Rise of atheism: 100,000 Brits seek 'de-baptism'

[Sqrl]

ManusJustus said:

Sqrl said: 

The concept of prayer as a literal request with an expectation of entitled fulfillment is woefully inaccurate to put it mildly.

People who sit around waiting for god to show up and do things for them wait a very long time, and no religion actually advocates this idea which is truly where your argument stumbles.  There may be misguided followers who would follow this indolent path to failure and then look to place the blame for their failure anywhere but themselves but if you intend to hold up these people as an example you should note that your original argument was a broad one and focused on god and thus religion as whole, not individuals who fail to exercise free will.  Sorry but prayer is quite clearly not a valid comparison to the government intervention you support and therefor your statement in your prior post is incorrect.

On the issue of why life would be meaningless your reply is no more coherant than the last post.  Why do you believe that noble acts and inventions are meaningless?  Could it be because you are making assumptions about what god's existence would mean?  For instance you assume that if you fail to invent something it means someone else will simply do it.  What is this assumption based on?  You also assume that inventions and discovery are without purpose if god exists because of their assumed lack of importance in heaven.  Aside from the assumption of no heavenly importance you ignore that they could and likely would still have significant earthly importance.  It's also interesting that you lumped in heavenly importance as part of a reply to explain a lack of importance specifically in life, in heaven you are dead so this line of reasoning is inherently faulty.

So again I ask, what about the existence of god necessarily makes life meaningless?

I dont know what planet you are from, but on this one when you use the English term 'pray' it means you are requesting something.

I pray that you will have a safe journey.  I pray that you will get better.  I pray that I can be closer with God.

Your reasoning is also flawed.  In religion, you do not end with death, you continue on to something else.  If you die and leave Earth and go to Heaven, fundamentally its not different than leaving New York and moving to Los Angeles, in the sense that you take your life experiences from one place to another.

For those who are religious, God has already invented, discovered, and created everything imaginable.  If you develop a new physical law, there is no use for it in Heaven because God already knows about it.  You do not need to strive for innovation, nor do you need to stand up for a social or political belief you have, in Heaven none of this matters.

Think about it this way.  You are a bio-chemical engineer and you desire to challenge yourself as well as to help other people.  Every time you create a new drug you think will improve the lives others, you go to your boss and show him your new innovation.  Everytime you go to your boss he says, "we already discovered that."  In this case God is the boss so you have absolutely no reason to do anything, you might as well sit in a box and stair at the wall because you can never achieve anything.

On the issue of prayer:  The context of the discussion, as set out by your comments, is people's requests on god (ie prayer) and therefor alternate definitions of the word "pray"/"prayer" are pointless in the discussion.  Additionally you should know that all of the alternate definitions you used to make your point actually express a desire for the outcome specified, not an expectation of entitled fulfillment.  So your argument actually betrays the idea that you support my contention by acknowledging that the word prayer is not used to express an obligation or expectation of future benefits.

This point seems fairly well established now. Prayer is not the same as advocating for a government program that entitles people to benefits.

On the issue of god and meaning in life: As you said, at the end of your life (ie your death) in religion you "continue on to something else". As "something else" it is clearly not life, in fact you will recall the term "afterlife" which specifically refers to life after death as opposed to just life.  The concepts are not the same.

Additionally, you didn't address the issue of inventions having meaning here on earth but instead only repeated their lack of heavenly importance.  Even if we accept that this idea (ie being alive in heaven) is valid it still doesn't address why these inventions would lack importance here and now.  These inventions and noble deeds make life here on earth better and thus clearly have importance and meaning to those that benefit from them.  Their assumed lack of heavenly value (which again is an assumption as neither of us have reliable knowledge of heaven) does not diminish their earthly value and there your argument falls flat.

You also assume that god having discovered something before someone makes any future discovery meaningless.  But the act of discovery is not the meaningful bit, it is the act of sharing the knowledge that gives meaning to the discovery and its process.  If you knew the secrets of the universe but cannot share or reveal them to anyone, that would actually be very meaningless.  It could be argued that it might have meaning to that individual but it would quite obviously be meaningless to others and thus it is the same for knowledge god may have that we are unaware of.  The only thing god having found knowledge first would ruin is those wishing to discover things first.