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Forums - General Discussion - Do you believe in God? Why/Why not?

 

Do you believe in any god?

Yes 63 36.21%
 
No 111 63.79%
 
Total:174
Flilix on 23 August 2018
LuccaCardoso1 said:

- The European colonization of the Americas: 34 million killed. All of the countries that colonized America were strongly Christian.

- The Hundred Years' War: 2.8 million killed. Both England and France were strongly Christian.

- The Crusades: 1.7 million killed. Happened because of Christianity.

And those are just the most famous examples.

To be fair, the vast majority of the native Americans were accidently killed due to diseases, so it wasn't as much of a genocide as it may seem like. The Hundred Years' War wasn't really directly related to religion either. But the Crusades are indeed a very good example of religious violence. They were perhaps even relatively worse than modern authoritarian regimes, considering the lower population and less advanced war technology back then.

Scisca said:

 

I think that people aren't aware of the real social consequences of rejection of God.

 

@Flilix - you are wrong. These are all Marxist regimes, and as we know, rejection of God is the very foundation of Marxism and Marx's materialism. It's not a by-product. It's the starting point.

- The least religious countries nowadays are generally also the safest and the most free, so their 'rejection of God' doesn't seem to be much of an issue.

- None of these regimes are strictly Marxist. Marx rejected totalitarism just as much as he rejected God. If acknowledging the existence of God would have worked in the favour of these regimes, they definitely would have done it.



WolfpackN64 on 23 August 2018
Torillian said:
WolfpackN64 said:

Down syndrome is an evil? I think your sense of morality on the matters of genetics are a bit twisted. These are things atheists like Stephen Fry don't get. Nature in itself, and certainly in biology are morally neutral. Morality springs forth from interaction between beings, one of which must have at least primitive reasoning or social skills. There is nothing moral about Down, or kids getting cancer. It's a tragedy, but in itself it has no overlap with the field of morality.

I've written a paper on the ontological, teleological and cosmological argument and I can assure you they're not synonymous. Intelligent design implies teleology, teleology doesn't imply intelligent design.

The cosmological argument eventually boils down to: the inference to the best explanation is that only God could have done it.

Out of curiosity, how do you view natural disasters then? I mean an all-loving god shouldn't allow people to be killed by random natural disasters that have nothing to do with maintaining their free will right? One could easily imagine a world where people are allowed to be evil but there aren't earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. Or what about disease, why is that necessary for there to be free will?

We have free will, nature doesn't. Nature acts on it's own accord. Even then disasters can have purpose (like forrest fires spreading certain trees or refertilising regions). But in general, nature acts on it's own precarious balance. The only effect of free will on nature is us not exercising caution or haste in dealing with climate change, leading to more disasters. As for disease, it's hard to imagine a biological system in which we have decay, but not disease.



Errorist76 on 23 August 2018

There are only two gods...nature and our universe.

I don’t believe believe in god but I believe in a higher truth, a higher good. I guess that makes me a kind of Buddhist in a way.

Most religions just exploit and manipulate the people sadly. They’ve become corrupted and cancerous and are responsible for many evils on this planet, be it Christianity, Islam or Judaism.



jason1637 on 23 August 2018

Yes because I'm Catholic.



palou on 23 August 2018
WolfpackN64 said:
palou said:

No. That's a bit of a misconception. The current big bang theory does not comment on the origin of time. It assumes the existence of time at the event. 

 

The big bang is simply the limit of what we can describe; since no information preceding the event could physically be observed from our stand point. 

 

It's the beginning of the *observable universe*. We simply have 0 information (and know to have 0 information) of the universe outside of the observable universe (equivalently, in both time and space), by definition. 

It's not a misconception, It's a very plausable hypothesis even pushed by the late Stephen Hawking himself.

It's one model, of many, which can't be verified in any way. Basing an argument on that seems a little dubious. 

 

Specifically, I fail to see how one consequently would need to conclude in god. The strength of the model comes from the very fact that it creates no issues. Could you elaborate? 



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I win if Emmanuel Macron wins the french presidential election May 7th 2017.

Lucca on 23 August 2018
Flilix said:
LuccaCardoso1 said:

- The European colonization of the Americas: 34 million killed. All of the countries that colonized America were strongly Christian.

- The Hundred Years' War: 2.8 million killed. Both England and France were strongly Christian.

- The Crusades: 1.7 million killed. Happened because of Christianity.

And those are just the most famous examples.

To be fair, the vast majority of the native Americans were accidently killed due to diseases, so it wasn't as much of a genocide as it may seem like.

I cited the colonization of America because it's a very shocking event, not just because of the numbers. The "morally superior" Christians dominated and killed a lot of native Americans (yes, a lot of them were killed due to diseases, but not all of them. Especially the Spanish battled a lot against the Aztecs and Incas.)

Flilix said: 

The Hundred Years' War wasn't really directly related to religion either.

My point is that manslaughter happens independently of religious beliefs. The Hundred Years' War wasn't directly related to religion, but both peoples were strongly religious.



B O I

Lucca on 23 August 2018
WolfpackN64 said:
Torillian said:

Out of curiosity, how do you view natural disasters then? I mean an all-loving god shouldn't allow people to be killed by random natural disasters that have nothing to do with maintaining their free will right? One could easily imagine a world where people are allowed to be evil but there aren't earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. Or what about disease, why is that necessary for there to be free will?

We have free will, nature doesn't. Nature acts on it's own accord. Even then disasters can have purpose (like forrest fires spreading certain trees or refertilising regions). But in general, nature acts on it's own precarious balance. The only effect of free will on nature is us not exercising caution or haste in dealing with climate change, leading to more disasters. As for disease, it's hard to imagine a biological system in which we have decay, but not disease.

But why would God allow natural disasters to exist then? They have nothing to do with human free will. Isn't he omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent? 



B O I

Errorist76 on 23 August 2018
Scisca said:
I'm terrified of a world without God. Whenever we reject God as the source of unquestionable and unnegiotable rules and values, terrible things happen. If you look at the most violent regimes ever - Mao's China, USSR, 3rd Reich - rejection of God was the foundation of their ideologies. Think of the French revolution - "enlightment emphasized the importance of rational thinking and began challenging legal and moral foundations of society" (from Wikipedia). Sounds familiar? All it led to was the "Reign of Terror" and massive manslaughter. We're going down the same path in the West now. The more we reject God, the fewer values we have and the murkier everything becomes. What's our highest value at this point? Cause it's not even life with abortion and eutanasia being commonplace.

It's so good to be Catholic and live in a Catholic country.

There are laws. There doesn’t need to be an imaginary being people worship because they don’t know it better. The French Revolution led to democracy after centuries of exploitation. You’re making it too easy for you. And abortion is an important thing for a woman who wants to decide what to do with her life. There’s nothing evil about it. The opposite is the case to be exact.

It’s a bit ironic you’re from Poland since Poland’s politics are anything but Christian lately. Typical hypocrisy I guess.

Last edited by Errorist76 - on 23 August 2018

WolfpackN64 on 23 August 2018
palou said:
WolfpackN64 said:

It's not a misconception, It's a very plausable hypothesis even pushed by the late Stephen Hawking himself.

It's one model, of many, which can't be verified in any way. Basing an argument on that seems a little dubious. 

 

Regardless, I fail to see how one consequently would need to conclude in god. The strength of the model comes from the very fact that it creates no issues. Could you elaborate? 

In a chain of contingent beings (that can cause effects and have effects caused on them) there must be in the beginning a necessary being that can cause effects, but is not caused itself. Since the Big Bang is a contingent event, that would still not explain the universe. But this is and remains a metaphysical argument, not definitive proof of anything.



V-r0cK on 23 August 2018

I'm a Christian so believe in God. I just feel there's a whole lot more to life and all around us than we know. As well, I just feel there's always a creation, like to whatever anybody says about how "this came because of this" that eventually I find the only logical explanation of its origin is that it just comes down to a single creator that started it all.