My Dearest Chichi...

abre les ojos · Guru

My Dearest Chichi...

chichi · Senior Member

WHAT?????????????

Just joking

hold on abre i am actually in class right now as soon as i get home i will give u food for thought

Lady B · Senior Member

Abre we have been through this one 2 many times i have been thinking ..well, the challange is simple..for both sides...
give me three reasons against the existence of God

I shall start with the five classic proofs for the existence of God..by St. Thomas Aquanis.

1. First Mover...everything is in motion so something must have set it all in motion..an unmoved Prime Mover.
2. First Cause
3. Neccessary Being..all things in the Universe are contingent upon something. Ultimate source of all contingencies...God.
4. Greatest Being...you cannot think of anyting greater than God.
5. Intelligent Design.

and here's another proof.

Values exist in the world...(they tell us for instance that is wrong to kill little babies), but they are not in the world, say in the same way as a table or a chair. By definition then, they must come from outside the world/Universe....what is the only thing outside the Universe..God.

Let the Games begin...

*Kiss*

abre les ojos · Guru

You guys are really funny - first chichi tells me to read Ellen G white, then you quote me Thomas Aquanis. What is the world coming to. Using christian revisionism to argue your point is kind of a misnomer.

There is no such thing as intelligent design. The very environment is the design. So fish, after millions of years have evolved to survive in water, because of the demands of their environment. The earlier species, died out and the mutation of an earlier fish that made it produced offspring and the process continues till we have it today.

Of course things are in constant motion. But that just means they require energy to move. That's it. Living things consume the energy, convert it, expell it, and the cycle continues. They die and some other living organism using them for its own engergy. Where does God fit in?

There is no reason. There is energy. Where does it derive from - we don't know. But we know that atoms and molecules are constantly colliding and producing energy. Can this all be traced to a God? If that is the case then God IS a physical entity. He has to have a physical manifestation to produce a force that is physical. Then if he is physical then he ought to be somewhere right. He ought to be able to interact physically with the world and nature. Consequently he has to reside somewhere. My question is WHERE IS HE THEN?

So you have down graded the biblical God (moved the goal posts) to being a force of creation rather that a being himself. The origin of everything rather that a being that created man in his own image. Since science is catching up with religious rubbish, religion is running away, hiding behind what scince hasn't discovered yet.

Someone asked me about the big bang theory. Well I said for instance when detectives come across a crime scene, they weren't there when it was commited but the examine the clues left behind and draw a picture of possibilities; from the CLUES. They don't just make a story up that can't be proven expecting it to be taken by FAITH.

Check out the pictures from the Hubble telescope. Scientist peering deep into space see it as it was billions of years ago (since it takes that long for light to get here) and the galaxies are moving apart from each other. So the thoery is that, at one stage they were closer, or probably part of the same. Only a tremendous force could have spit them apart - it is a theory based on verifyable evidence.

Now doesn't that make more sense than - Let there be light and there was light? And let there be man! Which man was that I wonder - early man (who we KNOW existed) or was it a white man or China man. I wonder....

Lady B · Senior Member

To me, every God (including my own) is simply the easy answer to the questions which scientist and philosophers have been asking ever since human beings realised themselves. These are questions to which none of us can ever know the answer, because we are basically very primitive life-forms with an infintessimally small proportion of the mental capacity needed to even start to form plausible theories about creation, etc.

When I say there are questions to which none of us can ever know the answer, I mean that if you think about some things such as the concept of infinity, or the concept of creation (Such as the Big Bang theory) you don't actually understand how it works, you just understand what people say about it. . I just don't think that human beings are evolved enough to possibly start to understand the actual mechanisms behind the solutions they are suggesting. Human senses are essentially very primitive, very inefficient ways of perceiving the world, in my opinion.

Man has a need to understand his environment. When he cannot, there is a natural tendency to fill his mental gaps. The more natural explanation we uncover for things, the further we push God aside. There is still much we don't understand about the universe . It seems unlikely man has the capacity to fully understand the universe.

whats your take ?

*Kiss*

abre les ojos · Guru

LadyB what a cop-out. Your post is indicative of the short-commings of religion and the primitive faith systems called God. The fact that in biblical times God was in the sky - then we found out that the clouds and space is what is up there - they change the story (move the goal posts a little bit) to fill the parts of science we haven't discovered yet.

So you religious people have reduced God to being a spirit; providence, coincidence, chance, luck etc. A force for God and harbinger of punishment for the vices of mankind. Without of course seeing the flaws in that model you christians deny all the contradictions in your faith.

An example. Chichi actually said that sceintists have found Noah's ark. I mean how brainwashed can you be to actually believe an event that never happened. Oh, I forgot you believe in those outrageous Jewish myths, namely the bible. If you can actually believe in Jesus you can believe anything as long as some preacher says God told him.

As for me it is very hard to convince me to suspend disbelief in a made up story without ant relation to reality. I mean NONE of you guy actually know if Jesus ever existed.

Lady B · Senior Member

Abre God was not created, but everything comes from him. He is in everything and controls everything for is own purpose.God has always existed and always will exist.Why he has always existed is a mystery that we may never understand, but so is life.Yes everything comes from something(except God),but everything has a beginning or start and God is that beginning.

you wanna talk about science? of math, not of religion. Fact is a matter of science and of rational logic, but belief is a matter of religion. There is a crystal clear distinction between knowledge and belief. Opinion is religion but fact is science. If God were a fact and could be proven by scientifiic method, that would be the end of religion. But as long as God remains a matter of opinion, of belief, then it is the realm of religion and not the realm of science. If something is true because it is not possible that it could be false, then that is not a matter for priests, preachers and prophets, but it becomes a matter for scientists and teachers of fact. You want to treat your opinions and beliefs as fact. You want to blur the distinction between what you know and what you believe. You want to act as if your opinions and beliefs carried the same weight as knowledge and facts. That is OK for you. It's your privilage, so long as you don't become a danger to society. But, even as you say that, you clearly realize that opinions and beliefs are not the same as knowledge and facts. People don't fight wars over math. There are no math armies, Why is that? Because math is factual and not a matter of opinion. However, religion is a matter of opinion and of belief. And men fight wars over whose opinion and whose belief will prevail. why do i feel like am repeating myself

Abre the explanation for the existence of the whole universe cannot be scientific. (There can't be initial physical conditions and laws independent of what is to be explained.)

It's possible that the universe has always existed, and therefore, has no cause (thereby creating no need to have initial physical conditions and laws independent of the event).

am i making sense

Whats your take ?

*Kiss*

abre les ojos · Guru

I used to be indifferent towards religion, nowadays I'm hostile to it. Especially now that it is undergoing a revival; George Bush, Al-Qaeda etc. And the lies and divisions that it is creating. It's not that easy to just say "well leave them, if they are not hurting anybody". But look around you. Religious zealots are condemning homosexuals, unbelievers like myself, scientists, even schools - who refuse to teach "intelligent design".

What you seem to be saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that spreading ignorance and stupidity and hate and bigotry (because that's what they are doing) is okay. People like chichi actually not ashamed to say that Darwin was a spreader of an evil doctrine. This is the 21st century? Where evidence to the contrary is so abundant.

I could excuse people in the middle-ages but today. With all the facts we have. We've sent satellites millions of miles into space, cured polio, maped the human gnome and people still believe in Noah's ark?

You know I never underestimate the depths of human stupidity but sometimes I find it frustrating when people, inspite of ALL the evidence, go to a preacher and expect a miracle healing from some charlatan that claims he talks to Jesus.

LadyB, you say that God is the begining. How do you know that? Someone told you? How did they know? If, as they claim that God told them, then that would mean God has some sort of physical manifestation.

For something to exist it is not just enough for it to be a void derived from an unexplainable event (like the origins of the universe) it has to be real, credible, interact with the physical in some form. If God is a spirit; where is the evidence of this spirit for you to know that it really is there. If not then it is the same as Santa Claus or unicorns or little demons in my drawers.

You have to understand the evolutionary reasons for believing in a supreme being which I clearly laid out in the begining of this thread.

What I no longer understand, looking back on my life as a Christian, is the capacity to believe in something so outlandish as the existence of an Almighty God - much less one who created us all one by one, cherishes our immortal souls, intervenes on behalf of those who call upon his name, and holds a place for his faithful in an everlasting paradise. None of us has ever seen this being; none of us has ever heard him, except in the silence of our own heads; none of us can produce a piece of evidence as large as a mustard seed that what we think of as God is anything more than a thought.

Our scientists can see stars that have been dead for a billion years; they can document microscopic bacteria that concluded their brief lives on earth eons ago. But of God we have no trace, except for the testimony of scribes writing of events neither they nor those around them ever witnessed - and the faith of millions of people who have managed to convince themselves that he lives and reigns somewhere in the sky.

-- Edited by abre les ojos at 13:46, 2005-09-15

Lady B · Senior Member

Ok Sweets since you dont believe in God cos there is no proof i ask you this ?
If I say spirit is real, you will disagree and honetsly i may not know why, and we cannot even start to talk, even less trying to convince you.

And also what is true to you? For example you may not accept historical truths. So for you are historical truths acceptable basis for knowing anything?

Also do you accept testimonies as valid means of knowing? For example have you seen the Great Wall of China or the deepest parts of the oceans or of a man named Mboktu who lives in the Kalahari desert? But if someone have been there and told you so would you take such evidence as real and convincing enough for you to believe it true?

Or do you only accept as true that which is logically derivable? Well as you may be aware by now there are limitations in logic. To name two, not everything that is true can be proved by logic (Goedel incompleteness principle) and all logic starts with premises, eg axioms, which are unprovable themselves.

I personally dont believe that God can be proven, logically or otherwise, for then God will be unfair as it then favours those who understands logic or proofs, which is clear not everyone does.

When you are a child and your parents told you things, how do you know and accept what they say as true, or otherwise?

And finally is language even necessary to know a truth?

*Kiss*

abre les ojos · Guru

Look I know the Great Wall of China is there. It is a physical place, not a mythical one. It doesn't require a leap of faith, it exists. People travel there, I've seen it on TV in pictures and know people who have actually walked on it. I'll be going there sometime in the future too you know.

So if you don't believe that God can be proven then by intellectual deduction there are chances that he is not real. And you say it would be unfair to those who don't understand logic. But isn't it the same when it comes to faith? Aren't there some who can't function on faith like me? Is it fair to us?

As for the parent/children relationship - see my first post on this thread.

Testimonies are not at all valid means of knowledge if they cannot be proved. If they are based on MYTHS - Adam and Eve (no one was there) Jesus tempted by the devil in the wilderness (he was alone wasn't he)? Did he tell the authors of the gospels what happened?

There about 1500 examples of such stories in the bible. Where testimony wasn't even possible since only a single person was involved in the situation.

Your argument would have been valid 200 years ago. But today with information travelling around the world, TV, film, news, there is only so much you can lie about. You can twist ideology but you can't stiffle intelligent analysis.

And the bible fails in every aspect of intelligent analysis. Fails woefully actually. The only argument left is that of "FAITH". Even despite evidence to the contrary, people still stick to faith. It strikes me as the depth of stupidity. It is a FACT that the world wasn't created in 6 days and Adam and Eve weren't the first people. And any person who actually has a rudimentary education and still argues about that is probably an idiot. Actually, definately an idiot.

As for the Jesus myth. You only have to read the gospels to see how many contradictions exist in the text. For instance, reading the Acts if the Apostles, nothing in it has any relation with actual historical events. It is all fables. Some utterly laughable!

Some of the stories in the bible are so fabulous - Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus walking on water, that it's no surprise that people actually believe it. Like they say if you want to lie make sure its a whopper - that way you're sure people are going to believe it.

-- Edited by abre les ojos at 22:22, 2005-09-15

Lady B · Senior Member

Abre you are an atheist right ? well correct me if am wrong but doesnt that Atheism, mean by definition , a lack of belief (in terms of deism/theism anyway) so there is no leap of faith involved. There is no atheistic doctrine or agenda, it is simply the denial of a set of beliefs and nothing more. As for religion i would agree with you that it could sometimes be "inherently worse" than an atheistic perspective, simply because propounds a set of baseless assumptions as being concrete fact. Forgive my harsh generalisations here

If you believe in a God, it is not for you to decide what laws of his you can and canot follow, as it is his will. I may sound like a fundamentalist here, but it still rings true. Religion presents a rigid set of moral and ontological guidelines, and abandoning these - even altering them slightly - renders them useless. If you change these guidelines then they become something else, and the message is lost.

In some ways I'd rather see people believe in literal religious interpretation, than in this consumer buffet of ontological and moral dishes we see now. At least the logic within a fundamentalist outlook is internally self-consistent (even if it isn't consistent with anything else we know about the world): God's will is God's perfect, unchanging will. Anyway, I hope I make myself clear on this point.

Given God's nature (which has been rapidly reduced as we came to reaslise he isn't an anthropic figure sitting above the clouds) it is impossible to come up with any piece of evidence that could go any way to disproving his existence: the fact that he can't be heard, seen or felt corresponds exactly with his nature, so these cannot be used as proofs against his being. However, Carl Sagan uses the "Dragon in the Garage" proof to explain exactly why we should be weary of any theory that cannot be disproven.

Think of any theory we "know" to be true: the basic laws of gravity, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, With each of these theories, there are several events that could occur that would prove, beyond all reasonable doubt that they are false. Thus, we can say, they are good theories.

However, take the concept of God, or of any other theory (UFO's, unicorns, ghosts etc.) that cannot be disproven (after all, they may all exist, but we just haven't encountered them yet). Now, Carl Sagan made this point: what's the difference between God (or UFO or ghost etc.) that cannot be seen, felt, heard -or in any otherway acknowledged - and the existance no God at all? The properties which God possesses seem to be highly commensurable to the properties of any given object (abject?) that doesn't exist. A non-extant being cannot be heard, cannot be seen, cannot be acknowledged and so on. So far as I can see, the only demonstrable difference between God and a non-extant being, is that people assert the existence of God, whereas they do not assert the existence of the non-being...... in fact it's quite curious that they should describe God as "unknowable" yet still remain entirely certain of his existence. Is that logic self-consistant?

Anyway, I don't want to continue this line of discussion because it's only going to lead to conflict and the same arguments being repeated over and over again. I'll reiterate that I believe that people are free to believe whatever they wish, but not to make claims to knowledge about anything they wish:

*Kiss*

abre les ojos · Guru

I fear your take on the literal translation of religion is quite a dangerous one. The fundamentalists version of any religion is a dangerous position to be in and I'll tell you why.

It stiffles dissent. You believe blindly without question. Which means one is open to deceit. You are by and all a robot. As the world changes you are left behind. You reject change, are suspicious of it and challenge it, mostly violently to hamper its progress.

In the case of the bible or Koran that rely on conversion and conflict, the selfish and self-righteous belief that God is on your side and the other it your enemy is a dangerous position to take. It has been evident throughout history, even today.

And the fact that WE as humans have created God as a being with a will we are only perpetuating our own fears, ignorances, hopes and prejudices and lying to ourselves that they are from God. We can therefore kill in his name, cheat, lie, steal and do all kinds of horrible things and rationalise them on behalf of God or the bible or the Koran. Isn't the bible full of the Isrealites killing children and women because God said they were the enemy and they deserved to die because they lived on the land God allocated to them.

So what is happening here is, we see something we like, we create God, claim he tells us to covet it and go ahead and do so.

All the religious people I know claim that there would be no moral authority without religion. I chose to differ on that. Considering that religion has killed more than it has saved. I mean look at animals. Species kill themselves for social and survival reasons. Same as man. Religion is just another social reason we have created to perpetuate prejudice.

And animals don't have religions but they have laws and structures. Some clearly structured and even more dynamic than us despite being, or maybe because of being less intelligent. Religion being a mode of social control leaves out the fact that we as living things are really programmed to have compassion and empathy. It has helped us survive as a species, create art and music etc. Religion I believe is the antithesis of this.