Do you believe in God ?

[ThinkWithPortals]

2 hours ago, George_Bud said:

What are you willing to do to find out ? ( Just curious )

I don't understand what you mean. If concrete evidence of the existence of a God or higher power was brought to light, I would absolutely accept it. Seeing as there is no evidence, and the only thing we have is blind faith, I can't bring myself to believe.

[Guest]

Personally there's nothing I disagree with more than religion and patriotism. 

 

But as long as you're not harming anyone else, I don't care what you believe. 

 

[Soundsystem90]

Anyone want me to read their chart? lol

[George_Bud]

8 minutes ago, Soundsystem90 said:

Anyone want me to read their chart? lol

What ? Like the astrology one ? In that case, i am fish.

[Soundsystem90]

Just now, George_Bud said:

What ? Like the astrology one ? In that case, i am fish.

Pisces.

 

I am Cancer, Taurus moon, Taurus mars, Aquarius rising.

Midpoint in Aries.

[George_Bud]

1 minute ago, Soundsystem90 said:

Pisces.

 

I am Cancer, Taurus moon, Taurus mars, Aquarius rising.

Midpoint in Aries.

What is all this ? Is it related to me or something ?

[JohnnyCorporalTech]

Yes, I am a Jehovah's Witness. God is the all powerful being and the creator of heaven and earth.

[Guest]

I can't stand how ignorant some atheists can be believing that you have to choose between science and religion. It's like you can believe in and trust in both.

I think that it is good to challenge your beliefs when you believe in a higher power. The same does go for atheists too. If you live your life blindly hating or criticizing something you haven't  tried than how would you be any better than someone that just blindly follows the bible?

I hope that came across right and understand it correctly.

And I would consider myself a Christian who does not go to church very often. 

[Nuluvius]

I believe in our great lord Linus.

 

- Hallowed are the followers of Linus

[phil_404]

Indeed, my friend. Among numerous reasons, there is so much design and complexity in nature, how could it all be a cosmic accident or just exist?

[stconquest]

2 hours ago, CaptainGunny said:

I can't stand how ignorant some atheists can be believing that you have to choose between science and religion. It's like you can believe in and trust in both.

I think that it is good to challenge your beliefs when you believe in a higher power. The same does go for atheists too. If you live your life blindly hating or criticizing something you haven't  tried than how would you be any better than someone that just blindly follows the bible?

I hope that came across right and understand it correctly.

And I would consider myself a Christian who does not go to church very often. 

No one here said you have to choose.  Science and religion do not have to be at odds with one another.  I see religion as a failed hypothesis, I supposed some atheists might as well.  A hypothesis is part of the scientific process.

 

See, science and religion... together. 

 

2 hours ago, phil_404 said:

Indeed, my friend. Among numerous reasons, there is so much design and complexity in nature, how could it all be a cosmic accident or just exist?

 

Hold on there.  Where do you get the idea that a cosmic accident is part of the equation?  In scientific terms, a cosmic accident would be an elocution not a theory.

 

If I remember correctly, god "just exists".

[Tosa]

I grew up in a christian home and still consider myself a christian.

[captain_to_fire]

I used to until I read books critically examining claims in religion (available upon request). Now, I'm an agnostic atheist. I don't hate religion, in fact I love learning about them for I consider religions as artifacts of antiquity. But I lack belief in them. I respect people and their right to believe but I will always condemn religious fanaticism that always has become pathological to society up to this very day.

[Clanscorpia]

Well, I go to a catholic school. Hate it, hate it with a passion. Not because of the religion, hell, most parts of the religion are very interesting and teach us a lot about the human consistence but I CAN NOT support a religion that also preaches hate towards ANY group of people. Which is the main reason I find Hinduism, and mythology very interesting. I also hate how most religions try to force themselves onto you which is why I basically sleep during religion and put 0 effort in because my teachers keep trying to force it onto me. I became an Atheist in grade 4 when I began to think for myself and I realized "wow, God is a fucking asshole" and stopped believing. I didnt even "believe" in grade 1, which is where I was first introduced to the religion and just did what I was told. Now I have converted most of my best friends to Atheism, not by forcing them, but by pointing out simple things in the bible that made them think. Whoever wrote the bible would probably be face palming super hard right now if he saw what he has done with it. I agree with whomever said it up there. The bible, and all other religious books, should be taken spiritually, not religiously. The only thing I can follow religiously are the PCMR gods Linus and Gaben.

[captain_to_fire]

2 hours ago, CaptainGunny said:

I can't stand how ignorant some atheists can be believing that you have to choose between science and religion. It's like you can believe in and trust in both.

I think that it is good to challenge your beliefs when you believe in a higher power. The same does go for atheists too. If you live your life blindly hating or criticizing something you haven't  tried than how would you be any better than someone that just blindly follows the bible?

I hope that came across right and understand it correctly.

And I would consider myself a Christian who does not go to church very often. 

I beg to differ.

 

As a person who was raised a Catholic and attended Catholic schools till college, I know the ins and outs of the Christian faith. I'm aware of the typical apologetics classes like how to defend the existence of God through Anselm's Ontological argument as well as the popular Thomas Aquinas' Five Proofs of God's Existence and others. But the problem with these theories is that they're ridden with logical fallacies. Anselm for instance committed the "Begging the Question Fallacy." Then, I read the Bible cover to cover and I found a lot of contradictions that apologetics is having a hard time answering. For example, how can Matthew 27:51-53 which states upon Jesus' death, the temple veil was torn and graves opened up with dead people rising like zombies and pranced around Jerusalem, hadn't made its way to any contemporary record of the Jews? Are we talking history or contrivance here? Also, most of the purported history in the Bible happened decades or even centuries long after the supposed dates of these texts. For example, conservative scholars tend to date the Pentateuch at around 1440 BCE or even earlier. The thing is, scholars nowadays are questioning this traditional date for there are a lot of anachronisms. Camels as described being domesticated in the Pentateuch didn't happened during 1440 BCE ir earlier since archeological evidence points out that Camels only became domesticated in the Levant only at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE. Also, the Hebrew script only started to become visible in historical record is during the beginning of first millennium as well as the very scanty references of Exodus and Moses in the post exhile prophets. Also, how ludicrous could it be that it took 40 years for Moses and his people to reach promised land? The distance we're talking about here is around 150 miles +/-40 miles. You can walk from Los Angeles to San Diego which is roughly 120 miles in between and it will only take around three days of walking. 

 

Again, interested parties who want a reading list may request for it. I'm not polemicizng the person, I'm just here for a civil and opend discussion. 

Edited November 26, 2016 by hey_yo_
Added a picture

[captain_to_fire]

2 hours ago, obi-fade-kenobi said:

Personally there's nothing I disagree with more than religion and patriotism. 

 

But as long as you're not harming anyone else, I don't care what you believe. 

 

Jesus approves this message. ?

 

 

[Misanthrope]

3 hours ago, TehStranger said:

Well I never said it had an end. You can believe whatever the fuck you want, I ain't gonna argue because neither of us are right.

Actually that's where you're wrong: I only believe things that are reasonably backed by evidence and scientific research. It's why things like my political opinions are fairly flexible in some stances and people call me a "moderate" on those regards, precisely because I am not arrogant and know when I could be wrong.

 

You are the one that abandons reason and henceforth you want to pretend "nobody can be right" to normalize your baseless believes. I don't believe whenever or not the universe started or not, I am comfortable with saying we don't know, we can't know. I don't need to make up some magic, metaphysical, existencial bullshit about gods and creations and beginnings and ends.

 

We're all just fucking sacks of meat waiting to be eaten by fucking maggots. No gods, no ultimate truths, just what we can observe and experience and the extremely narrow trap of a consciousness trapped behind a skull.

[Dash Lambda]

1 hour ago, JohnnyCorporalTech said:

Yes, I am a Jehovah's Witness.

Get off my lawn.

[natey_g]

Guys, you know this is the internet right? No one here actually cares what you believe. Believe what you want, do what you want. Regardless of your beliefs we will all see for ourselves one day now won't we?

[Gowers]

We all love to hear our own views repeated back to us. Religion is the ultimate form of echo chamber, not only do you pick a religion that fits your personal bigotries it's then further solidified by weekly teachings and social gatherings of similarly minded people. As someone with religion you also cut out those of other faiths or even kill people who disagree with you!

 

This is why I'm atheist before even getting to faith and belief. I don't think you even need to look at that aspect though it's hard to have a logical argument about faith as it's entirely based on faith and cannot be ratified. Logically you should have a religion to hedge your bets, but that's not a satisfactory reason either.

 

Most things a religion aims to provide you are advantages over others, like schools, jobs, deals etc just like business clubs the freemasons, secret societies or GLOs. There are tangible benefits to some, i fail to see any spiritual need for them though.

 

It's pointless arguing about the existence of god, it cannot be proved. And the emphasis should be on proving as even if you say things like god made man, that is just one of many things you could say, when explaining our us. That a science fiction writer like L. Ron Hubbard can create a new religion in our lifetimes should show you the fallacy of trust in religious writings.

 

We are circling around a 3rd or 4th generation sun 13.772 billion years since an event where matter was pure energy, this doesn't demonstrate a beginning but does suggest cycles that destroy everything we know to exist. We are literally made of stars. The entropy of everything is a far more powerful an idea than creating an unseen being just to explain away the creation of a few lifeforms.

[Misanthrope]

2 hours ago, CaptainGunny said:

I can't stand how ignorant some atheists can be believing that you have to choose between science and religion. It's like you can believe in and trust in both.

I think that it is good to challenge your beliefs when you believe in a higher power. The same does go for atheists too. If you live your life blindly hating or criticizing something you haven't  tried than how would you be any better than someone that just blindly follows the bible?

I hope that came across right and understand it correctly.

And I would consider myself a Christian who does not go to church very often. 

So you asume atheists were born atheists and were never theists when the overwhelming majority of us were religious due to child indoctrination being common practice.

 

So since we're making baseless assumptions and character judgements I'll go ahead and make one about you: You're a terrible Christian. Because if you weren't, you'd stone adulterer women to death, avoid shellfish, you would not wear mix fabrics, you'd never reply to this post cause it's the Sabbath, you'd kill homosexuals and condone slavery. Only Christianity was reformed by people who realized that was just stupid fucking barbaric bullshit and said "Oh no we'll stay with the new testament only, we'll only follow the Jesus stuff" except of course when it suits many of you to vote against marriage, etc.

 

So instead I'll assume that you're actually a decent person, a reformed Christian that has chosen a comprise between completely abandoning his faith and enforcing the extremely violent and ugly parts of it. Most Atheists have no problems with moderate religious people cause we know they're doing the best they can to deal with their cognitive dissonance and they support reasonable things like fully secular societies where God is just a personal, optional belief outside of the realm of governments, education, major political decisions, etc.

[awesomeness10120]

This question is a very philosophical one, as it questions the most fundamental part of our human existence. Now, people have an innate desire to worship or believe in a transcendent deity or spirituality of some kind. I mean, every ancient culture had some kind of religion, mostly polytheistic deities like Osiris, Zeus, Set, etc. However, what makes the Christian God, the Muslim God, or the Jewish God (they all worship the same one, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with differences like the Holy Trinity) differed from those gods? There is only one. Well, the Christian God (I am a Catholic) is not just an item in the universe. He doesn't need us to worship Him to exist. I personally like Aquinas's definition of God: the non-contingent foundation from which all continent things rise. God cannot be proven on merely empirical grounds because He specifically created things that can be empirically verified. That is just a category error in questions God's existence. The universe cannot have existed forever because everything inside the universe is contingent and it is finite and is dependent on the Big Bang. Now, let's go one step further, what caused the Big Bang? If gravity is a main perpetrator, then what created gravity? There has to be something that is able to bring gravity and the universe ex nihilo, or else we have an infinite regress problem, or the phrase, "it just happened."

[Omon_Ra]

5 hours ago, Soundsystem90 said:

Anyone want me to read their chart? lol

http://astro.cafeastrology.com/natal.php It's pretty crazy.

 

For me, I don't believe in a specific god; there could be a higher power, but I don't believe in or worship one. If anything nature itself is the closest that I consider a 'god.' I also believe than everyone and anyone can be, and is, a 'god.'

[Jumper118]

no

[AkiraDaarkst]

Hell no, I'm not some delusional moron that believes in fairy tales.