Do you believe in God?

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I think it's reasonable to assume something doesn't exist until there is evidence for it.

There's no logical reason for me to make assumptions about something like this. So I will not do so.

In the past, doing as you say and assuming something because I did not have evidence of that thing came back to bite me in the ass pretty darn hard, more than a few times. I learned from that.

On the whole, as this issue goes, either I'll find out for myself someday, or the whole thing will continue to elude me. Heck if I know.

Right now... it is what it is. And I dont know what it is.

Hi Misery!

Yes, I remember you have shared these things before. And the correct spelling is technically "marcb0t". But you are welcome to spell it anyway you like, or call me by any goofy nickname you can think up. I'm not too picky.

Thank you for sharing your beliefs and views. It is the same exact thing I came to do here as well. It's nice to be able to have a non inflammatory discussion about these things in the right setting. Which I felt it was. A sharing of ideas at least.

I agree with much of what you say. Without a confirmation from God Himself, in our hearts and lives... it is impossible for a man to truly know with certainty or prove the existence or "non-existence" of God. To quote another agnostic friend of mine, it is "beyond the scope of science". You gave a lot of good examples of how we really don't know as much as we like to think we know.

Science and logic never convinced me of God's existence. Especially not when I was a raging antitheist. That's basically an atheist who can't stand the fact that other people believe and have to go out of their way to snuff out and "poopoo" other people's faith. Yes I was like that at one point in life.

But what got me to believe was the love shown to me through other people in spite of my weirdness and hostilities. And also when I first reconciled with God in a prayer. I felt such a presence of love and forgiveness as of it were a blanket wrapped around me. There was a great joy and relief I had as well. Not that life is always like this, but this certainly helped to "super charge" my faith.

Certainly science and logic will never be able to convey and impart my own faith and experience to anyone else. But sometimes I can't help but share my beliefs and experience. I love Jesus, and He has given me so much good and help in life that I do not deserve in the least.

That forgiveness and love shown to me is what enables me to love even the most difficult people in life, and to look at people with understanding and eyes of compassion more so than ever.

I send my love to every one who has posted on this thread!

Also, I want to provide an answer to the questions that have been asked of me thus far. I am exhausted right now and need time to recharge after today's work.

I kindly request that any new questions be put on hold until I am more able to issue a proper response.

FWIW, I agree with a lot of what both you and Misery wrote. Although I don't believe myself, I'm also aware that neither science or logic can 100% prove the non-existence of a higher being of some kind, and are very unlikely ever to - it's just logically impossible without humans themselves becoming omniscient.

It certainly is good to be able to have an adult debate about the subject. I may not have spiritual beliefs, but understanding the faith of others helps me to be more compassionate. And I agree with you about many of the "raging anti-theists" - their apparent arrogance often dismays me, and I don't like that when I tell people I am an atheist, I sometimes get tarred with the same brush.

It's wishful thinking is what it is.

Neither science or logic can 100% prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. Are you an agnostic on that too? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. And yet otherwise reasonable atheists for some reason give religion a pass. I don't get it.

It's their own logic and viewpoint, is what it is.

Everyone has their own reasons for it.

Whatever you may call it... it's whatever it is to THEM.

Consider your words more carefully though. In conversations about such things, the term "wishful thinking" is often construed as a bit of an insult, or the person saying it proclaiming their own mental superiority.

Which... doesnt make the person saying it sound any better, nor will it get people to listen to them more. Usually the other way around.



Doesnt make sense within this context.

The arguement against God or any religion or whatever is that not only is there no evidence, but that there NEVER WAS. And the same goes the other way around: Atheists right now cannot prove the lack of existence, and NEVER COULD. This is the nature of "faith".

In the case of your example... the sun has already very clearly risen about a squillion times in the past. And apart from some unforseen apocalyptic event, science knows how and why the sun rises, and that the Earth will continue it's spin tomorrow. It is a large set of discoveries that have already been made. While unknown (and presumably, ridiculously powerful) elements in the universe could, theoretically, somehow approach and prevent it from happening tomorrow... we already know that it has, and very likely will, continue to happen. It's an extremely different thing from an absolute and total 100% lack of actual tangible evidence EVER on both sides.

So.... yeah. Doesnt work.


That all being said, you're free to believe as you want.

So long as you're not going around stomping on the beliefs of others... there is no problem.

I agree entirely. I know what I personally believe, which is that there is no supreme being, and I have never believed otherwise since I was old enough to comprehend what religion is. If someone wants to engage me in a debate about religion, I will argue for what I believe to be the case. But I don't see that as different from any other belief based debate - e.g. politics, artistic taste. Understanding that other people have beliefs different than mine, and trying to understand why they do, does not imply tacit agreement with them, or doubt in my own beliefs.

I have a hard time believing in the God of any organized religion, but I try. I do believe there is something greater than us though.

That's...not quite accurate. If we're going to be purely rational about it, it is fairly easy to create a proof in formal logic that God does not exist. You just find something mutually exclusive and prove it *true*. Anything that has been attributed to God over the last 2600 years but the actual cause of which has since been determined by scientific study will do nicely as an example.

Germ theory vs. demonic possession (or moral corruption).
Nerves & muscles & burning sugar vs. an animating 'soul'.
Heliocentric solar system vs. Earth (Rome) -centric Universe.
Mental illness vs. demonic possession / moral corruption.
Earthquakes, or lightning & thunder vs. angry God.
Magnetism, light, gravity, weather, fire, volcanoes, seasons, births, deaths...the list goes on.

And yes, even evolution from non-life vs. Creation qualifies, if we are going to be perfectly scientific & logical about this. All of these at one time or another had been determined - without a doubt! - to be proof of God (or "a god/goddess", or "gods/goddesses"; take your pick). And in each case it has since been determined that an omnipotent supreme being is not only not necessary, but among the least likely causes. And when an alternative cause is proven true and can be used to predict with high accuracy, the case is closed. The *only* way out at that point for a god assertion is to posit that god is doing it *all* in such a way that everything always fits together, but that results in several things including an absence of free will for both god and people, and a god that is again essentially static & no longer a "being" at all.

All of this that I've been arguing is not to say that there isn't a role for "God" (or gods or goddess or goddesses...), or religion in a humanity that has discovered and accepted science, rational thought and formal argument. But it does point to a shift from having this deity being responsible for the origin and day to day events of the physical world to instead being an agent of morality only.

The problem arises when said perfect deity can no longer hold sway over the events of our daily lives. Then all that remains is our fear of death portrayed as a wish to live forever in the absence of eternal pain.

I don't care if it's insulting, and the superiority isn't my own, but that of my argument.

I know. Even rocks and trees are greater than us.

I've yet to see someone tap into the energy between spaces of the universe like magic, but existence has a curious tendency towards order not chaos. The fact that we evolved over 3 billion years and have a concept of "good". I voted option 2. I'm an agnostic that has a positive view of existence.

Wow, that's not arrogant in the least. You must be such a humble wise omniscient, and omnipresent being then?

Loved the third video so much that I downloaded a copy on my hard disk. When I was younger, up to the age of 22, I denied the existence of God completely. Education in physics shattered my beliefs in God. But then I had a near death experience, and nearly passed away. There was no other way to explain my survival except something kind of intervention beyond time and space. I became Catholic again.

Oh one more thing, ever heard of Lawrence Krauss's "A universe from nothing'' in which Richard Dawkins praises on the grounds that it upends the “last trump card of the theologian?”

Proves that the universe cannot start without a first cause. End of story. You may need to have some of my physics education to understand some of the quantum field concepts and Hamiltonian integrals.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.6091v5.pdf

The only thing more notable in Dawkins then his bombastic ego, is his downright arrogance.