God

[Stark Evade]

Re: God

"For every action there is an equal, but opposite, reaction"

This also applies to what ara was trying to say.

No, it doesn't. There is a leap of faith being made that you apparently are not seeing.

[Armanen]

Re: God

We all make a leap of faith when we expect not to float off or our juice to pour into a glass and not float away. As you know gravity is described using the general theory of relativity. Theory being the keyword, notice how it is not a law.

But at the end of the day, we do make a leap of faith when we choose to believe in God, as Kierkegaard so eloquantly wrote. The important thing is we have free will, choice, so if you choose to be an atheist, fine but do not insult those who do not share your view, especially if they are not trying to enforce their views on you. Live and let live.

[yerazhishda]

Re: God

I'll ignore the fact that this is a false dichotomy and just say that religion is a disgusting festering disease and a mockery of the potential of the human mind.

The potential of the human mind to do what? Sure you have your innovators and geniuses but they are far outweighed by mass murderers, rapists, dictators and other sorts of evils. The human mind could be equally called a "disgusting, festering disease".

There isn't even a higher order of organism above humans on this planet and I'm still embarrassed by these things I need to call my fellow man walking about imagining crap because someone told them to or because they think it'll make them feel better. It's delusion at it's most disturbing. There are no gods, no fairies, no souls, no ghost, no demons, no chakras, no astrological systems... Nobody is watching you. Nobody is protecting you. Nobody is judging you. Nobody is creating stupid little rules for you to follow so you can reap some reward. Quasars and quarks and dark matter and brown dwarfs and black holes and nebulae and neutrinos and gamma rays could not care less about how you live your infinitely short life.

Life is depressing. If you follow a religion life is depressing but if you are an atheist life means nothing - no matter how great of an innovator you may be it will have been in vain as the world will turn to dust. Without God we cannot put a "fundamental trust" in either our senses or our reason. Without a God, life is essentially meaningless; we cannot give Ultimate Meaning to a world which is bound to disappear.

It's pathetic and childish to believe in things that are not there. Things that manifest themselves in your pathetic, flawed, vague little "feelings." Religion's connection to human fears and egotism is incredible transparent and ridiculous. Choose to evolve to a higher being and drop this supernatural nonsense. Read a real book. Grow up and let go of your imaginary friends so I no longer have to classify you as mentally diseased.

Regardless of what your view on religion is, it is not childish. There are very real reasons to believe in God such as the fact that logically the universe couldn't have just existed "without a beginning". There had to be a first cause, a Prime Mover, if you will.

Christianity helped many victims and survivors of the Genocide cope with the atrocities around them. Is that childish to you? Are you going to call Genocide survivors childish for believing in an Ultimate Reality that they found in Jesus Christ?

[yerazhishda]

Re: God

We all make a leap of faith when we expect not to float off or our juice to pour into a glass and not float away. As you know gravity is described using the general theory of relativity. Theory being the keyword, notice how it is not a law.

But at the end of the day, we do make a leap of faith when we choose to believe in God, as Kierkegaard so eloquantly wrote. The important thing is we have free will, choice, so if you choose to be an atheist, fine but do not insult those who do not share your view, especially if they are not trying to enforce their views on you. Live and let live.

I agree. I think that there are equally valid reasons for being an atheist and being a theist. The atheist puts fundamental trust in his own reason while the theist puts fundamental trust in God. Both the ideas of Reason and God have truth, but are simultaneously fallible. One takes a leap of faith when believing in God, but it does not have to be totally unreasonable.

[Stark Evade]

Re: God

We all make a leap of faith when we expect not to float off or our juice to pour into a glass and not float away. As you know gravity is described using the general theory of relativity. Theory being the keyword, notice how it is not a law.

But at the end of the day, we do make a leap of faith when we choose to believe in God, as Kierkegaard so eloquantly wrote. The important thing is we have free will, choice, so if you choose to be an atheist, fine but do not insult those who do not share your view, especially if they are not trying to enforce their views on you. Live and let live.

You obviously do not understand what a theory is in the scientific context. Wikipedia may be able to give you an idea of why I say that.

Your argument is just manipulating language as often occurs when a theist poses an argument to a non-theist. Sorry but it's not the same leap of faith. Science doesn't say anything is 100%. It says that certain things are predictable to a great enough degree that they are considered fact. Supernatural ideas are not testable and therefor cannot exhibit any predictability and are therefore not nearly of equivalent epistemological value.

[Stark Evade]

Re: God

I agree. I think that there are equally valid reasons for being an atheist and being a theist. The atheist puts fundamental trust in his own reason while the theist puts fundamental trust in God. Both the ideas of Reason and God have truth, but are simultaneously fallible. One takes a leap of faith when believing in God, but it does not have to be totally unreasonable.

The only way people can determine that best possible understanding at any given time of the nature of the universe is by logic reason and the scientific method. Trusting God is not as credible as trusting in logic and the scientific method. (See above post.) Just saying something is fallible is vague and meaningless. The leap of faith for believing in a God is entirely, completely, totally, utterly unreasonable and illogical. And that fact can only be clouded by fallacious language manipulation.

[Armanen]

Re: God

You obviously do not understand what a theory is in the scientific context. Wikipedia may be able to give you an idea of why I say that.

Your argument is just manipulating language as often occurs when a theist poses an argument to a non-theist. Sorry but it's not the same leap of faith. Science doesn't say anything is 100%. It says that certain things are predictable to a great enough degree that they are considered fact. Supernatural ideas are not testable and therefor cannot exhibit any predictability and are therefore not nearly of equivalent epistemological value.

I understand science well enough to know that it doesn't "prove" anything, just disproves things. As for perdictability equaling fact, I think you need to review what a fact is, meaning 100% of the time it is so, not 99.999999999% or whatever else. Many of the things in string theory are not testable either, and may never be, but does this mean they shouldn't be further investigated. I do not think science will ever prove or disprove the existence of God, but I also do not think it should be the job of science to do so, therefore I use science for the material world, for the immaterial world, well there's other fields for that.

[yerazhishda]

Re: God

The only way people can determine that best possible understanding at any given time of the nature of the universe is by logic reason and the scientific method.

Logic, Reason, and the Scientific Method may give the best means of understanding the specific workings of the universe, but this does not necessarily mean they are the best way of understanding the nature of the universe. Basing one's world-view based on "Reason" (which can mean different things to different people) requires as much faith as it does for a theist to believe in God. The atheist sees Reason as his only means of understanding the world but can give no explaination as to why this is so or why Reason can necessarily be trusted at a fundamental level.

Epistemologically speaking, we can never truly know that our senses are
giving us true data. We can never truly know if we are being deceived by our own body. We can only say - with reasonable certainty - that yes, what my senses are telling me is true.

Trusting God is not as credible as trusting in logic and the scientific method. (See above post.) Just saying something is fallible is vague and meaningless.

No its not "vague and meaningless" - admitting that your worldview is fallible is the first step. This is actually a part of the Scientific Method as you probably know: understanding the limitations of one's experiment.

The leap of faith for believing in a God is entirely, completely, totally, utterly unreasonable and illogical. And that fact can only be clouded by fallacious language manipulation.

It is true that many theists use fallacies (ever hear "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord"?) to support their faith in God but it does not have to be this way. Although there are certainly many things about God that are illogical, there are still many more that agree with Reason.

Also, just because one cannot prove something empirically does not mean it is untrue. For example, it is generally agreed that the Universe is infinite and continually expanding. We cannot prove that the Universe is infinite, this is actually non-falsifiable. However most scientists agree, with reasonable certainty, that it must be so.

[Stark Evade]

Re: God

The potential of the human mind to do what? Sure you have your innovators and geniuses but they are far outweighed by mass murderers, rapists, dictators and other sorts of evils. The human mind could be equally called a "disgusting, festering disease".

I'll only quickly say that religion is responsible for a lot of killing and sexual crime stemming from sexual repression.

It is quite obvious that I meant the potential of the intellectual aspect of the human mind. Your argument red herring.

Life is depressing. If you follow a religion life is depressing but if you are an atheist life means nothing - no matter how great of an innovator you may be it will have been in vain as the world will turn to dust. Without God we cannot put a "fundamental trust" in either our senses or our reason. Without a God, life is essentially meaningless; we cannot give Ultimate Meaning to a world which is bound to disappear.

If you are an atheist you give meaning to your own life instead of having someone tell you what that meaning is.

See "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality"

Regardless of what your view on religion is, it is not childish. There are very real reasons to believe in God such as the fact that logically the universe couldn't have just existed "without a beginning". There had to be a first cause, a Prime Mover, if you will.

It is childish.

Here's an intro for you on the first cause argument...

http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/firstcause.htm

Christianity helped many victims and survivors of the Genocide cope with the atrocities around them. Is that childish to you? Are you going to call Genocide survivors childish for believing in an Ultimate Reality that they found in Jesus Christ?

This statement is vacuous. Religion was in great part responsible for the Genocide. And you assume two things: 1) that it is the only effective form of consolation and that it did in fact work. Where was God's consolation when Komitas needed him? Did he recover from witnessing his friends slaughtered? No. He lost his mind instead.

And consolation doesn't increase the truth value of something. Ideally they shouldn't have had those beliefs in the first place. Period.

The belief in things that cannot be shown to exist is childish in an age when information and knowledge are so readily available.

[Stark Evade]

Re: God

I understand science well enough to know that it doesn't "prove" anything, just disproves things. As for perdictability equaling fact, I think you need to review what a fact is, meaning 100% of the time it is so, not 99.999999999% or whatever else. Many of the things in string theory are not testable either, and may never be, but does this mean they shouldn't be further investigated. I do not think science will ever prove or disprove the existence of God, but I also do not think it should be the job of science to do so, therefore I use science for the material world, for the immaterial world, well there's other fields for that.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Good bye.