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Do you believe in God?

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Original post by ikhan94
Yes...wow this thread is long lol


Care to explain why?
Original post by Defraction
What about miracles or religious experiences- surely they are evidences to show God exists as it is a direct encounter with the divine. Miracles, by pure definition, is something that breaks the law of science and makes you think only God must have done it. How can something so psychologically, physically, mentally so overwhelming be deemed to be as being an induced experienced. That's why philosophers like William James, Fredrich Schleiermacher and Rudolf Otto all give convincing arguments as to why religious experience prove that God exists.

My arguments are supported by prominent philosophers so I wouldn't count them to be amazingly awful.


Anecdotal evidence is absolutely useless. People have visions and hallucinations all the time, if anything it's just proof of mental illness or some chemical imbalance in the brain. There are also people who say they've been abducted and raped by aliens and all manner of bizarre things so then I guess you'd have to believe all of them too, then?

Not to mention that religious people have "visions" and experiences that contradict each other. A Christian may have a vision of Jesus being God and then a pagan will have an experience of talking to the Goddess Freyja for example. They can't both be right.
Yep, I believe in God. Well Allah in terms of my religion and what we call God. Same thing really anyway.
Reply 163
Original post by TheBirder


His first point is not justifiable in any way, it seems to be a common misconception that people of ancient times were uneducated and feeble minded individuals. Firstly, keep in mind that the progress we have made today in various areas, be it technology, medicine, philosophy, science, etc. is only possible because of the basis that has been built up over previous centuries by other people. The cavemen don't go from learning to light a fire to postulating the theory of evolution in one day. Despite not having the same information and technology available today, it is reasonable to assume that ancient people had similar levels of creativity and reasoning as the people today.
His second point is wrong because according to that logic, people living over a very wide area somehow managed to come to the exact same conclusion, and wrote a book that, even after centuries of persecution of Jews, and with Jews living all over the world with no contact between them, has no discrepancies between it's different copies.
His third point is incorrect as there is archaeological evidence for an Israelite kingdom dating back to 3 millennia ago. This leaves a gap of around 2-3 centuries between the events at Mt. Sinai and the existence of an established kingdom of millions of people, not the 1000 years the writer says it would take for 'a large nation of descendants' to form.
Reply 164
Original post by TheBirder
I would suggest that rather being evidence of God, it is evidence of the inherent gullibility of humans, and that all of our brains work in the same way in trying to understand what we don't know.

That is your opinion, and our opinions obviously differ. Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that, because I quite badly need to revise for my GCSEs.
Original post by JM999
That is your opinion, and our opinions obviously differ. Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that, because I quite badly need to revise for my GCSEs.


I think that is probably a good idea because so do I! :tongue:
Original post by TheBirder
"God created, and exists outside of, time and is therefore not affected by it." That's just an assertion , what makes you believe that? You can't have something that exists outside of time and space (or maybe you can, maybe science will find something that exists outside of time and space, some sort of weird matter or something, but it (almost certainly) won't be an intelligent being like the god of any religion)

As for what caused the Big Bang, science hasn't found out yet. It may be decades or even centuries until it does, and we as a species may be wiped out long before then, but just making up some sort of god because you can't explain it any other way is stupid.

We have evolved a system of morality to benefit us as a species of social primate. I think there are certain ideas that are ingrained in us as part of our evolutionary heritage. And besides, different cultures and different points in time had different ideas of what counts as murder and what is morally wrong. For example, a few hundreds of years ago, slavery was considered acceptable and in the future who knows what our opinions on things like killing intelligent animals will be. Maybe in a few hundred years we will look at the mass slaughter of animals for food similarly to how we look at the Nazi genocide.


To be fair, regardless of what this particular poster has argued, the typical person who uses some sort of cosmological argument will argue that God is the cause and that he exists outside of time. They don't assert it.

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Original post by TheBirder



The design argument is an absolutely terrible argument. It is inadequate, illogical, moronic, and doesn't prove anything at all. There is no obvious evidence, in fact, there is no evidence at all. Show me some. I don't see what point you're making at all in this last paragraph actually.


Also, I want to point out there are different types of design arguments (none of which are like the ones being discussed). The most famous is the design argument from fine tuning of the universe for the existence of life. Others have been included under the umbrella as an argument from design like the applicability of maths to the physical world and the argument from consciousness and reason (both are very similar and overlap but there are differences).

I would link an interview which gives the evidence for fine tuning of the universe and goes through why the most common objections are poor but I've just seen you are revising for GCSE:tongue:

I'll link it anyway :wink:

http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=8109


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Original post by ModernGoodGuy
Also, I want to point out there are different types of design arguments (none of which are like the ones being discussed). The most famous is the design argument from fine tuning of the universe for the existence of life. Others have been included under the umbrella as an argument from design like the applicability of maths to the physical world and the argument from consciousness and reason (both are very similar and overlap but there are differences).

I would link an interview which gives the evidence for fine tuning of the universe and goes through why the most common objections are poor but I've just seen you are revising for GCSE:tongue:

I'll link it anyway :wink:

http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=8109


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My last one is next week Friday, so I've got loads of stuff bookmarked to come back to in a week and a half, this thread included :tongue:. I'll come back and respond to your points properly then, or maybe earlier if I get distracted. (I'm doing the CIE exam board which ends much earlier than most, I'm also pretty lucky that my subjects all had their exams relatively early)
Original post by TheBirder
My last one is next week Friday, so I've got loads of stuff bookmarked to come back to in a week and a half, this thread included :tongue:. I'll come back and respond to your points properly then, or maybe earlier if I get distracted. (I'm doing the CIE exam board which ends much earlier than most, I'm also pretty lucky that my subjects all had their exams relatively early)


Well good luck anyway :tongue:

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Original post by davidguettafan


No. If someone does, they should get a brain transplant
Original post by theunitedGOAT
No. If someone does, they should get a brain transplant


Waste of resources?

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Original post by theunitedGOAT
No. If someone does, they should get a brain transplant


How euphoric are you feeling right now on a scale of 1 to 10? :holmes:
Original post by ModernGoodGuy
Waste of resources?

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True. We could just dump them in North Korea and let Kim direct a missile at them
Original post by Dima-Blackburn
How euphoric are you feeling right now on a scale of 1 to 10? :holmes:

5 out of 10
Original post by theunitedGOAT
True. We could just dump them in North Korea and let Kim direct a missile at them


Should be as economic as possible and chuck loads of rubbish with them. Like Dawkins books :wink:

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Original post by ModernGoodGuy
Should be as economic as possible and chuck loads of rubbish with them. Like Dawkins books :wink:

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Aye or we could get the most anti-religious people to intimidate them
Original post by ModernGoodGuy
Well good luck anyway :tongue:

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Cheers! :smile:

Original post by ModernGoodGuy
Should be as economic as possible and chuck loads of rubbish with them. Like Dawkins books :wink:

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Do you really not like Dawkins' books? I'm surprised to be honest, I've never met anyone who has actually read and understood and of his books that didn't think they were brilliant.
Original post by TheBirder
Cheers! :smile:



Do you really not like Dawkins' books? I'm surprised to be honest, I've never met anyone who has actually read and understood and of his books that didn't think they were brilliant.


He has published a few books that having nothing to do with God, I pass no judgement on them. But the God delusion particularly is terrible. I find that he doesn't really understand what his opponents actually say or their arguments. There are far better atheists to read and to be blunt; I think he's rather hopeless.

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Original post by Plantagenet Crown
Anecdotal evidence is absolutely useless. People have visions and hallucinations all the time, if anything it's just proof of mental illness or some chemical imbalance in the brain. There are also people who say they've been abducted and raped by aliens and all manner of bizarre things so then I guess you'd have to believe all of them too, then?

Not to mention that religious people have "visions" and experiences that contradict each other. A Christian may have a vision of Jesus being God and then a pagan will have an experience of talking to the Goddess Freyja for example. They can't both be right.


That's why William James provides four categories of a religious experience(an experience must encounter all of these categories for it to be called 'religious'; which are

1.

Ineffability- unable to explain the experience in words

2.

Noetic quality- you can important truths that cannot be obtained anywhere else from the experience

3.

Transciency- the experience was for a short time but has a long effect

4.

Passivity- you are unable to control yourself; you allow everything to take control of you

William James specifically emphasises the point that induced experience(so like drugs, hallucinations or alcohol) cannot be mistaken to be a religious experience. Even though an induced experience might encounter some of those qualities you don't encounter noetic quality from the experience do you and sometimes when you get drunk you can explain what happened to you like you got an headache or you doze off unlike religious experience the experience was so overwhelming you can't put it in words(no adjective that is near what you experienced). Visions follows the same principles as religious experience so there would be a big difference between a 'fake religious vision' to a 'real religious vision'

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