People who claim to represent God annoy me. Take the Roman Catholic priests with their confession booths, who are they to tell anyone how gravely or not they have sinned and how many Hail Marys to say to cleanse themselves. Absolute tosh. It's all subjective as well. How does saying Hail Mary's cleanse you ?? The argument that God's earth is only 8,000 years old is nonsense also, there is a lot of symbolism in the bible. If it was the case that the earth was only 8,000 years old the church would have a bit of a problem explaining away dinosaurs then Personally I think a lot of what is in the bible is not accurate, I mean, the bible has changed many times, rulers often had versions written for them. But that doesn't stop me from believing there is a God.
OK - so GOD decides to make us and the various forms of life in an evolutionary food-chain. This has taken tens of thousands of years, but is as a blink of an eye to HIM. He has decided to judge our behaviour to decide whether we will sit in paradise. This has been going on for thousands of years, and hundreds of generations. Human numbers are now into billions. This is of course just us existing on Earth - there is every chance beings are also existing on other planets. Ask yourself the question - Why?' What does God get out of this?
Vanity apparently. edit: seriously though, it's really interesting how "emotional" god is made out to be in the Abrahamic religions.
And what do you mean with enough understanding of the Universe? If you mean beginnings of the Universe I'll agree, if you mean anything besides that I'd say we have a vast understanding of the universe. Much of that knowledge is immaterial to everyday lives, and much of what might be discovered in the future will similarly be immaterial to our everyday lives. That is because most of the natural phenomena that puzzled people a couple hundreds of years ago are understood now. Let's suppose some mysterious/unexpected wildfires occur in an unusual region. Am i choosing not to believe that dragons caused these wildfires, or... I've never had any reason to even consider that dragons might have caused it? I suppose here too because I have not searched every cave/den on Earth I do not have sufficient knowledge to claim the improbability of dragons existing?
We know how many things work now, unlike in the past, yet theists as myself still say God exists even though we know the how's of how things work. What we say is very simple, that God put those things in place which is why things work the way they do, just like a car, an engineer-designer made the car that way and the way it functions. What you do for example is explain the in's and out's of how an engine works, but fail to realise the main point that someone made it that way precisely so it worked the way it does. So yes we know why the sun comes up, goes down, why the earth rotates, why it rains etc, we know the system and process behind these things and why they work, but we don't simply then limit our brains and say ah that's it, guess it just worked out that way on it's own and by chance, rather we see this was put in place by God. In fact this has been the great atheist straw man, somehow thinking explaining how things work removes the God factor, if anything it puts the God factor even more into the picture!
lol this part is too good. So concluding that god is the initiator of everything, that according to you is a concept that removes limits? WHAT? How does that concept encourage further inquiry? If your post is any indication it's just a way to excuse acquiring actual knowledge and default to "it's simple, god dun' it, we're done here".
If God is real where is he?! Surely if there's some giant glowing man who can make the world in his hands, and lives with all like 340958 billion people who have ever gone to heaven with all the telescopes we've got we'd surely see them no? and as no one answered me i'll ask again Do you believe God is omnipotent? can he then create a giant rock he cannot move???
I know your post is meant to be humorous, but in theist vs non-theist debates the "theist" sides actually do use quite a few of these silly "logical riddles" (or whatever they are) to gain the audiences. The reason the non-theist sides can't use them is because the moment they focus on a specific "property" (e.g. omnipotence) of the deity the theist side falls back on a more generic concept of a deity (even if they argument pro the existence of the Abrahamic god.) So... they fall back to a bare-bones concept of a deity to establish the philosophical possibility of such a deity --> use that to then claim a good probability of the Abrahamic god (with all the illogical baggage) being real. Makes for pointless debates IMO.
God the creator MUST be omnipotent if he created all things. I don't see why someone who is omnipotent cannot move a giant rock he created. Its interesting to observe spiritualists view on things, I have recently admired their take on life, some views like getting energy from tree hugging I find too bizarre to take seriously, but other aspects of spirituality I find I can align myself with.
Must say, I know this is a football forum. But the knowledge understanding and calmness brought to this debate, especially on such a contentious issue, is a breath of fresh air. With both side in the majority having a grounded reasonable tête à tête. The irony is if i go and open a thread labeled Arsenal or Tottenham who is better - God it would be a tsunami of bile.
if he was omnipotent then he's all powerful and can do anything and everything So if he can create a big **** off rock he cannot move, then he cannot do everything for he can't move that rock.
It always seems to me more of an act of faith to not believe in God. Until the most fundamental question is answered scientifically (the one scientists dismiss because they can't answer it) then God seems the logical explanation. Plus - we're above Spurs. After this year what more evidence do you need?
- and is God really 3 beings - The Holy Trinity? - and did Jesus and Mary have children - and are their decendents living in the South of France ? or was Christ actually homosexual? - or just not interested?
Not entirely true - many atheists believe in life after 'death' - not due to a God, but through scientific theory: http://exreligious.com/life-after-death.html
How is it the "logical" answer? There's still no evidence for a God/deity, believing something without evidence is not logical. Humans have had a big Ego throughout our history, we feel that we're important over all other life. That we're "special" and have had "Personal" relationships with various man-made Gods And that we deserve to live forever as a "reward" for doing so. Nearly all religions have a form of After life, because that's the one thing we're scared of. And have no control over. If there wasn't a reward/after-life for believing in these religions/Gods, nobody would. Humans have an Ego and WE have to benefit somehow.
It's healthy to question the things we are taught. I'm a spiritual person but I'm also a big science geek. (love a bit of string theory) I believe in a collective consciousness and I believe our existence shapes the universe around us. So I guess I believe in something that could be called 'God' but is not exactly the Christian definition. No good has ever come out of organised religion that couldn't be gained by some simple enlightened self interest. Endless rivers of blood are spilled needlessly in the name of one god or another, only growing deeper as time wears on.
