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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

Usually when people ask the "God question," especially capital G, they have a particular god in mind -- and especially (in my experience, in the US) the Christian God. But having studied history, read some of the work of Joseph Campbell, etc., recognizing that over the millennia billions of people have worshiped nearly as many different gods and associated, you begin to have a certain perspective on things that makes it difficult to take any one dogma all that seriously.

Early on, it seems that people worshiped rivers, volcanoes, etc., as living spirits. These objects of worship became abstracted over time and (in certain respects) more sophisticated, but it ultimately boils down to the same thing -- and I would argue for the same sorts of reasons, which are mostly because people wish to be comforted in the dark. But is the Moses myth or the Christ resurrection really any more compelling than any number of cults that have lived and died over the course of the last six thousand years? I don't think so. I think it's more compelling for many people today because they are raised to believe in its truth, which is then supported by cultural forces. But if they had been born in another time and another place, they would be worshiping their mud idols with the same intensity of belief. It's all kind of an absurdity.

And for those who currently need to disabuse themselves of the Christian myths specifically, I would advise some exploration into the canonization of the modern Bible and the early histories of the Church. Whatever your stance on such pabulum as "Pascal's wager," etc., a little education can really shed some light into the "holiness" of Christian institutions and so forth, and if we expect to know a tree by its fruit, well...



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Alara317 said:
EnricoPallazzo said:

Your answer is exactly why I usually do no enter this type of discussion. I wish I could have the answers for everything in the universe, like what existed before the big bang, how the universe can be infinite, what exists outside of it, where the matter that comprises the WHOLE universe came from and that condensed in a veru very small space before that big bang, or why atheist people are so intolerant sometimes, despite in theory being at the "reason" side of the discussion. And where god came from of course.

But I stand for what I said. The more I understand how the "micro" works in the nature, the more its clear for me it could not have been there by a mere huge sequence of fortunate lucky moves.

Then you clearly can't comprehend how large the universe really is or how old it truly is. The amount of chemical reactions taking place at any given moment is virtually infinite, and that's happening every one of the trillions of seconds all over the universe. Life on this planet is said to have started 4.28 billion years ago. The universe is said to be 13.8 billion years old. 

That's over 9.5 billion years where nothing happened. An infinite number of chemical reactions mixing and matching in infinite patterns for 9.52 billion years. If you don't believe that THOSE odds don't eventually lead to life, then that's fine, but don't pretend the numbers aren't there. 

If there was a god, I'm sure it wouldn't take him 9.5 billion years to take his first step on this planet. Especially considering how long it took to get to this point from there. Hell, even the time of the dinosaurs (about 320 million years ago to 65 million years ago) was, on the universal scale, like yesterday. 

I never said chances were not there. I never mentioned anything that would give the impression I do not now how old the universe is. This is pretty common in discussions like this...

But what I believe is that things so complex as dna and a cell, well for me this require an absurd amount of VERY fortunate coicidences, happening in a row during a very very long period of time, without the sequence never being broken by chance. 

 



Peh said:
EnricoPallazzo said:
Yes. The more I understand how a cell, genome, dna works, the more its clear for me that It cannot come to existance by chance. I think it is very clear the universe and life itself had a design. Im a christian by the way.

Your argument is based on a logical fallacy called argument from ignorance. Also known as god of the gaps argument.

Because you don't know or don't understand how something came into existence or could've been evovled, you go for a higher power which is the god you believe in.

Ahhhhh the ignorance card. Was waiting for this one. I perfectly understand the explanation the scientists give to life. I just think it is flawed and a few things does not make sense for me and that there must be more to it. 



EnricoPallazzo said:
Peh said:

Your argument is based on a logical fallacy called argument from ignorance. Also known as god of the gaps argument.

Because you don't know or don't understand how something came into existence or could've been evovled, you go for a higher power which is the god you believe in.

Ahhhhh the ignorance card. Was waiting for this one. I perfectly understand the explanation the scientists give to life. I just think it is flawed and a few things does not make sense for me and that there must be more to it. 

Can you give an example on what is flawed?

 

If you were waiting for the "ignorance card" then why did you make an argument from ignorance in the first place?



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I am not 100% in not believing in God, however I just don't see how it can be real. I always ask this; if god created us then who created him/her? It just wouldn't make sense to believe in something like that. But you never know.



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dark_gh0st_b0y said:
Peh said:

I wouldn't call it a miracle or luck. It's rather unavoidable. We are certainly not the only planet who managed to grow life on it  Even it if were one planet per galaxy whereas a galaxy has billions of solar systems. And our universe has how many millions or billions of galaxies? Not to mention that we found dozens of planets in our own galaxy which are fit for life.

this is an interesting topic! miracle or luck is always up to one's perception, I don't see how life on other planets can dismiss the existence of an upper intelligence deity in another dimension that caused the big bang and administrated the events that led to life on multiple planets

our knowledge is very limited on the matter, there is definitely life on other planets but does it even go beyond cells? many, many conditional circumstances must be met in order for life to exist, develop organs and evolve, even more when it comes to developing an organism that goes beyond the ''unavoidable'' in a sense that it possess a spirit and free will, one whose actions are not pre-set

Christian scripts support that both animals and human possess a spirit, but free will has only been given to the human by god, the only thing (along with the spirit) that does not recycle, but goes on to exist forever in another dimension, along with its memories

but like I said before, people give to much focus on connecting religion and science, religion is about having a healthy spirit and therefore a better life, if those teachings really make one feel healthy, then there's nothing else to prove

As most things supernatural they come from a place of missing knowledge and understanding.

Yes, the probabilities of life existing are astronomically low, but do you know what's literally astronomically large? The universe. That puts the likelihood of these events massively into perspective. I mean it's not like the earth is in a very specific spot in the universe. It's just one of the quadrillions of planets where it could've happened. But those are all very gigantic or tiny numbers, so it's hard for people to grasp and they start trying to fill their gaps in understanding. It's exactly the same as flat earthers. They cannot grasp the actual size of the earth, so they don't understand that the surface of a sphere can appear flat if sufficiently sized.

Of course we cannot say that there is no god, but looking at the wealth of evidence we find in the universe and recognizing that all is based on simple causality and logic we can at least conclude that even if there is some kind of god, he'll most likely not be how the major religions depict him. It's obvious, if he exists, that he doesn't give a shit about earth or its people. For that earth is just too random. And if there is also life on other planets, which is statistically very likely, it just underlines that the loving, caring god who views humans as the pinnacle of his creation just doesn't make any sense.

With this conclusion in mind there is no point in worshipping, no matter if he exists or not. He clearly just wants us to live our lives and doesn't really care what happens with us.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

EnricoPallazzo said:
Peh said:

Your argument is based on a logical fallacy called argument from ignorance. Also known as god of the gaps argument.

Because you don't know or don't understand how something came into existence or could've been evovled, you go for a higher power which is the god you believe in.

Ahhhhh the ignorance card. Was waiting for this one. I perfectly understand the explanation the scientists give to life. I just think it is flawed and a few things does not make sense for me and that there must be more to it. 

It's ignorant to claim that things cannot happen by chance when you cannot even grasp the likelihood of a chance. If you look into how big the universe is, how old it is and how many chances it had to develop exactly what we are today it puts things into perspective.

1 person winning a jackpot that's 1:1000000000 is unlikely. When 1 billion people try to win a jackpot every day for a billion days it's extremely likely that one person will win it eventually.

Evolution already tells us how complex organisms developed over a long period of time from very simple organisms. We are the result of an unfathomable amount of failures in a trial and error experiment. You don't need intelligent design when you just try every possibility and see what sticks. That method isn't fast but it always works. That's why we adopted it in computers today.

Last edited by vivster - on 28 August 2018

If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

JWeinCom said:
WolfpackN64 said:

While the designer argument is dubious, your retort is quite weak as well. Who designed God? If God is a necessary being at the cradle of the universe, the only awnser is that he always was. For when he wasn't he couldn't and if he is, he can't not be.

If you acknowledge that complex things (like god) can exist without a creator, you can no longer argue that cells need a creator because they are complex.

If you try to get out of this problem by saying that god is the only thing that didn't need to be created, then that is a logical fallacy called special pleading.  You can't just say "this thing is the one exception to the rule", unless you can give a valid justification to the rule.  

Either complex things always need to be designed, or they don't.  You can't have it both ways.

Yes you can, that's why you have the division between necessary and contingent beings.



Yes, mostly because I believe in the existence of a multiverse, and by virtue of what I believe, I believe there is a god...



WolfpackN64 said:
JWeinCom said:

If you acknowledge that complex things (like god) can exist without a creator, you can no longer argue that cells need a creator because they are complex.

If you try to get out of this problem by saying that god is the only thing that didn't need to be created, then that is a logical fallacy called special pleading.  You can't just say "this thing is the one exception to the rule", unless you can give a valid justification to the rule.  

Either complex things always need to be designed, or they don't.  You can't have it both ways.

Yes you can, that's why you have the division between necessary and contingent beings.

Is this the cosmological argument?



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