2percent

nope not just the Bible, the fact that we have life,water, earth, if didn't read my entire post...1 for the record this thread has made me believe MORE in GOD...2 but the Bible has assured my faith... got to go seee ya

gabriel12

Just curious, and it may have been answered in the 1000 plus posts that I don't feel like reading, but why is everyone trying to convince people that there is a God, when no matter what you say, the non-believers just want to twist it around to saying that there isn't...? In fact, how in the world can an agnostic or atheist prove that there is not a God?

So, I think it comes down to faith for the non-believer or uncertain that they will continue their life not believing and not end up in Hell. It comes down to faith that the believers will continue believing and end up in Heaven. Either way, non-believers and believers are basically using the same theory of Faith, just in opposite directions. Blaise Pascal, a mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, had a theory on belief called Pascal's Wager. "Wager posits that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists than not to believe, because the expected value of believing (which Pascal assessed as infinite) is always greater than the expected value of not believing." Either way, believing or non-believing is based on Faith alone because according to this thread, you can't prove either way.

And, yes, mutual respect should be given to everyone, but you don't have to respect anyone and everyone's beliefs....just their right to have them. Everyone is entitled to what they would like to believe, but someone shouldn't be forced to respect what they feel is morally wrong.

Red Swingline

Yeah, that's the real summation of these 1000 posts:

There is no God

You can't prove a negative.

Prove it.

You've gotta have faith to believe.

You've gotta have faith to NOT believe.

People who believe are soft in the head.

People who don't believe are meanies.

There are no absolute truths.

Are you absolutely sure?

I think that about covers it.

Seriously though, there's some power here b/c no other topic has this kind of staying power.

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Sean Curry, IAH

AviatorTx

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This post is my personal opinion only. I make no claim of being an actual XJT employee, nor do I play an XJT employee on TV. All statements are made only as that of a private tax paying citizen of the United States. No affiliation with Expressjet, Expressjet Holdings, or ALPA are expressed, nor implied.

Bigman

There has to be something. We didn't crawl out of the primordial ooze for no reason. Is the guy sitting up there on a cloud wearing a white robe with a white beard, probably not. What does he look like? Hopefully like the redhead from Wedding Crashers, but either way, I'll get to **** her when I die.

People that don't believe in God are afraid of their own emotions and insecurities. People that preach the word of God are afraid of the same thing. Get in the middle somewhere and don't be a dick.

Fats Schindee

So because the majority of the country practices Christianity, we non-Christians should have to deal with Christian dogma being legislated into law and affecting our lives? Interesting logic. The majority of this country is also female (51%), so I guess you should cut off your penis and testicles and "get over it"! Unless you are already a woman, in which case, "you rule"!

So just as long as there is a fantastical, non-realistic (and by this I don't mean "non-plausible" [as "realistic" is commonly equated with "plausible"] - as I'm sure an afterlife is plausible to many - but I mean that it has no basis in reality) element to funeral, it would be comforting to you? Say that Jack dies, and at his funeral someone just says "Jack was a bastard, and now he will rot in Hell with Satan for eternity"... that would be just as comforting? It does involve a theist view with a "higher spirit". Can't a funeral where loved ones show up and celebrate the life (reality) of the deceased and empathize/commiserate about his/her passing (reality) be just as comforting?

"Agnostics I can understand, but Christianity just seems like a joy destroying quest with an agenda to undermine one of the primary components of this societies culture especially when attempts are made to completely remove it from public life."

Besides the fact that, as you mentioned above, the majority of our country are Christians (but we do have laws, and logic, that tell us that just because a majority believe one thing, the minority does not have to believe this as well), my above statement makes just as much sense as the same one you made about atheism. Now, I don't really agree with either statement, but the reasoning used for the former can be applied to the latter. We take "components of this societies culture" to mean the freedom to believe in what you want (your case - Christianity; mine - atheism). And we take "attempts to completely remove it from public life" as the opposition to making laws (applicable to all citizens, of course) regulating the beliefs of one religion or another. We know that is doesn't mean the complete abolition of religion - what you make it sound like in your statement. Just like I would hope that you wouldn't try to completely remove my right to "practice" atheism from public life.

Again, the statement, "Agnostics I can understand, but Christians", works just as well from the other side...

In reality, we are all agnostic. As we've concluded over these thousands of posts, you cannot prove either the existence or non-existence of God or gods or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. So none of us "know" for sure. Yes, we "believe" or "think" or "feel"... but we don't really know. We just lean one way or the other, and some people to further extremes. I lean toward the atheist side based on everything that I have learned, read, heard, experienced, reasoned, discussed, contemplated, discovered and thought over my 32 years on this earth (including 18 years raised as a Christian). It just makes more sense to me...

__________________
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

- Mark Twain

Fats Schindee

For those that believe (or want to believe), recognizing God in everything and thinking that you get an answer from him (when asking him to change your heart) is just an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. You think that God created everything, and also that he is perfect and would create beautiful things. So, you recognize the beauty or birds flying in the air or of quantum mechanical laws and think, "Of course God must have created these things!". And if you ask him to change your heart, you want it to happen. Because you want it to happen, it makes it more likely that you will behave and think in ways that will make it happen (or even if you don't, you still may just randomly have a change of heart anyway - we know that change is the only thing that is constant in life). So if/when it does eventually happen, again you say, "God must have made this happen! He answered my prayers!" And then of course, if it doesn't happen, you don't blame God (because he's perfect, and can do no wrong). You blame yourself - you prayed for the wrong things, you didn't believe hard enough, etc.

For those that don't believe, the same recognitions can be made, but just different conclusions drawn about causality. I recognize that there are many beautiful things in this world, but that doesn't make me immediately think that they must have been created by something magical or mythical. I recognize that I want a change of heart, but when that change of heart happens it doesn't make me immediately think that some outside, supernatural force caused that change. And if that change doesn't come, I just realize that some things are beyond my control (and that doesn't equate to those things being in control of a spirit or god)...

Yes, there are things that we have no explanation for still. But there are many things, that we once thought that a God was an explanation for, that have now been understood to be caused by some other, previously unknown, natural force(s). It is just too easy of a cop-out to say that some unknowable, unprovable entity is the cause of everything (whether we understand how it works or not) we observe in the world.

You answered the last three questions reasonably... "that's the way it works". But if you are trying to use these three questions as a logical equivalent ("other variations of that question") to your previous question "why would I want to believe in a God that will punish me for not believing?", then that's not the way it works... "That's the way it works" is not a rational answer to that question. It is to the other three: We can observe our tax and justice system at work. We can observe the human life/death cycle at work. We can observe physical actions and reactions/consequences. We do know that "that's the way it works". But we cannot observe the supposed afterlife or punishment of a God for not believing during our actual, observable life... so therefore we don't know that "that's the way it works".

__________________
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

- Mark Twain

Wes Mantooth

First of all, this is a discussion. People can discuss things without forcing their beliefs on others. This thread is apparently an interesting topic. Both sides here lately have been trying to show that they are not out to convert each other. I don't care if someone worships Jesus or a tree, just as long as legislation is not passed forcing me to adhere to their beliefs. I personally enjoy discussing the philosophy involved with this subject.

Since we can't prove that Santa Claus doesn't exist: is it based on faith, or probability and rationality in which we don't believe in him? I don't believe in leprechauns because I have never seen conclusive evidence to suggest they exist. If a person believes in leprechauns without evidence of their existence that is faith. Not having a belief is not synonymous with faith. I have no belief in leprechauns based off of zero evidence and common sense. I do not claim that I know if there is a higher power or not. However, when religion comes into play and starts making claims about this "supernatural being" they can be judged by logic and rationality. It is at this point that religions start to fall apart. So yes, I do not believe in any religion based off of close scrutiny of their history, morals, followers, holy books or texts, and their various messiahs to the reality I know and logic.

So in closing, I do not know if there is a higher power. I have not seen evidence of one, so I currently don't believe in one. I don't actively walk around trying to not believe in one.

Once again Pascal's Wager shows up. Pascal's Wager is a logical fallacy.
Pascal's Wager

Also so people can stop calling everything faith, here is the definition.
faith - Dictionary definition and pronunciation - Yahoo! Education

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I'm sorry I'm not sorry. I'm not going to apologize. I'm a cocksman.

Fats Schindee

I agree that it takes faith to absolutely claim the existence or non-existence of a god (see my post two above about everyone being truly agnostic).

Since you didn't bother reading the previous posts (that would take quite a long time, if you are just joining this thread now), I'll just mention that Pascal's wager has been brought up probably at least four times (maybe more, maybe less? I'm too lazy to go back and look too... ) already. And it still doesn't stand up as a reasonable explanation for why to believe in God. I'll re-summarize two basics reasons for this for you now...

1. "The expected value of believing is always greater than the expected value of not believing." Believing in what? Which religion? Which god(s)? All of them? Some of them? One of them? Why one and not the others? We know Pascal was talking about Christianity, but you might as well believe in all of them (and that's quite a few!), "just in case". Since that is the reasoning behind this wager - you don't want to face the consequences if your beliefs are wrong!

2. Do you think that an omniscient god (such as the Christian one), if there really is one, wouldn't know that you are only believing out of the sake of not wanting to be wrong when you die? If I were that god, I think that that type of believer (someone "faking it") would be worse than someone who doesn't believe at all. At least the non-believers are being honest about their true beliefs...

Pascal's wager, once deconstructed, isn't a solid reason for belief in God... it's just a cop-out from owning up to your true feelings about not believing. Either you do believe, and then you are prepared to face the consequences (if there is indeed some sort of afterlife) about believing the correct thing (which of course you think you do) or not... or you don't believe, and you're prepared to face the consequences of your non-belief (which you think there won't be any, as you don't believe in an afterlife). There's really no point in deluding yourself (and God, if there is one) about a pretend belief in him/her/it...

[Edited to add] Wes replied while I was replying, and his link spells out the fallacy of Pascal's Wager in much more depth than I did... thanks Wes!

__________________
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

- Mark Twain

flatspin7

I really wish that this thread would simply die and go to heaven...

or oblivion depeneding on how you roll!!!