Penises with some kind of yucky disease on top?

Also penises?

No, I really get it now... Penises!!

Well, you showed some penis.

 

To Believe or Not To Believe, That Is The Question...

To "believe" is not: to uncritically swallow a thought, or a teaching. Believing is a spiritual conviction, as such highly personal, of what one holds as Truth. However personal, one's belief can provide a basis for bond with others of like sense. It can also provide a basis for trouble with those of other mind. I guess it is not to say whether God exists, or doesn't. After all it's us people who take care of business, perhaps of each other. Of course now taking care of someone can mean providing for them, but it can also mean: doing them in. That is where (belief in) God comes in super handy, so you may always hope He'll never let you forget the difference.

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2017

I'll guess we we'll know if you are a man of your words or not within 24 hours.

 

Its pretty obvious to me that the universe has a creator, rather than being something that happened through random chance.

You don't need religion to conclude that God could exist, we can use logic and reason.

Example:

Time has to have a beginning, whatever created time has to be eternal by definition. Space exists because of time, whatever created space has to transcend space, therefore being omnipresent.

So...

Whatever created time and space transcends time and space, so is eternal and omnipresent. Which happen to be the required characteristics of an all creating God.

Whatever transcends time & space is by definition, supernatural.

Also...

The mathematical structure of the universe is based on logic. So IF it was created, rather than just a random chance, which would be illogical, then what created it possesses logic. Also a characteristic required by an all creating God. We know logic exists, therefore what created it must be logical.

and...

If the universe was created it has a purpose, if it was an accident, then life has no objective purpose and everything is objectively meaningless. If life has no purpose or meaning then there is no objective morality. We all know that objective morality exists, to argue that there is no objective morality would be to say that there is nothing objectively morally wrong with murder, rape etc.

There are many, many, rational reasons to believe that God exists.

 

vote for thread lock, cause...


this fucking horse of a debate has been beaten into the ground a gazillion times and then some.

also, i'm all out of popcorn and my hands and face hurt from the constant facepalming

 

Well partially. Peeling off the layers of the Ego and its identification with sensations, emotions and thoughts exposes the Self as it is - pure awareness. This realization of a deeper level which was stated as a matter of fact not as "I personally believe x" is not demonstrable evidence though - so must be fiction?
Of course if we accept that qualitative research can tell us anything about reality, others could report their subjective findings using the same meditation technique as MMJ2017 and possibly reach the same conclusion. This is no different than a sadhana practice facilitating the experience of union with God though, as millions have done in the last few thousand years. Just a deeper level still.

But you are right, direct experience of the divine is off-topic here. I got a bit confused by the dichotomy of OPs poll but in later posts it becomes clear that the discussion is only concerned with belief in a transcendent Creator as understood in the exoteric forms of the Abrahamic traditions. I have no ponys in that race. Esoteric traditions, even the Abrahamic ones, would agree with Luke 17:21 though and consider seeking god outside oneself a futile endeavor...

Interestingly (for some..) the state of being - I AM that MMJ2017 describes is known as Atman / The eternal Self / Individual Soul in the Upanishads. It's never born and never dies, just relocates :D

 

Oh, not cries for tread lock please. Well meant questions was asked by OP alongside with good reasoning and explanations. This should not be punished i m h o. It is the rotten eggs going off topic that should be reprimanded, not OP.

 

so, discussions on 'world news & politics' are against the rules for obvious reasons...
how does the same reasoning not apply to discussions about religion!?
there's nothing on topic here that hasn't been said elsewhere a thousand times over.
nothing groundbreaking new will spark from this one here either.

 

Actually you're right...Religious topics are also on the blacklist if they lead to offences to some members (no matter what they believe in, or don't believe in). Obviously saying "hey hey I have the truth and proof that you are an idiot who believe or don't believe in what you should or shouldn't" is ground for endless talks that will light on endless s...storm.
All that for what ? Not one single argument that has any sense, I've never seen such unconvinsing arguments in any similar debates (which always turns to s...t obviously)...There is no way in hell you can convince a believer, and as @mozee rightfully underlined it it's impossible to prove scientificaly the presence or the absence of god (which itself leads to mzking science the new religion, in the name of which peole must tremble), and any way you lean FAITH is ultimately involved and not rationality, if you excpect an holistic explanation for all things (it's at its core a religious way of thinking of thing, even if it relates to science). If you say about science "I believe" instead of using its concrete results to display proof, then you're not in the scientific spirit anymore, you're already a believer.
There is no rational argument to make for an act that soly rely on a leap of faith.
To me it is as unreasonable to blindly trust an invisible deity wether you name it science or god. A scientific mind like mine cannot "believe", it needs proof...even to prove that science can proove everything which so far is improvable.
I'll stick to the third way, even if the OP wrongly won't aknowledge it : I'm an agnostic, the only reasonable position in this matter.

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2017

Thats your intepretation and nothing more than filling gaps with "supernatural". Time and space didn't exist because even non of our known natural laws existed before the big bang. And its impossible to research a before, because of the lack of measurable things. So what can we assume? Right. Nothing!
But you assume out of nothing that something must be there. And it has created our universe. You call it supernatural. And you just pretend it has a purpose and a meaning because life would be useless without. Sorry. But what you do is assuming and filling knowledge gaps with wishful thinking just to give your believing a justification. You fool yourself.

At first: A random chance doesn't mean, something is illogical. Its just your point of view. If you were a dino saurus watching a big asteroid falling on earth, you wouldn't think: "Wow, thats logic!" But 65 Million years later you stand there as a child of god and say: "Of course. It was logic!"

At second: Please google "entropie" to understand, that everything in our universe tends to disperse. This means more and more chaos. There is no logic behind this. You won't find free floating gas in form of a cube in the upper corner of a room. Nothing in our universe follows a logic, it just follows our known natural laws. (And maybe some unknown.) And believe me, if the earth would reach the area of influence of a big black hole, no creater or god would stop us from getting vaporized in its hell like gravitation.

And: Logic in a way of thinking doesn't exist as a god given law. Logic is the consequense of thinking and a product of an evolved intelligence. Intelligence allows to self reflect or to fool yourself. (You choose.) And IF the universe would be bases on logic (What sounds like nonsense.) then why happen so many unlogical things on earth? Why is there hate and love, chaos and war? Why would an omnipresent creator allow to give birth to an retarted child? Makes no sense!

And also: You argue, without an objective purpose life would be meaningless. Ah okay! So whats about the life of an animal? Meaningless because it has no objective purpose? Animals have no morality. I guess that means also they are meaningless. And the answer is: Right! Just because humans and animals evolved millions of years doesn't mean they are not just build out of atoms.

Did you hear about nihilism? I'am nihilistic as long as i remember. You can't change or choose that. Even as a child i thought about the meaningless of everything because i realized that humans are just animals with just a little bit more intelligence. But did i murder someone? No. Do i kill myself? No. And why? Because morality has to do with being human, not with being a child of god following his commandmends.
I can feel the meaningless of anything. But i also know its nice to live, to feel and to have sex. And as i enjoy it, i respect other persons enjoying it too and respecting me in reverse. There is no need to have a god. It just works without him. And if you take a look into a prison you will quickly realise that many many of the prisoners are ... yes, they are believers!! Bingo!

Your line of thought has no basis. You are assuming from a backwards directed view which can't be right because anything had to follow a plan to allow you to look back now. Its an illusion. Take a look in the future instead! There won't be a plan anymore. It needs one day to destroy earth with atomic bombs. Some seconds to get roasted by an supernova. And no logic or god will prevent the extinction of humanity. We would be absolutly meaningless.

You can stomp on the ground like a child saying: "There must be a god!" Do it! But don't expect anything, because as human being you are more than obsolete by comparison with the universe. Just accept the gap holes of knowledge and don't fill it with fantasy or wishful thinking.

 

I don't believe a word of what the guy says, but you're as unconvinsing.
You're filling gap with speculation, you don't have a lot of facts just a handfull of hypothesis, and your own pessimistic phylosophy.
Good that you confess that your nihilism is only coming from your childhood and your belief that man is just "animals with just a little bit more intelligence" showing that your philosophy of life itself isn'tstanding on scientific evidence but on what you feel.
I don't feel the need to give or not give meaning to the world. To me it's good either way I don't need to believe that things are a certain way, even a "scientific" way.
How the heck would you know what law applied before the big bang, it doesn't even make any sense to speculate on that one.
Scientism is the new dominant theology. Which is the only condition it requires for not being science anymore.

 

This debate, argument, discussion is a very old one. People have been trying to prove for centuries that God doesn't exist that the Bible isn't real. It has never been proven to be false in anyway. Many scientists who were atheist became believers in God through their own studies,google Christian scientist and get the evidence. These are men who are highly intelligent and were atheist, who Earned their living through science.if they cannot disapprove the Bible or creation what makes you think that anybody on this board has enough intelligence to do it.

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2017

I might add that a lot of scientist believe in the mathematician god, the "great architect", the one that Spinoza admired. No heaven, or smilling angels there, obviously...But still a God, a principle of creation.
They have such an admiration for the natural law as we put it,they come across so many wonders through their discoveries, yet without always knowing their genesis, that they choose to imagine something behind it, just like that without any beginning of a proof.
That obviously doesnt prove a thing except that even hard core scientist don't rely on "intelligence" and analysis for all things. They are smart enought not to do so.

 

Not necessarily.

I have nothing to say on weather you should believe or not, if you want to be a believe I think that is good for you. However you should believe with faith (though you do not need as conviction as much - faith is the overriding factor here.)

You arguments are poorly constructed and they breach into that space where the real answer is "who knows," or "nobody knows." When you reach a stop in knowledge that doesn't automatically lead to a proof of god (it is not a logical conclusion that something you do not know to the answer to automatically allows you to make up whatever answer you want.)

As far as the Universe or Multiverse and the seemingly rational mathematical nature and structure involved, you are putting the chicken before the egg. This Universe is rational and patterned to us because we have built our rational and logical patterns based on it, not the other way around. A different universe with different rules and patterns, might not be so rational to us, but it would be for whatever aliens developed a rational observational model of it.... and so on.... Besides, there are a lot more mysteries than answers in cosmology, all of which fall outside the scope of this forum and thread outside of mention.... and that is the problem that leads back to the initial statement that this whole topic is underwater as consequence of there just not being enough time, space, and qualification to make any point stick at all without writing a book to explain every statement made and a second volume to explain the fist one and so on.

 

google Christian scientist

 

No thanks. I don't care what path others have chosen. It's their choice, Christian or scientist, faith in a god is something they want and/or need and good for them. Faith in one god (in any shape or form), many gods, or no god isn't a popularity contest and isn't about science or proof (ironicaly even if you're a scientist).
But this type of subjects about what to believe in or not is bound to turn into proselitism at his highest and in its purest form from all sides which quite frankly is vain. No one is going to convert anyone on a music forum...

 

I count 36 persons who are going to Hell, and dont care about it

 

Thomas Metzinger and Sean Carroll put forward arguments for why no supernatural entity is likely or possible. There are explanations other than invoking the supernatural. However, the supernatural remains highly plausible to most people.

Whatever gives one hope and comfort, so be it. Each to his, or her own.

When a mind that cannot bear the notion that each person is a unique entity attempts to proselytize its worldview, that mind, of itself, is inaccesible to revelation.

A challenge was issued to present, hopefully for debate, an event (just one) that is outside of one's personal conciousness that is irrefutibly non-fictional. Here's my propostion;

All of you who read this thread will die - in the clinical sense.

Now, my turn to beg a question. Why the f**k did you think it was so important to you read this sentence when you should have expended this small slice of your limited on telling someone that you love them?