somebody' you 'give them a wank' or 'wank them off' i have other lessons of english slang to offer if you ever need them lol

no this is like saying that those explorers who still believe the earth is flat despite all scientific evidence to suggest otherwise are still scientists are still explorers

it is ridiculous incorrect it is a fallacy once again

a belief in god in our contemporary socalled civilized and post enlightenment world is inherently antagonistic towards the intellectual development of mankind

it is also while we are at it inherently sexist which by default means it can never be fully progressive

without science without that is the scientific endeavours by which we have arrived at our understanding of the world as we know it then were just another fucked up backward primitive race

without god however we are not by definition just another fucked up backward primitive race

your argument which isnt really an argument at all is typical of the moderate bendingoverbackwards fencesitter

it would do us all good to look at the socio historical origins and development of religion itself and why there are so many different and differing and inherently exclusive religions in the first place it is obviously due to some social need

if we wish to eradicate the backward social phenomena of religions and theisms we cant simply have a fight between those who believe and those who dont believe - the crusades not withstanding lolz - then we must look at such social relations and abolish those only then can we abolish the idea of looking at some entity in the sky in order to compensate for the otherwise meaninglessness of our pitiable lives

function lack thereof virulent proportion engendered nerve

board and god capitalized lol

Capo, you need to wank yourself today buddy. Gotta relieve the stress.

you mean i need to give myself a wank lol

or wank myself off lol

Kind of on the same subject ~ do any of your women scream out, "Oh, God", at the ultimate moment of togetherness, Mick?

SC, you sure have a way of lightening things up with your humor!

Faith is personal. It's not something to be judged and I certainly don't believe that anyone is going to heaven or hell for their beliefs. I think that we should all be try to be good to those that we share this planet with, despite the fact that some will inevitably get on our nerves.

I think that, believe in Him or not, the way that Jesus lived was pretty cool. He cared for others, he wanted to relieve their pain, he was humble, he was kind, loving and forgiving. Quite a legacy.

Exactly SB.

I believe in God and the divinity of Christ. And it's not just a matter of faith. It encompasses faith and reason.

I believe in spirituality and a creator/beginning. I don't really believe in religion. How can someone blindly follow one religion and then think the billions of other people are wrong with their religion? Like "I'm Christian and going to heaven, But you Catholics are screwed" Doesn't make any sense to me. Also I've seen how religion has blatantly told a bunch of people that their native culture is wrong and the way they've been living is a sin for thousands of years.

I do believe there is a lot more than what we just see around us. I admire the Earths perfect design and do believe it is due to a creator ( A God/infinite spirit etc)
I just really think religion is a massive turn off to people seeking some spiritual guidance. According to religion, I should go to hell cause I've had sex with women when I wasn't married to them. My daughter is a sin etc etc.
Why would this loving God, also condemn you to "hell" to spend eternity in pain and agony all because I didn't read a book that has been changed and chopped and misused for centuries....

I follow my own spirituality.

My answer is he wouldn't. While there are judgmental fundamentalists that believe and vocalize this sentiment, it is not the teaching of my faith that you are condemned. Unfortunately, much of the media outlets would like to discredit religion by taking fringe intolerant viewpoints and portraying it as mainstream.

Keep in mind that we are all sinners. There is nothing we can do to escape this fact, and it does not make us hypocrites for striving for the ideal. Redemption lies not with sin, but upon how we react to sin, our struggles. We are all going to fall along the path, but it's whether we get back up and help others up that will define our spiritual worth.

Your post was thoughtful and heartfelt.

Just a little side thought to this eternal debate.

To follow a religion and be good at it is like anything else in life - you have to practice and apply. You can't take snippets here and there or ala carte selections. You have to embrace the tenents of whatever faith you are inclined to follow. And to support Kly's explanation, you have to try to be good; try to change; try to be humble. After the Ten Commandments Jesus Christ added another one - love one another. Tough to argue with that one.

I don't agree with that. Many if not most Catholics in the U.S. are pro-choice on abortion and most use artificial birth control. Does that mean they're not legitimate Catholics?

And the whole idea that you have to embrace all aspects of a religion is largely a Western/Middle Eastern one. In the Far East, there are many people who combine elements of Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc.

To be honest, "love one another" seems pretty stupid to me. Love is not an act of will. You either love someone or you don't. You can't choose whether you do or not. I think it makes sense to say that people should respect each other's basic rights and treat each other decently. But a "commandment" to love seems nonsensical to me.

VitoC, obviously you have strong beliefs against any god. That's fine. But I don't believe that you need to disparage the beliefs of others. Using words like "nonsensical" only makes you look intolerant.

There is no "11th Commandment". It was an expression. Jesus preached that we should care for one another. He didn't "command" that we love one another. He commanded very little. Jesus led by example.

While there are many tenets of the Catholic Church that I disagree with, I realize that the "Church" was created by men. Men are fallible. They aren't perfect. And the world has changed since its invention, and perhaps the Church doesn't try to keep up quickly enough for some. However, the teachings of Jesus referenced in my earlier post are as relevant now as they were then.

I think him trying to disparage the beliefs of others is no more insulting that those who try to force their faith on non believers.

I agree. That's why I said that faith is personal. However, I have read several posts here that were rather disparaging towards believers, and I don't remember anyone posting anything that could remotely be considered forcing faith on others.

I didn't mean to sound disparaging of anyone. If you look at what I said, you'll notice that I said that "to me" it sounds nonsensical. I didn't make a factual statement that it's nonsensical.

I'm strongly opposed to hostility or discrimination against anyone based on their religious beliefs. If other people respect mine, I respect theirs. But given that this is a thread where people are specifically talking about whether or not they believe in God and why, I don't think I said anything out of line. Sometimes, to say you believe something is stupid or nonsensical is the only way to honestly express how you feel about it. I didn't mean to imply that I have any hostility toward MaryCas or anyone else who holds those views. I don't.

Vito, perhaps I misinterpreted what you wrote; however, telling someone that what they believe is "nonsensical" or "stupid" is disparaging to me.

I am glad to hear that you believe in tolerance. There's little enough of it in this world.

Again, I return to the idea of substituting a belief in God for a belief in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

The latter believer will undoubtedly be judged by most as stupid and nonsensical.

When no more evidence for God exists than for fairies at the bottom of the garden, why shouldn't we hold it up to the same sort of rational scrutiny?

There's tolerance and there's bending-over-backwards liberalism that creates the sort of moderate environment in which fundamentalism and other more dangerous beliefs foster.

At the very least, a belief in a Grand Designer/Inventor/Maker is insidious.

Nobody has reasonably tackled or even tried to tackle some of my arguments in this thread.

Again, might we put this down to the notion that 'faith transcends all arguments on the contrary'?

Seems a bit of an intellectual cop-out to me. A faux pas if ever there was one. The unanswerable trump card. Balls.

That God 'works in mysterious ways' is no less a cop-out.

Why does God only exist to those who believe in him? Is he some sort of stubborn 'well if you don't want to be my friend you can fuck off' sort of moron?

Quite frankly, I personally didn't reply to any of your posts or try to tackle anything that you said because what you wrote and the words you chose prove that you wouldn't listen anyway. So, what's the point? You've made up your mind. You obviously think of those that believe as mindless sheep. So, let us baa away.

Let's make it clear here that I'm against, and am attacking - even being disparaging toward - the notion of a God. By extension, though it's almost a different matter in itself, I'd also attack organised religion.

That doesn't mean I want to burn anybody at the stake, though; I could most probably sit with anyone who's posted in this thread and have an interesting conversation about life. We'd just perhaps have to steer away from religious matters.

One of my closest friends with whom I've made films calls himself a Catholic. I've said everything to him that I've written here.

I'm not sure if that amounts to 'I don't have to agree with what you say but I respect your right to say it,' because I don't really know what those sorts of statements mean.

To me, a belief in God is often representative of a wider intellectual crisis. If someone can believe in God, when there's so little if any rational argument in his favour, what else might they believe in matters of urgency?

I was writing my last post as you posted yours.

I'm not sure about the 'mindless sheep' thing; to a large extent, if pushed, I'd have to question why people would believe in a God without at least admitting to its essential silliness, like people do with other superstitions.

My vehemence is in response to the utter seriousness with which we are meant to treat theisms; why must 'God' endure science when the notion of a flat world and so many other naive beliefs rightly haven't?

That's not to say I don't have some sort of understanding of what might drive people to a belief in God, a belief in some Grand Other (whose image Man tellingly loaned his own) on whom we might project our neuroses and fears for comfort. Historically, it's actually been a clever survival mechanism; I just think it's extremely outdated. (Just as the Industrial Revolution was a vital part of the scientific and intellectual progression of mankind, but how the capitalists ought to be long dead.)

The question of why one might believe in God is not insignificant. Beyond familial indoctrination, that is.

Why do I believe in God? Because I believe that there are things in this world that are larger than Man. I believe that there are miracles. I felt life grow within me and I believe that only a God could make that happen. I felt both my grandmother and father's life slip away. At that moment, I saw them regain strength that they hadn't had in months and go on with a certain joy. I've spoken to a friend who had a near-fatal heart attack, and she described entering another world, only to be drawn back by her daughter's voice.

There are things that I have seen and have experienced that have convinced me that there is a guiding force to this life.

Is there some mathematical equation that I can provide to "prove" my beliefs? Can I show you photographs? Can I yank God out from behind a curtain? No. But I know what I know. That's MY brand of faith. It may not work for you or for anyone else. But it works for me.

Wouldn't you be interested in accounting for those recoveries with medical and scientific explanations, though? Does the belief that God saved your parents undermine the tremendous work of the doctors, or the amazing (even 'mysterious') complexity of the human body?

As for 'other world' experiences, they'll have to remain unexplained to everyone - including those who apparently experienced them, since again there's no rational reason to account for them with 'God'. I'd be very interested if anyone's ever had an 'other world' experience without even having had God or an afterlife as part of their social world, their upbringing; in other words, in a Godless world, where God is not a large part of the society the person lives in, would a dying person ever experience an 'other world'?

Or:

Why did I dream of Wine Gums last night after craving for them all day? Would I have dreamed of Wine Gums had I never laid my eyes on them before in my life?

(I too think there are things larger than man's intellectual capacities; but I think accounting for such things with 'God' forever makes them stagnant, non-progressive. Which is why theism essentially and inherently contradicts the scientific endeavour of mankind.)

Capo, you definatley right now need a one-hand applause.

No, you misunderstood. My father and grandmother DIDN'T recover. They died. And in the moments before death, they experienced a surge of strength and a joy that is inexplicable. I was pregnant when my father died, and I felt terrible that he didn't live to see my second child born. After I gave birth, my father came to see me. Some might say that it was the morphine, but he was there. I know it. I don't know what world he crossed to be there, but he was THERE. And I believe that God sent him.

However, my mother and I are both cancer survivors. Science? Of course. And I believe that God guided those doctors in their endeavors. I also believe the amazing complexities of the human body is further proof of God. We are incredible creatures, and I believe that we had a creator.

One reason why I don't believe in God is that I don't think there's any need for a God. Many people look at the universe, human beings, and other complex things and think that these couldn't have come into being without a God. But to me, this just substitutes one mystery for another. The question then becomes: where did God come from? Such a powerful creator would itself call for an explanation as to why it exists. Because of this, I end up concluding that not everything has to have a cause--that even complicated things can exist on their own without a creator.

Often, people point to positive things--people with illnesses recovering or improving, people being motivated to be medical researchers or help others in other ways--as being evidence of God's power at work. But if God (at least an all powerful God) is going to be credited with the amazingly good things that take place, wouldn't he ("it" might be a better pronoun) also have to be blamed for the bad things as well--for example, for making Hitler want to do what he did, and for all the horrible diseases that exist?

In addition, even if there is a God, I don't see a clear reason why God would be morally good. As human history makes abundantly clear, power doesn't equal goodness.

Capo, while I fully understand you think God and organized religion is absurd, can you at least acknowledge that religion can be a good thing for people?

One of the receiving dock workers at a regular delivery stop of mine has his desk covered with religious verses, crosses, a bible, etc... and he always says "God bless" when I leave. I've since talked with him about that over the years and it turns out he got himself into a lot of trouble as a young man with gangs. While in prison he got hooked up with some sort of program that brought him to Christianity and it's what drives him now. It changed his life and he now uses it to speak with other young men in gangs in an attempt to save their lives before they end up dead or in prison.

I know you can make the argument that non believers can also change people's lives for the good. You can also argue that religious people can blindly follow their faith and use it to make themselves feel better than others. There are good and bad people in any walk of life and religion is no different.

I'm saying alot to basically make the point that the idea of a higher power is comforting for a lot of people and it helps them cope with daily life. It can even help them do good in the world for others. And if it's a positive thing then why knock it? If I meet someone who is doing charity work dressed like a fairy I might think it's odd, but will commend them for helping others.

Okay, I'm ready for your response to make me look stupid

Do you believe that this perfect creator is due to a creator?

[I believe that] He exists, period, whether one believes or not. He believes in you, and exists for you; what you do (or don't do) with that is up to you.

The earth was round forever, while most everyone thought it was flat. No one had to prove it was round, it was always round.

As I posted above, God's existence is not a function of one's belief in God. God either exists or does not exist. Religion on the other hand is a function of what requirements a believer thinks a God imposes on them. Those requirements vary by religious sect and encompas the scope of human behavior. I side with those Board members who view belief in God or religion as a generally good thing. The reason some Board members disparage belief in God or one's adherence to religion probably has deeper roots than just an expository on this Board.

But if it's not about belief then why would any believe? As Capo has stated, there's no more proof of God than there is a flying spaghetti monster. So belief, or faith, has to be a factor.

I personally believe there are flying spaghetti monsters in space. I didn't before, but that's only because I'd never heard of them until this thread. I love the idea, so I now have faith that some where in the universe they exist. And why not?

Madonne! If you never existed, either flying spaghetti monsters would exist or they would not exist.

No deeper than the reasons many religious people have for disparaging nonbelievers.

I would like to think all "good" people make it to heaven or whatever sort of paradise in the afterlife. And not just the fanclub.

My mother was part of a pretty intense "born-again" Christian church/cult. She flew over to Vanuatu as a missionary with the head pastor and she reckons she saw the Pastor bring a dead guy back to life. I was always skeptical, but she swears she is telling the truth. I asked what happened to the man who was resurrected and apparently he was alive for no less than 45 mins before he stabbed his wife and kids to death, all because he couldn't handle being back in his "human form" etc.

I still have doubts, But at the same time don't know why Mum would continue with this lie for so long.... She never used it as an argument to try and convince me of Gods existence.

Faith v. Intellectualism. The intellectuals always sound so ..... desparate; maybe even frustrated.

Human knowledge is limited by elements of time and space, both of which are creations of the almighty. To believe in God is to accept there exists a reality or plane of existence that transcends our own; that there is something greater than human knowledge. While Capo has been calling for a "rational" explanation to prove the existence of God, I believe that humaintellect and rationality are human traits and science is a strictly human creation, and are insufficient to fully comprehend or define the existence of God, whose identity as an all-powerful being rests within a separate plane. Thus, to try to use rationality and science alone to disprove or prove his existence is like using a fork to eat soup.

For reasons that are too vast to post here, I believe that God has revealed himself through the prophets and Christ, who, I believe, is the Word made flesh. This isn't merely based on faith, but the resurrestion of Christ seems reasonable to me, based upon many inferences from the events surrounding the crucifixion and rise of the spreading of the gospels.

That's a cheap shot.

Sitting blindly where you were yesterday v. moving about to get to know your whereabouts: May be desperate and frustrating, but it is satisfying and I don't have to pretend that I know without actually knowing.

Why do you talk?

As Richard Dawkins put it in The God Delusion, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Even if we take the 'fiction' bit out, even if the Bible were a work of non-fiction, if it were a faithful (no pun!) portrait of God, all of those descriptions are apt.

Firstly, I think religious beliefs - which are beliefs in superstition - thrive in a society where universal education has not been achieved; this is also the same society where criminals are punished more than rehabilitated, where poverty is a natural result of exclusive wealth, where crime and poverty are related, where gang cultures have a strong social grip and the laws against such cultures are ill-thought-out.

It's a vicious, vicious cycle of continual destruction; with this, scientific, intellectual, artistic - in a word, human - development can only happen in little bursts of progression, against the greater tide of regression. We need to change the fundamental forces that create these social contradictions.

Religious beliefs do not arise from a vacuum, but from concrete social and historical processes, which we can trace and analyse and learn from. Beliefs in God have evolved through time and space - Klydon's right, but I contend two of his points (the first is obvious and the second is less so): that 'time and space' are 'creations of the almighty'; and that science is no more strictly a 'human creation' than religion. I see both as antagonistic, exclusive ways of interpreting the world; one is founded on rationality, the other on idealism - or 'faith'. Crucially, though, science develops; science is by definition a process of continually attempting to prove itself wrong. Theism is stagnant, reactionary, non-progressive. It is used (and crucially, is able to be used) as a means of homophobia, xenophobia, sexism and many other evils. It deals with a world of absolutes.

And yes, science is limited to the socio-historical forces in which it exists; is limited by the instruments and technology available to it at any one time. These are truisms that do not help the believer's argument, since I've already said science is no more a human construct than religion. But what scientists know about the world now is a lot more than what they knew 100 years ago. Priests, on the other hand, still believe Moses parted the sea.

I could just as easily believe in Middle Earth, in Frodo, in one ring to rule all; through the establishment of time and space - creations of the almighty Gandalf, of course - I might hope that the idea could catch on, and in a coupla thousand years time we're all thanking Frodo for a white fucking Christmas - I mean Frodomas.

With enough social sway, ideas become very powerful, especially in a society in which such sway can garner very quickly as a result of said society's fundamental flaws - i.e., not everyone has the same access to the same level of education, which is of course an economic problem at heart, a class problem. (Sigh.)

To say that science cannot answer the mysteries of creation is an insult, an inherently reactionary statement indeed. It is also an intellectual cop-out. To say 'it is not a cop-out because intellectualism is inadequate and insufficient to give genuine insight into the objective world' is probably the most cynical, depressing statement I've ever read on here.

Yes, I don't think God, or a belief in God, necessarily precludes morality. I think I answer this further below...


As I wrote yesterday: 'That's not to say I don't have some sort of understanding of what might drive people to a belief in God, a belief in some Grand Other (whose image Man tellingly loaned his own) on whom we might project our neuroses and fears for comfort. Historically, it's actually been a clever survival mechanism; I just think it's extremely outdated. (Just as the Industrial Revolution was a vital part of the scientific and intellectual progression of mankind, but how the capitalists ought to be long dead.)'

This seems to be a fallacy or a truism or both.

If we hadn't changed our understanding of the world through genuine scientific development, we'd still be under the assumption the earth is flat. This is false.

How can you say that we didn't 'have to prove the earth was round'? What a great argument against empiricism. Cynical and depressing.

It's absolute nonsense to say 'God believes in us' and that is what matters. That implies and allows a complete rejection of concrete human reality; religious idealism begets self-debilitating sceptical relativism. It's misanthropic and cynical. It's horse shit, I'm afraid.

If God has an agenda, it's a highly contradictory one at best. He's not much of a thinker. Nor, it seems, does he want his creations to be.

If God doesn't have an agenda, there's absolutely no importance surrounding whether or not he exists; he becomes an unimportant abstract, reference to whom we should totally eradicate.

Sorry for the multiple posts, I'm just replying to peeps separately.

So you're choosing to interpret a medically possible occurrence in religious terms. ('Inexplicable' does not mean 'impossible'.)

So you're choosing to interpret something very possible indeed - you've even mentioned the morphine yourself - in religious terms.

Again, does knowledge of the idea of God preclude the interpretation of such visions in religious terms? I'd argue yes. Another way of putting it: if I lived in a society where there was no idea of God, no knowledge of him, would it be possible for me to explain such images of dead relatives in religious terms? I'd argue no.

Crucially, though, either way it still remains inexplicable. 'God' explains why we have visits from dead loved ones much less than the chemical reasons given by science.

I dreamed I was with my dead grandmother last week. I could just as easily choose to interpret that as God sending her to me in a dream.

Why does God guide some doctors and not others? That agenda thing again: contradictory. He's a bit selective for someone who's apparently omnipotent, no?

Riddle me this: Did God aid Darwin in his studies on evolution? If so, why? So that Darwin could publish his findings and that people could then be tested for their loyalty to God? Seems like a bit of a vindictive thing to do to me. It's like hiring somebody to seduce your girlfriend and then setting up CCTV in the bedroom...

Or did God secretly hope Darwin would fail in his research? Why didn't he intervene with his power? Why, with Darwin's findings, is God even part of this hypothetical question at all? It's all very absurd, but it brings me back to my previous post.

Or did God place all the 'evidence' against him as a trick on poor old Charles? Again, seems a bit of a shitty thing to do for someone who loves everyone. What had Darwin done to deserve that?

Hmmm. Perhaps I'm thinking too much about this mystery being. Perhaps I just need to have a hot bath and wash away my rationality - it's done no one any good anyhow, has it, because the real truth 'transcends all human endeavour'. (AND PEOPLE SAY IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT FAITH REASON IS INVOLVED AS WELL. BUT REASONING OFTEN ENDS IN FALLACY OHNO!)

That's not me misunderstanding, either: if a God exists and that God has a moral agenda (which he should, otherwise 'God' becomes reducible to 'physics' or 'nature', becomes a meaningless abuse of language), then he is the real truth, and we'd be better off killing ourselves in the would-be full-of-meaning-and-explanation world, because what would be the point?

This same God could also have given us a better vocabulary, because the whole notion of 'belief' unavoidably implies a conscious choice to be made between something, between truth and non-truth. And if God exists, it doesn't come down to a belief at all, because it then becomes the ultimate truth. (Which then brings us to the last sentence of my previous paragraph.)

(Again, sorry to repeat, but this brings us back to what I said earlier: consider the meaninglessness of the following statement: I do not believe that boys have penises and girls have vaginas. Or, I do not believe that tigers have stripes or that leopards have spots.)

I wouldn't try to prove there is no God. I'd only say one way or another, it doesn't matter. Would I change a single thing in my life if he existed? No! Would he, if he exists and there's an afterlife send me to hell for not recognizing his existence? I'd say I'd be better off in hell to be with such a petty God.

As it is, my understanding of the human life is that once your brain is gone, you are no more.

Hear hear!

For the record, let me clear up a misconception on this issue. Roman Catholicism, in particular, does not teach that salvation is based upon acceptance of God and recognition of the divinity of Christ. This is a common mistake made by nonbelievers, who lack essential knowledge of the faith, but love a sound bite.

It is taught that our salvation is through Christ, but acknowledges that there are many, who for whatever reason are not believers, but will share eternal life. This is a doctrine I learned when I was young.

By the way, another misconception, to which there was an allusion within the thread, is that believers in God lack the education, intellect and sophistication of nonbelievers. I think you'll find that a proportional share of atheists and theists rode the short bus.

Yeah, I know a lot of people who declare indifference ('fuck that' / 'whatever lol') to religious views, and they're not educated in the slightest.

But that doesn't mean contemporary religion isn't a product of the same society that inevitably creates vast gulfs in wealth and therefore education. (I've said elsewhere on this board that if we were to abolish God, we would have to abolish the fundamental flaws in society that create the material voids that God helps fill.)

On the flip side, I find it extraordinary how people who show a clear capacity for rational analysis of situations - I'd include you in that bracket, Klyd, as well as Sicilian Babe - and yet still maintain faith in a superstition.

It might be a generational thing. A lot of successful, educated people inherited their faith thanks to family indoctrination. We need to teach our children how to think, not what to think.

Thanks for that clarification. There are some fundamentalists, however, who do believe that anyone who doesn't believe the "correct" religious theology will go to hell. I am Jewish and so is my mother and all her family, except for her sister. She became a born again Christian many years ago and has her own Bible class. She has said that both of her and my mother's parents are in hell since they didn't accept Christianity before they died. At the same time, she clearly thinks of herself as a very compassionate and moral person. It has always boggled my mind how anyone with the slightest glimmer of compassion could believe something like that. By their logic, Hitler could have gone to heaven even after causing WWII and the Holocaust just by accepting born again Christianity in the bunker before he died. But a three year old Jewish child gassed at Treblinka who was too young to even know what religion means before they were killed went to hell. Who would need the devil with a God like that!

VitoC, I've never understood that brand of Christianity. How is it possible that if you believe in Jesus, who came to Earth to sacrifice Himself to wash away our sins, that you could possibly condemn "non-believers" to hell?? That goes against all His teachings! He taught love, acceptance, tolerance, respect and humility. How can anyone interpret that to be "believe as I do, or go to hell?" It makes no sense to me.

As for my father's appearance at my bed, Capo, it was no hallucination. He was there. I felt his presence. I saw him. He was no hallucination. He wanted to see my daughter, because he died two months before she was born.

As for religion, to me, there's a vast difference between faith and religion.

It doesn't make sense, but that's how some people are. My mother told me that a woman once told her that her minister said that the Jews got what they deserved in the Holocaust for rejecting Jesus. I was thinking the same thing--how does compassion fit into a belief system like that? I'd hate to see wickedness if that's compassion!

“Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.”

Thanks SC, I like that one.

It's a quote from Khalil Gibran. I'm sure an old hippy like you must have read some of his stuff.

Why do some people have to have scientific proof for this and for that?

I believe in miracles, guardian Angels. Just because I can't see an Angel doesn't mean they aren't there. I have enough faith to know that they are Angels all around us. If it wasn't for God and his Angels I wouldn't be alive today.

We don't get to decide who goes to Heaven or who goes to Hell. That is up to God.

Probably because they have no faith.

The thing that always disturbs me about faith is that it seems like it could be used to justify anything and enable people to believe whatever they want, regardless of what the evidence shows. What if a Holocaust denier, when asked about the overwhelming evidence for the Holocaust, said "Yes, the evidence and all logic suggests there was a Holocaust. But I just have faith there wasn't"?

Doesn't the huge number of world faiths with mutually incompatible beliefs suggest that faith can be an unreliable guide to what's true?

I guess there is no inherent right or wrong in one's faith. It's an individual thing.

Agreed.

And, as such, is pretty redundant as a social moral force.

Good quote, SC.

Two similar quotes:

"Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to." -- George Seaton

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” -- Saint Thomas Aquinas

WOWZA.

A miracle is something that is scientifically impossible. Many improbable events occur daily; that they do happen is evidence alone that they can happen. Why must peeps interpret this as some sort of divine intervention?

And why can't the same peeps recognise the inherent contradictory selectivity of such a divine intervenor? Why would an all-knowing, all-loving God help some and not others? He seems a bit of a huffy, volatile [BadWord] to be honest.

Same with the fairies at the bottom of my garden.

Why would God ever send somebody to hell? If he knows everything, surely he can account for why people do the things they do, what made them that way, and forgive them their ignorance as a result of poor education and an advanced bourgeois society that embraces greed and profit. Surely he knows all of those humane reasonings. Oh, wait; maybe he doesn't - maybe he's the anthropomorphic product of self-projecting blood-thirsty absolutist self-serving backward-thinking fear-mongering state-loving liberal (make-)believers...

Hm. I'm starting to sound desperate - frustrated, even.

Ignorance is bliss.

All of those are self-serving intellectual faux pas, designed to cocoon and parry; a cop-out. They actually say more about the inadequacies of faith than they do about genuine reasoning.

Not this one: "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” -- Saint Thomas Aquinas

In a nutshell, Aquinas is saying that no matter what I say to you, your mind won't be changed. No matter what you say to me, my mind won't be changed. You're no more open to the possibility that there is a God, than I am to the possibility that there isn't one. That's why this whole thread is futile.

No. I'm not saying there isn't a God, I'm saying there's no more evidence for his existence than there is for any other superstition that we would otherwise dismiss as silly.

So, in essence, though the quote itself might not mean this, you're using it as a way of 'agreeing to disagree' on the reducible grounds that 'faith needn't offer any evidence because that's what the definition of faith is': again, that's a cop-out, it's horseshit.

So, my point stands: 'All of those are self-serving intellectual faux pas, designed to cocoon and parry; a cop-out.'

I'm very open to the idea of a God, should we arrive at some concrete evidence that there is one. Of course, should I begin to want there to be a God, under the right circumstances - some medical drug, for instance - I might start finding the 'proof' that I feel I need. But such proof would never reach beyond the profoundly individual. It's internally insular, a way of coping with certain material issues - and nothing more. It's a form of idealism, a way of interpreting the world, a way to which I'm eternally opposed.

Read this.

That's why debates about many other topics are futile as well, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Because it is their GOD given right to believe so -- just as it is your GOD given right ( ) not to believe so. GOD gave all of us free will to have faith and believe or to not have faith and be a non believer. You have the right to seek out a 'scientific answer' to some things that may happen just as Mig has the right to believe that some things happen because of 'devine intervention'.

You want to believe in fairies, then by all means believe in them. Pray to them and worship them for all I care. As long as you don't hurt others because of your beliefs than I don't have the right to mock you, make fun of you, or tell you that what you choose to put your faith in and believe in is wrong. By the same token if the "peeps" choose to believe in GOD, choose to put their faith in GOD and believe that he can perform miracles, as long as they are not hurting others because of their beliefs than no one has to the right to mock them, make fun of them or tell them that they are wrong because they believe in GOD.

People need to respect one another's religious and/ or non religious beliefs as long as those beliefs do not infringe upon, make fun of, mock or call for the hurting others.

Thank GOD for free will!

What proof can possibly be offered? The miracle of life? The ability of a plant to perform photosynthesis? The existence of the oceans? The way that the moon controls the tides? The way that a bee pollinates a flower?

These are all miracles, and they occur every day. That's the only proof I require to believe.

Devil's advocate for a second: A scientist would say that these are all naturally occurring events and someone else might say that we perceive these as a miracle only because we're at the tail-end of the natural process called evolution.

I respectfully disagree. We must respect what people can't change about themselves, those that they've no role in it. Like the color of their skin, their nationality, or these sorts of attributes. Religion on the other hand is what we have a role in adopting for ourselves.

Why shouldn't we debate or mock ideas? If someone believes they can fly just by the motion of their hands, you suggest we should not mock them? Or try to reason with them? Of course after a course of debate, and laughing at them I'm willing to let them fly off the roof, but what if they are trying to take a bus full of people and jump off the cliff? Would you sit aside and say, well, that's their religion and we should respect it? Haven't we seen enough of such mantras and attitudes even these days? Bush's war on Gog and Magog? Islamic Republic's mantra of setting the whole world right? Should I go on?

I refuse to respect any religion, since they've not presented me with any proof to their sanity or sense. Just because you blindly believe something is there, it doesn't make it so.

Can I ask Capo, VitoC, Afsaneh and others who don't believe in God, AKA a creator, how we got here? How is it possible that this entire planet has an atmosphere capable of supporting millions of different lifeforms that support one another? How did it start?

Something that has always bothered me is the clash between science and religion when it seems logical to me that they should go hand in hand. Two things can be equally true. I'm one of the few Christians that believe evolution is a possibility. I believe in adaptation by survival of the fittest. If it wasn't for technology keeping us fat people alive, the current population would be way down and our current athletes would be the main survivors. But when you go back to the beginning of evolution, how did it all begin? It only makes sense to me that a Creator would be the spark for the very first life form that eventually evolved into everything that lives on this planet now, which if you ask me is just as incredible and unbelievable as God is to nonbelievers. I find it just as hard to believe that a single coincidence resulted in millions of other coincidental events of "evolution" bringing us to where we are now in the world.

What do people who don't believe in God believe happened here? Science tells me we are made up of atoms. I've never seen an atom. I only accept that they exist because scientists tell me so, and as far as I know the most brilliant scientists are part of an underground group trying to eliminate religion. I don't believe that, but underground fairy's make as much sense to me as most science. But I'm getting off of my original question of how the first lifeform came to exist and how likely is it that everything works perfectly together to survive as a planet?

To add to my last post, I'm not saying I have any answers either. I think it's easier to try and disprove something than it is to come up with an alternate answer. I personally like the idea of a God. It doesn't mean God exists, but as mentioned before the earth was flat until science proved it was round. Who's to say that science won't progress enough in the future to prove there is a God? I think it's a possibility. But again, I don't know for a fact that God exists. I just choose to believe in something more powerful than I am. That's not a cop-out, it's a personal hope.

I'm not suggesting there's no God. I don't even want to go there. As for your question, I would be open to any sensible reasoning as to how we got here. For now I simply don't know. But I wouldn't buy the first theory that has no proof.

You don't have to listen to scientists and take what they say blindly. There are atomic microscopes. You can go and see for yourself. That's the difference between backed up science and bogus religion.

Haha, I had a feeling that would be the first thing someone would pick on from what I wrote. That's fine.

Where do I go to see one of these atomic microscopes? And how do I know what I'm looking at is true and not fabricated?

Really that wasn't my point. Nobody knows the truth. I find it interesting that people who try so hard to show how absurd God is, will say they aren't sure if there is a God. Of course not. That's the cop-out for nonbelievers. There's really no end to this argument. It's all "what if". If you don't believe, fine... if you do, fine. When it comes to what others believe in a world so focused on acceptance, who gives a flying fairy shit?

Hey, do you need direction to lab where there is one? I mean, if you don't want to know, that's okay, but that's just lazy excuse. You need to study on how an atomic microscope works. And then, if you have any proof that what it shows is not right, you can back it up with your studies.

If you believe there's an elephant in the dark room, it is fine as long as he doesn't communicate with you to do something stupid. And even before that, I would like to know your reason as to why you think there's one, and exactly an elephant. You are the one who needs to back up your claim, not I. It could be anything.

Read what I said Afsaneh. It's easier to try and disprove something than give an alternate answer. Nobody seems willing to give a better answer, but everyone wants to argue that the idea of a God is ridiculous. I said I don't know the answers... there is no proof. But if there isn't a better answer, then why not believe in a God? You don't have to, but I choose to. I said it's a personal hope, not proof. I can back up my faith no better than you can back up your lack of answers. When someone has a better answer, I will definitely listen.

Because I want to be open to scientific reasoning. I need my brain just yet. The religious theory, when you get deep in it, would make sure there's no sense left in you to argue otherwise. Faith is blind and clearly states that you don't need reason, but I do. I desperately and frustratingly yearn for reason. I don't want anything clouding my judgment, however limited that could be.

I refuse to dope myself with the comfortable answer.

Well that goes back to my original post, that two things can be equally true. Why is it impossible to have faith in a God, while still keeping an open mind towards science? Everyone who has faith should never blindly accept it. It's a healthy thing for every person in religion to constantly question their faith. It doesn't mean that if you question it then you don't believe it. It just means you are doing your part to try and confirm what you believe. Where does it say you need to be a dope and follow just one thing?

It is as if you ask "Why can't a judge believe someone is guilty and try to prove he isn't?" Judge is supposed not to believe anything about the accused prior to trial. Otherwise he tries to prove what he originally thought is right.

Faith goes against constant questioning. You dope yourself with faith to stop questioning and accept blindly what you had doubt before.

The thing I think about is, Scientists believe that the Universe is infinite, doesn't end. Why is that so much easier to believe then a God/Allah/Creator etc that is infinite? How does an infinite universe begin? It would have to have always been there cause there's no beginning or end...

I'm by no means a Bible basher/Coptic Soldier etc. I dislike religion etc, But to the non believers, will you guys whisper a silent prayer on your deathbed, just in case?

What utter bullshit. You seem to feel that faith is a morphia for the masses. I'm not blind and I'm not deaf and I'm not mute. And I'm not drugged.

And since when is it ok to mock other people's beliefs? Debate, yes. Mock? No. It's insulting and it's beneath us.

There are these constant demands for proof. There is no proof. That is the point of faith. It's something that you believe DESPITE the clamoring of non-believers. That is the true sign of FAITH. There are constant challenges in life that can tempt you to abandon your faith. But a true believer hangs on in the face of adversity. A true believer doesn't turn their back on their faith because life got too tough. A true believer simply believes.

For those that don't believe, have a nice day. I hope that your emptiness is filled with something else. I will continue to follow my own brand of faith. My God will love me and challenge me and care for me and mine.

While much of this has been interesting, it's apparently pointless. You all want to continue to mock the existence of God, have at it. Stick a fork in me.

And when adversity does come your way your faith will see you through and make you as a person stronger. And your faith becomes stronger. JMHO

This is something that I have references concerning the existence of an eternal God existing within a separate reality or plane that is not bound by elements such as time, space, etc., which are creations of His in our world. While people search for concrete examples of His existence, they are, in fact, searching for human based methods and constructs (science, education, experimentation, philosophy) to ascertain the precise nature of God.

I disagree with the premise that faith is blind. If you look to scripture, precisely the writings of St. Paul, who was an ardent persecutor of Christianity until his dramatic conversion, he incessantly calls upon people to open their minds through learning and education to develop a deeper underrstanding of God through Christ.

My belief and faith did not merely result from blind acceptance of what I was taught, but from applying thought and rationality. Reason and faith coexist.

You just mocked my views by calling it utter bullshit. So now it is okay for you, but not for me?

Not that I care what you call my views! I could do just the same for yours.





You sound like you are blind, deaf and drugged. You believe in things despite the fact that there is no proof for their existence.



Actually if anything with the dope of faith, you can cope with the tough times much better. I for one didn't turn my back on faith because of tough life. I think it braver, to live with no hope of reuniting with the deceased loved ones for one thing. Or thinking that you will be no more once you die. You've to be way braver to face these possibilities and not run to faith.



You've a nice day as well. Thanks, but no thanks.

This, and the rest of your post, is not an argument for God or for the existence of God. Just because we don't have definitive answers doesn't mean we ought to grasp onto some idea - however appealing (and I understand the appeal) - at the expense of the same rational analysis that makes us not cross a road when there's traffic hurtling along it.

Two things can be equally true; 2+2 is the same as 3+1. But these concepts you're dealing with do not amount to the same conclusion. That's another fallacy. There have been books and books and books written on the world from a religious point of view, and it's normally with the already-chosen agenda of somehow using the world as a proof for God's existence. Scientists don't research to directly disprove God, they do what they do so we can understand why and how the world around us works. And they do so with rigour, with consistency, with the continual attempt at disproving themselves. And with such research and technology, they can tell us how and why a plant photosynthesizes; they can predict the weather for us based on real things such as wind movements and changes in temperature. In contrast, where's the purpose in saying, 'plants photosynthesize because of God' or 'it is raining because of God'. That's idealism, and it's vague and it doesn't really help us at all. It might be appealing, it might be comforting, but it doesn't really offer much in the way of self-honesty.

I could just as easily reduce the entire Holocaust to 'God'. That's ignoring all the social and historical forces that allowed the Holocaust to happen: technological modernity, a largely indifferent and complacent Europe, the subversion of an entire history of anti-Semitism to a seemingly logical end by the Nazis. All of these are 'God', in that they are no less 'God' than Moses parting the sea, than the creation of the Earth in six days. They are no less coincidental. But 'God' remains a vague explanation for the Earth's beauty, its horrors, the seeming inexplicability of a purposeless humanity. I don't see a defence for such vagueness, neither socially nor intellectually; I can see a need for it, historically, as a means of understanding something that we didn't have other means of research to find out with. But as I said, 'God' is now an outmoded tyrant; perhaps a vital system of belief that has helped get us where we are today, just as the bourgeois revolution was a necessary part in the development of mankind. But look where capitalism is heading now, and us with it... Like I said, I think we need to change the fundamental forces that create these contradictions, and perhaps we'll see an eradication of 'God' as a 'social need', because as an 'intellectual need' he's been long dead.

I disagree that 'disproving something is easier than giving an alternative answer'. That's a harsh reduction of the entire history of Darwinian thought; of all intellectual endeavour, actually - the development of modern philosophy, of genuinely groundbreaking ideas in science and art that have given us new insights into the world.

Why does it make sense? Why does it have to make sense?

I'm not saying there isn't a God. I'm saying that socially, we don't need one - or shouldn't need one, as I've argued already - and that if there is one, he isn't the by-default morally good power that we supposed him to be. Again: he's the product of anthropomorphic self-projection (and self-protecting because of that), which is why there are so many flaws in God's apparent mode of operating; he's the product of primitive thinkers.

Again: without God, we do not become immoral beings without purpose. Without science, however, we remain primitive tribesmen.

Science allows us to 'overcome' God, whereas a belief in God is always going to be in spite of all the scientific development that points against creationism as well as other things.

Not only this, but all the other coincidences that had to occur after that in order to establish certain dominant bloodlines and the evolution of species. But that they did happen means they could happen; a coincidence is not an impossible occurrence occurring, but an improbable one. The odds are stacked against it, but then people do actually win the lottery every week.

The world is far stranger than you've even posited here; and science hasn't and doesn't explain these strange things overnight. It's always limited by and related to the economic and intellectual state of society, which is always changing. But why should questions of probability be washed away with 'The Grand Designer' in the name of, frankly, what I see as an intellectual convenience, a way of putting an end to all curiosity? I actually think it's a shame, and I'm not even a scientist.

Blib, try thinking of all the coincidences in your life that didn't occur, that haven't happened, to try and get an idea of the meaninglessness of attributing one improbable event to some sort of morally conscious being...

Since you're already thinking about this subject, which is a good thing, and since you recognise your belief as a conscious choice, which is also a good thing, you should also ask why you choose to 'believe in something more powerful than you'. Why does it have to be something or someone more powerful than you? What needs is that belief fulfilling? What psychological state warrants a 'hope' in 'something more powerful' than the self? Is it to account for the atrocities around that self? The social injustices? More than this, is it to account for one's sense of guilt in relation to these injustices and atrocities, one's sense of utter futility as an individual in a system full of individuals?

I don't know, and am not pretending to know. But these are all significant questions if we're to search for any truth within ourselves, with any sort of honesty. Faith is not called 'blind' just for the fun of it.

That's the first step to self-debilitating scepticism in the fashionable name of relativism.

How do you know the chair you're sitting on isn't a table?

No, because again the two opposing concepts do not weigh the same in research or rigour. It's true I've had a few jerk-off digs in this thread at the would-be nature of would-be God. At a God with an agenda, anyway, since a God without an agenda becomes redundant and meaningless. I guess that's me trying to show how 'absurd' God would be, if he existed.

But it's not a cop-out to say I don't know if there is one. Atheism isn't a belief there isn't a God, it's a refusal to believe in God.

You can argue that a belief either way is arrived at through reason (though I'd argue religious people are more likely to have inherited their faith, through family indoctrination, which is more or less child abuse; little reasoning involved). But though the process might be similar between the following two approachesthey do not amount to the same, because A's reasoning is sound and B takes a leap in logic for its answer; it's a fallacy.

No, a miracle is when a scientifically impossible event occurs.

You seem to hold nature in awe, as something beautiful and precious. You're right to do so. Things are far stranger than you can imagine.

But 'God' in this sense is just a word reducible to 'Nature' or 'Causality' or 'The Way Things Are and Will Always Be No Matter What Happens or Will Happen'; Hegel talked of 'God' in the same way.

It's a language game, but it's subtle and it's insidious; there's a whole contradictory idealism that comes with it by extension.

If God is not a continual moral force - an intervenor - then he is redundant, and we should eradicate all reference to him. If he is a continual moral force, then we should see in him his deep contradictions and the evils that he places around us.

Then faith is, as I've said, inherently exclusive from reason. Falling back onto the argument that you've arrived at this faith 'through reason', through the 'common sense' of asking 'well how else can a bee pollinate a flower, how else can we account for the miracle of life, how a plant photosynthesizes?' That isn't truthful reasoning; it's a fallacy.

'God' becomes a premature explanation. And in the absence of a society advanced enough to research the world with rigour and cogency, theism was a survival instinct, a means of man understanding himself and his relation to the world.

But now a belief in God is in spite of such scientific endeavour, in spite of the social advancement and intellectual development of mankind. Religion is far outmoded; it remains as primitive and naive as it was when Poseidon ruled the waves and Athena was goddess of wisdom and the arts and when Zeus ruled over both of them.

It's just a silly cop-out. Again, to go back to an earlier post: if I believed, despite showing in other areas of my life a clear capacity for rational analysis, that there were fairies living at the bottom of my garden, I would be mocked, and challenged. Don't pull my leg by saying I wouldn't be. And it'd be right to mock and challenge, in the face of how silly such a belief is; you can substitute 'I believe in God' with 'I believe in The Smurfs / Santa / The Tooth Fairy / The Devil' (all of whom, again, are just anthropomorphic self-projections (why does the Tooth Fairy look like a human? Why does the Devil have human features? It's BOLLOCKS!)). The same things apply, but the beliefs no longer appear as reasonable. And I don't see why 'God' should endure reason when nothing else does; I don't see why religion should be off-limits when everything else is thrown out once a child realises that Santa didn't come down the chimney last night, that the Tooth Fairy didn't leave a pound coin under the pillow.

'God' (I add quotation marks because I speak of an idea, not a being) is the great tyrant masking the truth from us all. Reducing your beautiful, inexplicable world to, as said, a premature explanation in the name of OHMYGOODNESS clarity.

My 'emptiness' is filled with my family, with my friends, with love for each of them; it's filled with the joys of cinema, of music, of art, of life; of people and their interrelations, their frustrations, their strangeness; the ineluctable irreconcilability of linearity - time itself; with memories fabricated, selected to protect me from the trauma of the present; with writing, with thinking - 'I think, therefore I am'; with quests for the truth, for the objective reality despite all attempts at the internalisation of the horizontal plane; with the churning of my stomach as I look at a girl and she looks at me; with the moral dilemmas of eating meat; with the daily struggle of the emancipation of the working class from the illusions of a 'selfish human nature'; with debates with people I've never met before but would love to meet, for they are humans, inherently mysterious, of interest, strange and unique and perishable and fragile - significant and expendable, meaningless and void; with the utter horror of mortality, and the liberation of such horrors; with outrage at the many social injustices of the world - the increasing decline of civilised man; with the writings of Trotsky, Lenin, Marx, Engels; the films of Patrick Keiller; James Joyce; Terrence Malick and Frederick Wiseman; James Gandolfini and Edie Falco kissing in a swimming pool; the peaks and troughs as I stand on the threshold of adulthood as a graduate in a world seemingly hostile to graduates; as a graduate in a relative privileged social and economic position, but one whose exploitation seems inevitable due to his relation to the means of production; DH Lawrence - Birkin and Gerald, their honest declaration of love for one another after that naked wrestle; the absolute heartbreak of a break-up; Aroon - her tits, arse, pubic bush; dark nights when the rest of the world seems to be sleeping and I lie awake wondering why I can't stop thinking why I'm wondering about nothing in particular and everything at once; my adolescent yearnings for innocence; weed-induced laughter; the naked comfort of comforting nakedness; transience, of which we are at the mercy, always and forever; the sweeping moment; when Michael shoots McClusky and Solozzo; when Vito shoots Fanucci; Noah23, Ihmotep, New York, Tuscany, poetry, green, red, blue, yellow and everything in between and beyond and within and without and what is said and unsaid and the faint sigh of delight as we realise there's really nothing to it after all.

And I guess I don't need the idea of a God to get me through any of that.

Actually, the universe is expanding, which means it cannot be infinite. But a belief in an infinite universe is arrived at by mathematics, by scientific research; scientists' understanding of these issues is always developing and changing, but crucially they are honest about it. They have to be, otherwise research becomes purposeless. There's consistency to it.

Regarding a belief in God, and I've heard many reasonings, there's either a fallacy at the outset or some sort of leap of logic at the end. It's just a language game, wherein 'God' becomes reducible to 'Nature' or 'Causality' or 'The Way Things Are and Will Be No Matter How They Are Are What They Are'. The language employed by believers allows them to account for many incompatible worldviews formed by materialism: evolution, the Big Bang, etc. 'God' made the world and now we're fit to explore it as we wish, with science and all those other 'human constructs'. Meanwhile, God watches down out of curiosity as to how we're getting on...

But the belief in God remains a product of a logical fallacy; I've dealt sufficiently I think in my two previous posts as to why this fallacy might have such social appeal - a belief in something beyond us and above us helps us to remain aware of our own hopelessness: this is the true meaning of 'hope', it's actually a product of despair.

This brings me nicely onto Klyd's last post:

Okay, fine. So he 'incessantly calls upon people to open their minds through learning and education to develop a deeper understanding of God through Christ'. Cool. But how does that help with your reasoning? How is 'learning and education to develop a deeper understanding of God through Christ' any more cogent than simply saying 'I cannot account for many things in the world, therefore I believe in God'. The two don't even connect, they don't have the same meaning.

Well, I suppose you've got to have some faith in what you read and accept, otherwise you'd be another self-debilitating sceptic.

But saying you have applied 'thought and rationality' to arrive at the knowledge of God's existence does not mean you did apply 'thought and rationality'. It's just another vague linguistic trick.

So: What's your reasoning for God?

Afs, I was quite rude to you. You are the last person on this board that deserves that kind of treatment, and I hope you accept my apology. I respect you and your intellect tremendously.

I admire your intelligence and the way your mind works, Capo. Very interesting reads. Like I said in my first post. I'm a spiritual dude, who follows his own spirituality. I believe in a creator, yes, But I don't believe in these rules and hell and tests. I don't think it really gives a shit what I'm up to etc. For me the main reason I believe, is I just have to look around. Everything is perfect. Such a perfect design. Religion has poisoned everything.

The big bang theory sounds as plausible to me as God does to the Atheists. The theory we came from Monkeys also sounds like a crock of shit to me. We were killing Monkeys to conquer the planet. But that's a different debate...

I originally said "as long as those beliefs do not call for the hurting of others."

Capo, I wish God gave me (or was born with, either way) the brain and energy to debate the way you do. Honestly I feel overwhelmed by your posts. It's not that I don't have questions and comments for each of your statements, I just don't have the time and energy to do so. Working a hard 10-12 hours a day and coming home to a demanding family wears me out. I promise I will try to respond to what you've said. Your thoughts aren't being ignored.

I also want you to know that I find what you have to say very interesting, minus the indirect personal insults like the several "horseshit" references among others. I seriously hope we get to meet in person someday because I think having a few drinks and having a face-to-face discussion about this sort of thing would be more beneficial, for me anyway, in that I can stop you after each point and discuss/counter question. I look forward to that day if it ever happens

SB, You were not in the least. If you think you were, then I must have been as well rude to you, but I honestly was trying to debate about beliefs. You mocked a belief of mine and I strongly believe that beliefs are detached from people, so it is all right to do so. It is not like we are born with them or we couldn't change them. we think and adopt them as we go through life. They should be debated, occasionally laughed at, get hammered, get polished, and by all means be defended.

I confess that maybe mocking is not the wisest way to go when you try to persuade people to change their beliefs, as it seems our beliefs define us after a while, but I really don't think it should be off limits. We are the one in charge, beliefs could change.

As well as always, I respect and esteem you deeply. I hope you know that.

Well, this thread has gone peaceful quite suddenly! I feel like I need to call someone a [BadWord] to get things back on track

Settle down ...you [BadWord]

Fisticuffs time... good thing my nails are sharp.

Then 'God' as an idea becomes interchangeable with 'Nature' or 'Causality' or 'The Way Things Are And Will Always Be No Matter What Happens', as I've said. 'God' ceases to be the morally conscious intervenor; just a word, but socially and intellectually redundant.

But yeah, looking around us, the world is a strange, mysterious, beautiful place, full of wonder and horror and contradictions - in themselves wonderful and horrific. Life is precious, even when we're 'down'.

Happy New Year y'all. Here's to a cracking 2010...

Just like George Carlin, I believe in Joe Pesci because he looks like a guy who can get things done.

No I do not believe in god.

I want nothing to do with religion as I hate it with a passion.

Yo Capo, give me a beat [BadWord]

I've finished a new album!

January 2, 2010 5:27 a.m. EST

(CNN) -- An Irish atheist group has published a series of quotations on religion in an attempt to challenge a blasphemy law that went into effect on New Year's Day. Lawmakers in staunchly Catholic Ireland passed the law in July, but it came into force January 1.

A person breaks the law by saying or publishing anything "grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion."

The 25 "blasphemous" quotations include the words of Jesus, Mohammed, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie and Bjork.

Atheist Ireland published the list on its Web site Friday. It says it aims to challenge the law, which makes blasphemy a crime punishable by a €25,000-($35,800) fine.

"Despite these quotes being abusive and insulting in relation to matters held sacred by various religions, we unreservedly support the right of these people to have published or uttered them," the group said on the site.

Well, the foregoing should prove to be ample grist for some Board members' mills.

Jesus was black!

He was Jewish, too. No wonder so many wanted to kill him.

It's so curious how people use Jewish or Jew as an ethnicity when it is actually a religious nomenclature. People may refer to you as Italian, Irish, Polish, etc. or as White or Black, etc, but not as Catholic or Protestant (unless one is in Northern Ireland probably). But yet we will state that someone is Jewish despite the fact that they are also Italian, or Irish, or Polish, or White or Black. Was Sammy Davis Jr. Jewish or was he Black? He was a Black guy that adhered to the Jewish faith. Curious, indeed.

From my experience Jews refer to themselves as Jewish, and not from what country they were born. Sort of like half the board members on here saying they are Italian, even though they are American.

I believe in Jews.

Race, ethnicity, and religion. People refer to themselves differently.
It seems to depend on the group or the individual and who you are conversing with. I prefer to use Euro-American and not limit it to one country since I have roots in several.

....and Jews believe in God.

Erm, I see where you're coming from with this, but I'm not so sure about any of that. To wit: we know that the Egyptians and Mayans built structures that we today, even with all of our modern powers of massive construction and destruction, simply cannot duplicate. Science didn't arise out of a vacuum over night, as you know, it's a system that has built on itself for thousands of years. I think some of us are a little too quick in dismissing the ancient Mayan, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, Golden Chinese, etc. theistic societies as somehow backward and progressively concave compared to our own, when in fact, the scientific acheivements of these ancient peoples were far more significant and broad sweeping than those made in our own supposedly progressive, outward looking time period.

The Hindus' didn't let their multitheism prevent them from inventing the number zero; the Egyptians had Gods of all sorts but were still practicing surgery and alchemy thousands of years ago; the ancient Chinese more or less invented modern Theology as we know it along with just about everything we take for granted today from paper to gun powder; the ancient Mayans were the greatest astrologers, maritime navigators and calendar makers ever (see Mayan 2012 Doomsday Prophecy) who knew more about celestial orbitations than contemporary science does today; and that's just to name a very few achievements by a very few ancient, primitive multitheistic socities, thus; I really think we need to detach ourselves from attributing 'primitive' with naivety or a lack of scientific progression, as it's clear that the scientific postulates formulated by these ancient multitheistic societies thousands of years ago (notwithstanding the monumental acheivements made in the high Middle Ages) are the foundations for which today's "progressive, outward looking society" is built upon.

I'd argue that one must learn to seperate and distinguish between the presuppositions about life that we form as children, from the suppositions that are developed in mature adult hood. We must distinguish between those experiences which are necessary conditions of human experience, and those which are not. Unfortunately, God gets thrown out often times about the same time as the Tooth Fairy and other mythical whimsies. Put simply - I'd argue that God is a necessary condition of human experience, while tooth fairies and Santa Claus are not. Once we're able to draw clear distinctions between childhood presuppositions and the suppositions formed in adulthood - thereby distingusihing between those experiences which are necessary conditions of human experience and those which are not - then the idea of a God can be developed and conceptualized like any other discipline.

Re: Science vs. Religion - The famous Tower of Babel (19,000 ft high, and 8 miles round); "an enormous tower built at the city of Babylon, a cosmopolitan city typified by a confusion of languages,[2] also called the "beginning" of Nimrod's kingdom. According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, participated in the building. The people decided their city should have a tower so immense that it would have "its top in the heavens."...."Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" (Genesis 11:4). The Book of Genesis then relates how God, displeased with the builders' intent, came down and confused their languages and scattered the people throughout the earth."

The great Tower of Babel is believed by many historians to have been an a symbol for the consolidation of science and religion. It's been said that it was God himself who burned it to the ground, angry at the townspeople, but most historians believe the gargantuan structure was destroyed by townspeople who didn't believe in a unification of science and religion. I have a feeling that a similar fate would befall any modern attempts at such a landmark today..

Wait a minute, "necessary condition of human experience"? Alright...

Erm, right. Speak for yourself.

Also, I've already said science is limited to the tools and thoughts of the time and space in which it exists. I don't think I'd be creating too much controversy here if I supposed that we know more about the world today - and that we are better equipped to know more about it - than ancient peoples did. That's an inevitable part of historical progression.

The Mayans didn't build the Empire State Building in just over a year, because they couldn't; they didn't have the means.

As Marx said: 'The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.'

Also, I could visit one cathedral after another in England and not fail to be overwhelmed by their architectural beauty. Just as I might enjoy well-woven biblical allegories and references in Bob Dylan's work.

That is not to say that, 'God is not long dead intellectually, and we ought not to strive to make him redundant socially'.

I studied Marx because I had to. Marx (and any of his contemporaries) didn't know anything about psychology. There's no simple causality between (social) existence and consciousness. Btw., in the German original he doesn't say anything about (i)social[/i] existence. "Das Sein bestimmt das Bewußtsein."
All this, of course, has nothing to do with my original question.

I never thought that this would be my most answered thread.

No, I don`t believe in things I can`t watch, feel or whatever with my senses.

Personally, I believe in a god. I have my reasons, just as Capo and VitoC and the others that don't have theirs.

My reasons are many, but I shall share two of them.

Reason Number One:

When I was six years old I suddenly got very ill, it started off as just flu symptoms, but one day my Dad found me with large, purple, elliptical bruises all over my body, and I was burning up. He immediately called 911, they medivac'd me to Arnold Palmer Childrens hospital; At this point I was hallucinating severely. When they admitted me the bruises had disappeared, but when they checked my temperature I had a fever of 108 degrees Fahrenheit. They packed me in ice, and eventually brought it down (giving me frostbite on my right thigh in the process.) But I continued to hallucinate, after two days I stopped, but was still extremely feverish, no appetite, etc. The whole time the doctors could find nothing wrong with me. Then, 4 days after I was admitted, I just... got better... inexplicably. They said it would take on the upwards of 2 weeks, and I got completely better in 4 days.

Some people may not think so, but I believe it was a genuine miracle.

Reason Number Two:

My family has been going through some real tough times lately, and tonight we didn't have anything at all in the house to eat for dinner. We had $2.58 to our name and we went to the store (A Publix in a strip mall with a Movie Gallery/Subway/Bizzaro's Pizzaria) While I was inside I bought Eggs and bread, to feed our family we had a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread. when I came back outside My dad had a Pizza from the Pizzaria. He had apparently asked the manager if he could have a pizza to feed us and the man said yes. So when we would not have had enough food to feed us, we suddenly had enough.


I know they are not stone solid proof... and I know that most will write it off as luck. But to me, and me alone, this proves the existence of a god.

Please, I don't need to hear how you can write these occurrences off to luck, or the like. To me they prove God exists.

You see, I don't understand why people try to crush the believers' faith. If you don't think there is a God, I don't need you to try to prove me wrong, or show me the errors of my ways. Why don't you Keep it to yourselves and pity us "fools." Because I don't think that anyone here, who does believe in a god, want to hear that we are morons, or various other insults. Just leave us be.

That is my two cents

EDIT: I don't think that my ability to see reason, and broaden my intellectual horizons is hindered because I believe in God. I realize fully that there is no proof, and that there probably never will be, the only people that know are dead. But there is, as I have said, no reason for an Atheist to try to sway a believer's faith, and Visa Versa. Just let everyone believe what they want and let us go on with their lives.

Why yes virginia there is a God.

ds

Two cents well spent. Well said Santino.

I believe in God, yep.

Again, that's just a way of interpreting "the inexplicable".

"I do not know what caused this, therefore it must have been caused by 'God'."

But they don't, though, do they? Because you said yourself that "they are not stone solid proof". It's just a way of interpreting historical hazard in religious terms.

As for your second reason to believe in God... was the same divine being accountable for your family's hardship in the first place?

Also, isn't the reason your family ate eggs, bread and a pizza that night down to economic circumstance and a very kind pizzeria employee? Was God acting through said employee?

If it had suddenly started raining pizzas in your garden after you had prayed for God to feed you, then fair enough. But as is, I see nothing inexplicable or miraculous in the logic of events you've described.

The key question here is why do you account for these events with an interventionist interpretation? Regardless of what the event is, why should it be a creator, some unknown mysterious and morally good force?

I can understand the desperation of certain situations, and the immense relief one might feel when surviving such situations (be that an earthquake, a break-up or the biological need to consume food). I can relate to the real sense of 'gratitude' and 'thanks' in coming through these situations, though cannot understand why one must fill what one thinks is a gap in logic (due to scientific ignorance?) with 'GOD DID IT!'

I direct to Santino Brasi the same words I posed to Blib earlier in the thread:

Try thinking of all the coincidences in your life that didn't occur, that haven't happened, to try and get an idea of the meaninglessness of attributing one improbable event to some sort of morally conscious being..

Santino, if one hand claps in the forest, does a tree fall?

If two forests fall in a clap, do five trees sleep under snow?

As.
Much.
Sense.
Making.

I didn't read all the stuff, just the last page. I see some interesting things going on. The posts of Capo and Santino are opposed to each other, but both make very clear how they 'see things' without flaming (or too much flaming).

Personally I don't believe in a God. The only person I believe in is myself. I'm the one who's responsible for my actions and for the things that happen/occur to me. For me there is always a logical reason for things that happen.

I agree Floors. However, I have an abiding respect for people who do believe in God and who are religious as long as that belief and that religiousness doesn't result in physical or mental harm to others (as those terms are usually understood). Some of the content of a couple of Board members posts on this subject have been replete with vitriole that betrays a deep wound somewhere along their life's line.

Would the endorsement of irrational superstition come under "mental harm", or would "mental deficiency" be a better term?

'Vant, whose posts on this subject have been replete with vitriol that betrays a deep wound somewhere along their life's line?

No i don't believe in god.

Bump..

I absolutely believe in God and His Son, my Lord & Saviour, Jesus Christ. Through Him all things are possible. I am a very blessed man with a beautiful wife, two great kids, a job that I love and a terrific home. Of course I wish he would have blessed me with a better metabolism - I could lose some weight!

Oli, I wouldn't have said it any better myself! Especially the "replete with vitriole" kicker! Just trying to help so you don't waste time with bashing the believer about how harmful religion is with vitriole!

I don't believe in a God or an afterlife, though I am open to being wrong on the subject. I used to be a believer, but like most (if not all) believers, I believed simply because I had never considered that there might be an altenative. There is an alternative, and it makes a hell of a lot more sense.

I could never put it as eloquently as Capo (whom I miss and wish would visit these boards more often), but there are just too many contradictions, too many inconsistencies, and too much hate and intolerance for me to ever consider religion again. Plus, it is far more likely that there is no God, and if there is a God, He isn't the omnibenevolent, omnicompetent, omniscient God that Christians believe He is.

As they say "you got to believe" and just curious on why you think there's more probability there not being a God?

There are countless reasons, but I'll name a few.

The problem of evil. There are a few examples, but I will focus on Draper's evidential problem of gratuitous evil.

1. Gratuitous evils exist.
2. The hypothesis of indifference, i.e., that if there are supernatural beings they are indifferent to gratuitous evils, is a better explanation for (1) than theism.
3. Therefore, evidence prefers that no god, as commonly understood by theists, exists.

Now, free will dictates we can do what we want, and some people do some pretty horrific things. I understand that. But the problem is with gratuitous evil. Take the Holocaust, for example. I understand that some bad things must happen in order for us to truly understand and appreciate what is good. But when is enough enough? What can we possibly learn from the extermination of 6 million Jews that couldn't have been learned by the extermination of a small percent of that? You don't think an omnibenevolent God could have intervened at some point and stopped it? What it tells me is that if there is a God, He either has the power to stop these things and chooses not to, or he is an omnibenevolent God, but doesn't have the power to stop it. The more likely scenario, however, is God doesn't exist.

Some may argue that God is a "hidden God" and therefore can't make any sort of overt contact with his followers, because faith is believing without knowing. You have the choice to believe, and God showing Himself to His followers takes that option away. But a hidden God isn't possible either. There are countless examples in the Bible itself that prove that God isn't averse to showing Himself. Exodus, Chapter 14, the parting of the Red Sea, for example.

Want an example from the New Testament? Matthew, Chapter 17:

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters--one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah."

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"

Clearly, God doesn't want to hide. So why is God hiding today? Simple, the Bible is a collection of stories created by MAN, and God probably doesn't exist.

If God doesn't exist like you state here as fact that's fine if that is your stance. However don't take the tone nor stance that I have to abide by your word or single example. If that's your belief than I commend you for it, however your conviction and the way you express yourself tells me your need to spread this belief. However, me personally I have other beliefs which obviously don't align with yours. I understand this is an open forum, however you were responding to my post. So in other words I appreciate your stance but I'm not budging.

Thank you EHI. This is the best argument for not participating in these debates. You are saying exactly what most think .... "I have my own beliefs and whatever you say or do won't change them".

What tone? I never said (or implied) that you have to abide by my word. You asked why I think it is more likely that God doesn't exist than He does. I told you why, and gave you examples. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't force what I believe on others, but will answer when asked, so pipe down with the attitude.

maybe that one!

Yes, that would be the attitude. And also the line "their is no God" which is purely your opinion and you stated as fact.

It is CLEARLY my opinion. I was unaware that I had to put "in my opinion" after everything I said. I would have assumed that would be clear. Clearly, I was mistaken.

SO, to clarify, in my most humble of opinions, God does not exist, for the reasons stated above (which are not facts).

Drama? Really?

I though it needed a flair.

To be honest, that tone came later. And it´s understandable, in my opinion. East, it seems as if you know exactly what buttons to push. Is it pure coincidence that you seem to be right in the middle of most of the fracas around here? Or are you just an agitator, provoking people for your own satisfaction? What will you do when people stop responding to your posts? No offense but If ever visiting London, make sure to give Speaker´s corner in Hyde Park a shot.

If the mods find this post offensive, they may give me a vaccation. It´s worth it.

Participating in topic generally puts one in the middle of the "fracas". And since I'm here to often I guess that puts me in more than your comfortable with. When people stop responding to me I will talk to myself I guess! And no offense taken! Don't take offense to this, I would like to see London for many reason. However I'm more into tropical weather and beaches!

You certainly have a knack of rubbing people the wrong way. It does not suit you and your definition of God's righteousness that you so passionately seem to defend.

I'm simply participating in a discussion. Things get passionate when sides disagree. And your a hypocrite plain and simple

What is plain and simple is the boot on your ass out of here. It's long overdue despite many warnings.

I knew it was only a matter of time.

Seriously, all I did was answer the question that he asked me, an all of a sudden, I have a "tone", and I'm trying to force my ideas on him. Don't ask the questions if you can't handle the answers.

Good riddance!

Why EastHarlemItal Why..

Seems like it took two to tangle and maybe you weren't so innocent!

and the addition of: Good riddance! shows it. You both are to blame as I see it.

This from the shit-stirrer of all shit-stirrers.

Please, sir...do explain.

Was it the purported tone? That didn't come until after EHI responded to my post. He asked a question, I answered, and he apparently couldn't handle the answer. So he lashed out the only way he could: by accusing me of stating opinion as fact, and accusing me of trying to "spread" my message. It was clearly MY opinion, but just to be "fair", I clarified that it was my opinion, and not a statement of fact, with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure. You're probably the most sarcastic poster on these boards, so I don't know what your deal is.

Calling them as I read them! and I guess the truth hurts those who finally hear it.

Or is this against the rules? truth telling that is.

Gee SC, And I thought I was one of your favorites!

The board has very capable moderators. I'm not sure why some constantly feel the need to jump in the middle of every two members' argument and call it, like some kind of wannabe moderators.

Ah, the old atheist argument of "God either doesn't care or He's too powerless to do anything about it." Of course, they come to this conclusion because they start off all wrong.

God is neither uncaring or powerless. But we all knew, as did He, that suffering, including atrocities such as the Holocaust, would be a part of our mortal lives in this fallen world. He knew that some would use their free agency for good and others for evil. This life is both a learning experience and a testing ground.

Ultimately it's up to Him when "enough is enough." And the fact that His Son's suffering exceeded the combined suffering of all human beings, on this earth and all earths created by His power, gives Him the moral right to say this a good plan.



God has certainly shown Himself to select people at given times throughout history. However, while the ancient Israelites witnessed manifestations of His power (the parting of the Red Sea, the water from the rock, manna, etc.), only Moses and some others actually saw God.

Of course, the earthly advent of the Son of God was a unique event. But don't assume He hasn't shown Himself since then.

You're essentially like Thomas, the doubting apostle, who said that he would never believe Christ had risen from the grave and appeared to man unless he could see Him for himself, feel the prints of the nails in his hands and feet, and thrust his hand into His side. Jesus, of course, did appear to Thomas shortly thereafter; to which Thomas said, "My Lord and my God." Christ's response was, "Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

One person "discussion" seems to be another persons "debate" which seem to be anothers persons "argument" I guess.

Tuff time to figure which one you are in sometimes.

and just like "God" "Allah" or "Buda" things are always in the eye of the believer/ non-believer/ or poster sometimes...

1) Theological question: Why is it that Christians assume that the God they believe in is omnibenevolent?
Is there any hint in the New Testament?

2) (this question is, I guess, less theological, more personal) Would it diminish the belief if God was not omnibenevolent but just a creator and looks at what happens to his creation?

Discussing religion and politics always causes hassle and bother. That's why i generally stay away from such topics. If somebody has a belief in religion, they are not going to stop just because somebody else tells them they are wrong??

Live and let live, everybody has different opinions and beliefs don't they?

The ban wasn't neccessary.

Well now he's dead and nothing can bring him back. So you gotta talk to FS. You gotta talk to the other caporegimes. Its good business.

Differences are differences, especially when it comes to religion and politics. The distinction between the person who got banned and others who do not is that what happens on these boards is business, its not personal. When you get personal, eventually you get banned.

I strongly disagree with almost everything Mignon says about politics, but I have nothing but respect for Mignon. Same for Fatherson. Even if I make a wisecrack it is not about them personally, and they treat me the same way. I am sure my views infuriate them, but to my knowledge neither of them has ever come after me personally. These disagreements never get in the way of wishing one another a happy birthday, or giving kudos for some number of posts attained, and the like any more than it interferes with personal contact with more like minded people like Oli or PB.

The individual in question got a number of warning but would not quit.

Aw, give FS a break, SC. He just misses his guns is all .

And now the US Supreme Court has agreed not to touch the changes New York made with gun laws. Maybe there IS a God!

At the end of the day, I respect everyone's right to believe whatever they wanna believe. For me, however, blind faith simply isn't enough. In my mind, the God that Christians worship cannot exist given the way things are. Again, that is just how I see things.

That's fair enough, but why are you singling out the "God that Christians worship"?

What about the Jews (possibly a bad example because I FIRMLY believe that Jews and Christians worship the same God), or the Muslims, or the Hindus, or the Moonies, or whoever?

That is a fair question, and it is probably unfair that I have singled out Christianity in most of my posts and examples. I suppose it's because I am more familiar with Christianity than Islam, Judaism, or any other faith. But my reasoning extends to other faiths as well.

One thing I will reiterate is that I am agnostic, not atheist, which means I am open to the idea that God may indeed exist. But at this point in my life, there are too many things I can't accept in order to believe.

Hopefully that cleared up any confusion!

That's something that is almost never stated. We Americans are hughly more familiar with Christianity than any other religion even Judaism. Thus, we are able to legitimately discuss and comment on what we know.

That brings to mind a recent accusation by Sean Hannity that SNL was not fair and balanced because its skit about Jesus was not mirrored with a skit about Mohammed.

Wisely spoken.

Well, for starters, you know all those signs you see at football games and other public events? The John 3:16 ones.



It certainly would for me. In LDS theology, God isn't just our creator. And He isn't just our "Father" in a some kind of symbolic sense. He is literally the Father of our spirits. And we lived with Him for ages before we came to this earth. And Jesus (known as Jehovah) was the first born of these spirit children of God. So, we see God caring for mankind on this earth as a father would care for his children.

DT, that is very kind of you to say. That is the difference between posters being able to disagree and still show RESPECT for one another and posters not doing that. Some people post at an adult level and show maturity others post at a childish level.

I think that many people confuse God and religion. You can believe in God, but have doubts about a religion. The two don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, although to many they do.

I more or less think that religion and god's were created by people to control other people and put order in everything back then. Such as if people were afraid of not getting into heaven, they wouldn't chop each other's heads off.

I could believe in God, but not religion. Religion is kind of the thing I don't accept at all. Starting from the things that they force people to do things and ending with pedophile priests and other priests covering them up.

If religion wants to attract people it should be modernized and fair to everyone.

It's not like they "force" you. If you try to be religious and then decide you don't agree with its principles, you can walk out and nobody will stop you. It's not like the mafia where you can leave only when you die. I always got it that, according to Christianity, if you are a good person but are not a follower of God, it's not like you automatically end up in hell just because you don't believe. What matters is being a good person. This view is shared by all other Christians I personally know.
And why always this talk about pedophile priests, as if pedophilia was monopolized by the church? I mean, there are scumbags in any social group, if you find a pedophile football player, does this mean all football players are bad?

Well said. There is a huge difference between believing in God and following a religion.

Here's how you tell the difference: People who are interested in the subject of God will have philosophical discussions. People who run religions are always making you feel guilty and asking you for money.

Well, if you watch TBN and a few other networks, the money part of your statement seems to be true.

Monsignor always used to joke that Palm Sunday was the most well-attended day because people feel that they're getting something for nothing.

I'm not sure

think I will start believing in hundreds of gods... like the Hindus.

Hey nowadays you can get a light brunch every week..,usic,.a piece of bread, a sip of wine....all for a dollar in the collection plate.

Thew question shouldn't be whether we believe in God, but whether God believes in us.

Like George Carlin, I believe in Joe Pesci. He looks like a guy who can get things done.

Yes I do believe in God but I am not a fan of organized religion which is actually pretty unorganized.

Nice to see this thread bumped, i remember this being quite a controversial thread..

I don't believe in atheists. Everyone, on some level, knows there is a God. When you get to the root of those who claim to not believe in God, it invariably is based more on emotion than what they often cite as their basis, i.e. reason, science, etc.

I know people who are Atheist and have been for decades but they believe in the afterlife, reincarnation, various different types of religions or spirituality, and other things but they claim not to believe in a God/Gods.

I have a friend from a country that was once a part of the USSR and he is technically Jewish but he and his entire family do not actually practice Judaism at all any of it, and are Atheists since that's how they were raised for generations in their original country. One time I was riding in a car with him and we saw a church that was for people from his original country and he laughed saying how he had never seen any sort of churches, synagogues/temples, or anything like that in his former country as it was and still is primarily Atheist as that's what most people were when they were a part of the USSR.

Well not me, i'm just not a believer. You shouldn't speak for everyone Ivy..

You say that but I'm sure you've heard the old saying, "There are no atheists in fox holes."

I imagine if you were in a life threatening situation or some sort of life crisis, you couldn't help but have your thoughts turn to something higher than yourself or what might wait for you after death. Every self-professed atheist has or will face this, if only at the closing moments of their life.

That is simply inaccurate, and quite honestly one of the dumbest things I think you have ever posted.

I agree. There is no evidence of a God. In his books The Case for a Creator and The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel does not present any evidence of a God. Instead, he simply criticizes evolution and the Big Bang, and those who advocate them, but presents no science to support creationism. That's true of the wide array of books I've read that advocate a creator. Their content is criticism, but not evidence.

Of course there is evidence for God. How the universe exists, the planets and how they move in their rotation, the perfect environment to sustain life here on Earth, the intricacies of the human body, etc. all testify to the reality of a Creator. Blind evolution and other explanations secularist scientists have come up with to explain away a higher power is what is weak and hardly convincing.

In any event, like I said, none of this is the real reason why people claim not to believe in God. Few will admit it but the real reasons are inevitably emotional. They are angry, they've been hurt, they see the evil in the world and can't reconcile it with there being a God, etc.

And some people adopt Atheism to help pass themselves off as "intellectual."

If people want to be Atheist or Agnostic that's their choice as they are not going to change their mind even if I or other people tell them things contrary to their beliefs. I am just not a fan of militant/hardcore Atheists/Agnostics who claim they really dislike Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, or anyone of any religion/spirituality; but then are big into proselytizing their own Atheism/Agnosticism by saying things like "If you believe in a God/creator/etc. you're an idiot." or "The world would be better off if everyone was Atheist/Agnostic".

My friends that are Atheist or Agnostic are OK if other people want to believe in God or they follow a religion or spirituality, or have had religious/spiritual experiences where they felt the presence of God or a higher power, only they themselves just do not believe in the existence of a God, or have at one point or still do question if there is a God, and they don't proselytize their Atheism or Agnosticism the way people like Richard Dawkins do.

I saw this question in the poll: The Christian God? The muslim Allah? The Jewish JHW? They are all the same "God" but just have different names.

I have seen people online who claimed that they were pagan or something like that and worshiped the Egyptian or Ancient Greek gods but these people were not Egyptian/Egyptian-American, or Greek/Greek-American so I was rather puzzled by that or how it worked for them.

There are also people I have encountered online who claim to be Satanists but some of them are actually really Atheists but just doing this to "rebel" against Christianity or for shock value, and they read stuff by Anton LaVey. As for the others I asked a friend of mine about it and he told me how there is stuff out there you do not want to mess with or invite into your life.

While there is absolutely no basis for what Ivy is claiming regarding why people become atheists, PB's theory does prove to be true in some cases. Many atheists believer they are intellectually superior to EVERYBODY, but they're really nothing more than jerks.

As for how I became an atheist? I was a Christian for basically my whole life up until about 7 or 8 years ago (give or take). But like anything I have a keen interest in, I always want to know as much as possible about my interests. I'm a nerd, and I like to research the things that I like and matter to me.

In my research on faith and Christianity, it started becoming more and more obvious to me that it is nothing more than a sham. None of it makes sense when you truly sit down and think about it, and while I considered myself a person of faith for a long time, I've also always been scientifically minded. There were a lot of things regarding my faith that I simply ignored because I followed God blindly. I guess that is the basis of faith anyway, and eventually, after years of studying and research, blind faith just didn't work for me anymore.

For me, it was completely unemotional. I looked at the evidence and I went down the path that made more sense for me. I respect people's right to believe whatever they want. Sometimes I wish I could take that leap of faith and just believe again. But I can't, because I have absolutely no doubt that this life is all there is. I have had a handful of near death experiences since my conversion to atheism, and never once did I jump to thoughts of God or eternal damnation.

Could there be a God? Sure. Could there be an afterlife? Absolutely. But the odds are STRONGLY against it. The simple truth is that it is far more likely that there is no God or afterlife.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Do with it what you will!

Thanks, buddy .

And many of these Atheists become so overzealous in their belief (or non-belief), that they become as fanatical as some fundamentalist religious types. And in that case, their Atheism almost becomes a religion in itself. And that kinda defeats the whole purpose of abandoning religion in the first place.

Just live and let live. I'm a Catholic. I have a strong respect for Judaism. But Jews and Catholics don't proselytize. The idea of standing on a corner and handing out flyers, or ringing doorbells, is ridiculous to me.

If you're a believer, pray to your God and shut up about it. If you're an Atheist, you're entitled to your beliefs (or non-beliefs) as well. But when you start protesting every time a Deity is mentioned in a school play, or the Pledge of Allegiance gets you foaming at the mouth, then you're a fanatic in you're own right.

Like I said, just live and let live.

Old saying I subscribe to: I would rather believe in God and be right than not believe and be wrong.

I agree with everything here.
While there are religious fanatics, many atheists are intolerant towards people who "dare" to disagree with them in the same manner. I once discussed about religion with somebody on another forum (not about organized crime) and on a certain point asked a simple question:

"have you ever though that, if I may be wrong about something, you may be as well?" (in this case it was about the existence or non-existence of God).

You can't even imagine how rabid this guy turned after this question. Even a Crips/Bloods member who catches somebody dealing drugs on his turf would be more reasonable than that individual became after I implied that his "rational logic" may sometimes be too self-serving.

Of course, any reasonable person would never be so pompous that he believes there is no chance that he is wrong. Maybe I am. But the problem with people such as, say, IvyLeague, is that they take that "maybe" and equate it to an underlying, unadmitted belief in a higher power. I may be wrong, but that doesn't mean that I subconsciously believe in God. I don't. But I would like to think that if such a higher power did exist, that I would be deserving of eternal paradise based on my living a morally good and decent life, and that he wouldn't be so petty as to say "You have not worshipped at my feet for quite some time, so buh-bye!"

I'd hate to believe that God is the Soup Nazi!

I agree, in fact I think St.Paul said the most important thing is to live a moral life, even if you are of a different religion or an atheist, if you are a good person you won't be treated like a sinner, since everyone has their own way to reach the Truth.
The problem in my opinion is that some atheists are so horrified by the cruelties of the Old Testament (I am too, to be honest, if it were to be considered by itself), that they dismiss the New Testament and the rest of the Bible with its new morals which contain more humanity. In my opinion conflicts concerning religions often arise even in cases in can be dealt with reasonably and peacefully.

I think if one of your children die you want to believe it does not end for them when they die. It could help the parent move on in his life, and maybe even see them again when they die.

On living a good life. In some religions you can lead a bad life. Then just before you die you can repent and go to heaven. It's like getting a get out of jail free card in monopoly. You just have to believe it. I think I can definately get myself to believe before I pass away. Religion is cool in that regard.

My daughter graduated from an Ivy league school. She was relatively normal out of High School. She is like a communist now. But a communist that loves money.

Not only are you fabricating facts for an argument, but you are fabricating an argument that contradicts your premise. You suggest that a belief in a higher being will most readily surface in times of great peril or crisis when one is less likely to rely on one's rationality, intellect or sense, and that the mysteries of God are revealedin the face of impending demise or a sudden crisis where one's best judgment is clouded by the anxiety of the moment. Moreover, the foxhole bit is just a line. Where some agnostics might suddenly hope for the miracle of everlasting life when his life is suddenly in danger, it doesn't mean he actually would believe it. Don't confuse hope with belief.

The existence of God or lack there of is not a function of one's belief in God or not.

In fact, one could use the same reasoning and say that if a person of faith ever doubts the existence of a higher power, even for just a moment, then they are secretly an atheist.

And that would be equally fallacious as what Ivy is claiming.

Again, God's existence or lack thereof is independent of anyone's belief in God or lack thereof.

You're preaching to the choir, my friend (pun intended).

And there is another problem I've noticed with just about every atheist. They claim their "research" in religion has led them to discard it. The problem inevitably is, however, they really haven't done much research at all. And what they have done has been woefully inadequate. I don't think I've ever come across an atheist in person, or online, where their ignorance of religion, the scriptures, etc. wasn't apparent the more they tried to justify their position. Unfortunately, some of that does have to be put at the feet of many mainstream Christians today who don't really understand the scriptures themselves and who's ignorance provides many talking points for atheists.



There's no contradiction. The natural turning to a higher power happens shortly before or during the time of the crisis. The turning away happens afterward when they've become bitter and hardened their heart. Or when they see the wrongs of the world from afar that they aren't personally involved in.

Another reason I neglected to mention, why people claim not to believe in God, is they don't like the thought of having to answer or be beholden to anyone but themselves. So, by claiming God doesn't exist, they mistakenly believe they and their will is all that matters. And that they can go through life making up their own rules, their own morality, and so on.

It's clear to me that no matter what I or any other atheist says, it'll sound like nothing but BS to you, and that's fine. This is a topic in which we will never agree on, so, for the sake of my own sanity, we agree to disagree.

Not only that but these evangelical atheists, as I call them, undercut their own position by devoting so much time and energy against something they claim doesn't even exist. It's rather ironic when you think about it. It's why I can't take them seriously and why I'm pretty sure a guy like Christopher Hitchens was more than a little nervous as he approached death, despite whatever public claims he might have made. I would have loved to see his face after he passed to the other side.

There is no empirical way to even begin to provide evidence of a God. For one, there is no one definition of God (Jefferson and Franklin, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson are testimony to that). As I stated in an above post, religious people like Lee Strobel have already reached their terminus: i.e., there is a God who manifest certain attributes and intervenes in human lives (I like the Catholic terminus: "I believe in God, the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.")

Creationism, irreducible complexity, and unerring biblical content as the word of God are their bedrocks, none of which is truly subject to empirical examination.

Blah blah blah.

"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." ----- Saint Augustine

Good luck when you get to the other side, Oli .

I have no problem with people who believe in God. I have no problem with people who don't believe in God. I have no problem with people who do good. I have no problem with people who do bad.

But what I do have a problem with is people who have to stick their noses into those other people's business who they don't agree with.

Really? That's strange.

Most people do both good and bad. So no I don't you never do anything bad?

Christ this is an exhausting thread to read back!

I believe in my fellow humans' capacity to do good. And I don't need to believe in God for that to happen, so therefore I don't.

Just imagine actually participating in it! It is impossible to debate with someone like IvyLeague because of his arrogance and self righteousness. He has a certain opinion of atheists and agnostics, and has the gall to generalize that opinion across the entire atheist/agnostic community.

It'd be like if I said all Christians are arrogant, intolerant, pompous jerks. But I would never generalize Ivy's characteristics onto the entire Christian community. Because that is bad.

jesus christ! i didn't know there were so many godless heathens on this board

Count me amongst them!

I don't believe in no heaven. I don't believe in no hell.

I think it is silly to make generalizations about believers or non-believers. Unpleasant judgmental people can be found among both groups. Saying that an atheist is going to change his mind when faced with crisis makes about as much sense as claiming that a religious person will know one day there is no creator.

My only major issue with some religious people (i.e. Creationists) is that they persist in making claims about the world that are demonstrably untrue (i.e. world only 4-6000 yrs old) and expecting other people to treat those assertions as scientifically valid.

Other than that you can believe or not believe as you see fit. It neither harms nor helps me.

I believe if there is a God he only helps people who help themselves to your stuff when your not home.

Don't seer how you can't believe. Just look around at nature. Some people "Don't believe" just to be cool- in their opinion. My best friend, a Special Forces soldier when just about to make a jump out of a C-130 said "I don't need you God" well, he destroyed his knee and ankle upon landing. Later in life, he became a believer again when he got cancer.

When non-believers say "empirical evidence," it means they won't accept anything as evidence unless it's in just the way they want. Of course, God providing them that would defeat one of the primary reasons we're here to begin with.

I should also add that, despite there being many definitions of God created by man, it doesn't mean there isn't one true definition and the rest are either partially correct or wrong altogether.



"Religion has always been unpalatable to those whose lives are thoroughly steeped in philosophical conjecture."



Going forward, I'll assume by "world" you mean the earth. That is one of the more prominent examples of where many Christian's misunderstanding of the Bible gives non-believers a lot of talking points. Many mainstream Christians don't know or understand much of anything beyond what they read on the pages of their King James Bible. It's why they believe the earth is only 6,000 years old. When, in reality, it's simply been approximately 6,000 from the fall of Adam until now. The earth itself is, of course, much older.

Well then, it ought to be pretty dang simple for ya: simply present the empirical evidence and state the "one true definition".

"God is a concept, by which we measure our pain" John Lennon.

This website does a thorough and admirable job of breaking down why the existence of an omniscient, omnicompetent, omnibenevolent creator makes no sense. And NO Ivy, my research went far beyond the talking points of this particular website, but it does a great job of breaking down the inconsistencies and contradictions of faith in God.

GodIsImaginary.com

This is by no means an attempt on my behalf to undermine anyone's beliefs or their right to believe. Rather, it is to give insight as to why many people don't believe in God. And hey! If you guys can throw the Bible in our faces, it's only fair that we counter with some scientific literature of our own!

Sure it is. You're letting one guy, who can't help but outrage people who don't agree with him, drive you to mock all of the believers on this board who quietly go about their faith.


Again, it's not "you guys." It's basically one guy who can't help but mock people who don't agree with him. So you're mocking everyone who believes.

I mean, just look at the title: God is Imaginary. If that's not meant to incite, I don't know what is.


And don't turn Lennon into a philosopher. He was a musical genius, but he was just a man. A very flawed, very drug-addled man. It's amazing that you can't recognize a Deity, yet you seem to "worship" a singer. And if I wanted to be mean, I'd say look what happened to him.

You certainly don't have to read any of it if you're not interested. But I imagine your faith is strong enough where you're going to believe no matter what an atheist like myself says, so what's the big deal?

And I'm not mocking anybody (except maybe Ivy), so don't get it twisted.

I believe in Capo, the Poster Almighty,
Creator of havoc and mirth
And in J. Geoff Malta, his lonely chum, our host,
Preoccupied with the Godfather Saga,
Bore the Gangster BB,
Suffered under delusional mafia wannabes,
Was ridiculed, frustrated and found SC.
By the third year it felt like hell
So SC rose up a thread to predict the year's dead
And ascended to the lead with seven.
They sit at the right hand of Turnbull, the Sage Almighty,
From time to time they have to judge members, the good and the banned.

I believe in Random Post Whoring,
the community of members,
the thinly veiled racist rants,
the resurrection of the threads
And strife everlasting.

Amen.

Ha ha ha ha ha!! That's great Kly!!







TIS

I think the truth of the god issue really matters very little in practical terms. Philosophers have been discussing it since the very beginning, with limited progress.

The point I think matters is whether this country is better or worse off for having belief in god and transcendent, objective moral laws. I think its a hard case to make that we would be a better country with the moral nihilism necessary in atheism (and no i dont think sam harris makes a compelling argument for secular morality) compared to some sort of core belief in redemption. You especially need to consider the fact most of the folks on this board are smart people that will lead their lives well probably regardless. I don't know if the same can be said for the average Joe when faced with his cosmic meaninglessness. The atheists relying on the power of reason rather draistically overestimate man's ability in that respect.

This is coming from someone who is a lapsed catholic that has strong doubts.

You want to hear Good. I just heard this the other day. One of my sons best friends just got married on Saturday. My son has been very lucky to have exceptional friends he has know since he was a little kid.

I knew the kids father he died very young. Which proves the old saying that the good have a tendency to die too young.

Any way the Grooms mother has not been well for a long time a kidney issue. I don't know her very well.

Well, after he got back. I asked him how's was the wedding. He said they had a good time. My wife started To talk to him I left the room.

She told me after he left. It seems a year ago the brides mother really liked the his friends mother. The brides mother got herself tested and was a good match to donate a kidney to his friends mother and believe it or not she did it.

That probably was the only reason his friends mother was able to see her sons wedding.

So I would say his new wife's mother is a pretty good women.

This just makes me almost desperate to hear one of Kly's closing arguments!

So then you firmly believe that the human race are all descended from Adam and Eve?

And the fuse is lit...

Yeah, really. Here we go . . .

I believe this is the way it should go: If you want to choose to not believe in God or a higher spirit then that's your choice as a human. As well as for me, I was confirmed a Catholic and will continue to follow my beliefs in God.

80-100 years from now when we are long gone and dead, if we don't end up in heaven, purgatory, or hell, then hey, you were right.

But 80-100 years from now if we at the Gangster BB are all lined up at the Pearly Gates waiting to be admitted and The Lord himself looks down on one of you non believers and simply says "NO", then the joke is on you my friends.

Personally, I think its better to believe in the big guy, you have nothing to lose by showing some faith.

Sky rockets in flight
Afternoon delight

I think that song was picketed by the Westboro Church due to the sexually implicit content .

I can believe in SOME type of god. Religion and spirituality are not mutually exclusive, after all. However, organized religion (all of it) is little more than a tool for social control. The bible lacks so much historicity, has shown many MANY historical falsities and being that the catholic bible cherry picked which teachings to include and which to omit, and with its three major redactions I don't think there's any logical room for doubt that the bible is little more than a collection of parables and not grounded in any sort of reality.

Then of course there is the near non-existence of historical documentation of such a man. The only extra-biblical sources can be traced back to Tacitus, Pliny the younger, and Suetonius... None of whom ever mention Jesus by name. If Jesus did exist, he was a carpenter who was executed for sedition. And that's it. Nothing else.


ANYWAY, if such an omniscient, sentience such as (the christian) God existed, then God would have to be above silly human vanities like the desire to be worshipped. Further Christianity just lacks any logic when you break it down to its fundamental levels. Like, for example, apparently God was geographically biased so unless you happened to be living in the middle east at the height of the Roman Empire then too bad, you're going to hell? So I guess those dumb fucks in India just chose to be born in the wrong place? Bah. I sort of feel like this is exactly why religion HAS to indoctrinate children... Because asking me to believe in the bible is like asking me to believe the Lord of the Rings is a factual account of human history.

That said, I can believe in some type of god. Perhaps something that is more like a force of nature, perhaps not even sentient in a way we understand. I believe there is another phase of existence, of consciousness beyond death, what that is, what it will took like, i have no clue. But I don't think that god, this force of nature, has any desire to be worshiped. I think its moving, every expanding with the universe, never looking back.

Of course.

Kudos to Ivy for his restraint .

Well, I do not believe there is an old guy with a beard who lives in the sky, and even though I consider myself a Christian, and even though I go to Church almost every Sunday, I do not believe Jesus was God, or his Son, and I do not believe he rose from the dead. I do believe in His teachings, however, and I believe there is some kind of God beyond my comprehension.

I have no problem saying "I don't know," because after all Original Sin in the bible is eating from the "tree of knowledge." To me that means people who say they "know" are the true sinners.

Ok thanks WG, Have a few questions about the concept, seems it's considerably different from the Catholic school teachings of the 80's, And sorry WG and everybody for being such a miserable

bastard lately and pushing the envelope lately in regards to

theism. My buddy got killed at work a couple years ago and died

right next to my truck. Everything's spiraled out of control ever

since, not sure if any of you were aware of that, can't recall if I ever told anyone on here about it or not. I know I'm the one that's created this hell I've been living, so nobody to blame but myself.

In the last few years, everybody else has moved on with their

Lives, yet I dwell on it daily. His wife's remarried, etc. but I

can barely function. Feel like my guts are rotting from the inside

out too from other issues, but I'm afraid to go get checked out.



To ice the cake the

Water pump went on my truck today while I was picking up my

daughter. Tearing into a GM Ls 6.0 is not what I had planned for

The weekend, but that choice is made for me now.

Anyways, sorry again for being a dickhead. It's obviously worn

thin. Next time I start "raging against the machine" somebody tell

me to shut the fuck up before it gets out of hand again.

I'm sorry but if there is a single prerequisite for considering one's self a Christian, it's believing Christ was who He said He was - the Son of God and Savior of the world. If you don't believe that, that's your business, but you can't call yourself a Christian. In fact, you may as well just join up with the crowd that says Christ was a good moral teacher but nothing else. Never mind that argument has no basis since it would make Him a liar and His claims false. One only has two choices - He was either who He said He was or He was a mad man. There's no in between.




I'm sorry to hear about your loss, jimmerz. That's horrible. Speaking for myself, it's times like that that I am thankful for my belief in the afterlife. You will see your friend again.

Thanks WG, that means a lot and I certainly appreciate it.

I am a Christian and I do believe in God and I do believe Jesus is the son of god. there have been times where my beliefs have been questioned by anger/the devil/demons... I also believe that religious beliefs are personal. however I am also educated and do believe in the theory of evolution.. something that was pure Ludacris to some hardcore Christians 20 years ago. But science is something that has been proven and those who refuse to believe facts are lost. I also do believe that atheists are lost souls, hardcore muslims and religious fundamentalists are sick and uneducated people. I really cannot comment on Buddhism and eastern philosophies simply because I am not educated enough to their beliefs to do so. But one thing I have found is balance among the two beliefs... maybe I am the crazy one to think that Buddhists are TOO free spirited and Muslims are TOO controlled and set into routine. who knows

i think you are free to believe whatever you'd like as long as it doesnt impose on others or cause harm.

the ones that baffle me are the evangelicals that think the world started 2,000 years ago and that dinosaurs walked the earth with men. very strange, but to each his own.

Sorry for all your pain, amigo.

I agree completely some crazy guy who worked at the CertainTeed plant was convinced this was the case... we all kind of just laughed at him... the years and science don't add up... dinosaurs and humans???

cognitive dissonance