do you believe in god?

seems that Tim(in addition to doubting failing solid science) buys heavily into Pascal’s Wager. which is bluntly: it’s better to believe in god because if he doesn’t exist there’s no penalty. it’s horribly flawed logic and basically only works for making believers feel better about believing or helping them when they’re questioning their faith. A better, longer, verision of Pascal’s Wager can be found here.

personally, i’m an atheist. was raised a Lutheran, but never really believed that much. i always had questions that sunday school teachers couldn’t answer and the pastors never did much better. I also went to high school in a very small, very religious town, and exploring other ideas was discouraged by everyone not just authority figures. so when i went to college and took some philosophy classes i got some better answers to lots of the questions i had. and more importantly i got answers to higher level things similar to, but stronger than, pascal’s wager. once the logical fallacies were made aparent, i realized that i hadn’t really ever believed. well, not since i could think abstractly for myself, so around 10 or so. i just didn’t know it until i was about 20. if anyone has questions or anything, don’t be afraid to ask, either in here or via PM or AIM or some other method.

ps. i was a philosophy major so i have a pretty good base from which to discuss.

How does believing in God give your life purpose. Let’s say after death you go to heaven.Great.Whats the purpose of heaven?What do u do there? As far as I can see, we are insignificant and really don’t serve much purpose.Am I happy?.. So, I make up a God and believe and live for him.Now, I’m happy…So does God exist? I don’t "believe " but I hope that there is a “force” greater than us…but until I can prove it…no faith…sorry…unhappy guy here…haha<<<insert smiley…

I thought it was just catholic nuns who had old dusty hymens.

Kit

Thanks, Dogbowl - you saved me a heap of thinking and writing time!

I’m with him (not Him)!

I didn’t read Dogbowl’s post…yes,sir,well said…

Re: do you believe in god?

no, i don’t believe in her

bruce, that is a stunning salutation at the end of a letter/email/post
hope u don’t mind me nicking it?

:sunglasses:

Re: Re: do you believe in god?

I stand corrected. Thanks. It was getting on quickly toward bedtime.

Bruce

Nick away, my good man. I love a happy ending.

Bruce

God is BOB, BOB is Hope, Bob Hope is with the Pope.

Rised catholic and went to catholic school for a few years….even as a little kid I TRIED AND TRIED to believe in it…but I just couldn’t. Once you start investigating you realize that organized religion is a load of crap. I’m not saying there is no higher force, just saying that people who assert that they know HIS name are full of poop.

I was actually removed from catholic school in 3rd grade for forming a “gang” called Demons From Hell!!! We use to terrorize the school yard …and the nuns flipped shit when they found out about us…thought we were evil little children….guess that’s what happens when you preach hell to little bored children all day.

Peace

How can such a magnificent and complex thing such as the human body be “a chance combination of matter and energy”? When studying the human body (or really, anything in nature), i find it hard not to believe there is a God.

Assuming God created nature, then who or what created God?

Im going to go with a peanut amn to say organized reigion is mostly crap.

life is pain :wink:

I agree. In our experience, whenever something complex is formed from less complex elements, it’s because an intelligent human, or some animal formed it. And Darwin himself admitted he could not understand how the eye could evolve.

I think it’s silly to receive the entire Bible as truth, except for the first few chapters of Genesis. If the first few chapters of Genesis are all myth, why couldn’t the all the acounts of Christ’s death and ressurrection be myths, are our whole fatih be void? You should believe all scripture, or none of it.

We believe that God is eternal, that He has no beginning or end, and that He was therefore not created. I see no reason why it should be more reasonable to believe that the Universe created itself, than to believe in a divine creator whose existence is of himself.

  1. Why cant you just be happy God created you, and be thankful. the end?

why couldnt our whoile universe be created by living things? we could just be in some alien lab, insiden a petrie dish.

Doesn’t the answer to your question follow by the definition of God? Noone/nothing created God, because then God wouldn’t really be God. :wink:

dogbowl,
So then you have faith in “the natural scientific scheme”? I believe atheism taken to an extreme would lead to insanity. Even atheistic existential philosophers recognized the need for something else to replace the role of God. And frankly, if I were going to be an atheist, I wouldn’t choose any view as narrow as science as a foundation for my beliefs.

I could just as easily argue that the universe is eternal, it has no beginning or end, and therefore it follows that the universe was not created.

If you say that universe is too complex not to have been created by a higher power, then why can’t that same reasoning be applied to the creator of the universe? A ‘creator’ of the universe is too complex not to have been created by an even higher power, so there must exist an even higher power than created it.

What is fact? How can we really prove anything? The answer is never. No matter how much evidence there is for evolution, there will still be people so blinded by their faith. However you have to look at both sides of the argument impartially. At least evolution has an iota of evidence. Darwain used real live populations of birds, skeletons, and fossils to prove his theory. Yet all the justification most people have for religion is a book full of fables, some of which may be founded in fact (ie. Jesus was a person, there was a fact). But one can take the idea of the Burning Bush and water to wine miracle no more seriously than Harry Potter . Yes i will admit evolution is a theory, but as defined by Merriam-Webster: “the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another”. Yet i consider Religion mere fiction : “something invented by the imagination or feigned”. If you take an alien and show them the Bible and On the Origin of Species and ask which makes more sense, they will undoubtly say Darwin’s book. If you look at it objectivley, the bible makes little sense.

Yes, attempting to be impartial is important. I think it’s clear that you are operating on the assumption that science is correct and that Christianity is wrong, and to me, you seem just as guilty of lacking impartiality in regard to Christianity as Christian fundamentalists are with respect to evolution.

Evolution has evidence according to the scientific method, which was invented and elevated to its current seemingly irrefutable status as the result of certain trends in philosophy. Since then, many philosophers have challenged the philosophies that gave birth to science, yet scientists continue to operate in their blind faith according to their centuries old modus operandi.

So since we’re trying to be “objective” (if that’s even possible), how can you say that the invented philosophical works that led to science are any more reliable than the couple thousand year old texts that Christianity is founded upon?

Yea, i agree it is impossible to be completely unbiased. Yet the difference between the couple of thousand year old texts is that they have mostly been passed down by word of mouth until recently being put into written languages (thus being open to human error). However scientific evidence (fossils) have been undisturbed for the most part by humans , therefore able to be observed in their original form

Re: Re: do you believe in god?

yea they are but they are one together, they are god the son, god the father, and god the wholy spirit. its hard to explain