This is why I don't like debating religion

[KungKras]

happydolphin said:

Dodece said:

What he is probably afraid of is literal death, or a form of Thanatophobia. Religious thinking is equal parts placebo and opiate. It dulls the rational mind, offers up a type of euphoria, and convinces the user that use will cure them of their ailment. Basically it is like getting stoned, and thinking you are better off for doing it in the first place. If he admits that he is taking a drug to deal with a problem. Then not only will the drug stop working, but the problem he was self medicating away will resurface with a vengeance.

If he admits that his faith is brought about by a emotional need, and has no basis in reality. He must also admit that the choice he made had a ridiculously low chance of success. Given that humanity has generated tens of thousands of religions, and it isn't guaranteed that even one of them is right. Well let us just say it would be the height of hubris, and a megalomaniacal vanity. For him to assume he through sheer dumb luck found the right answer. He would probably reach the most rational conclusion, and that is he is fallible, and because something feels right. It doesn't equate out to it being right.

There is a difference between searching for what you want, and searching for genuine understanding. If you have already redefined a fact to serve your own purposes then you are just being disengenuous, and you are actively engaged in self deception. Death is death. It takes a leap of genuine desire to redefine it as a fog of ignorance. When the apparent nature of what happened is painfully simple. Namely a living person is no long alive. You can argue for a fog of ignorance if something happens for a unknown cause, or if something counter intuitive takes place, but people dying is a mundane fact of life. The only reason someone would label death as a fog is, because they desperately want there to be more.

So seeing as you took me up on my offer. Let me ask you was your choice based upon a emotion, and are your emotions fallible, and if you agree to those two. Isn't it reasonable that you say you could be wrong, and are probably wrong. In other words can you say that your god is probably a lie.

Yeah, my emotions led me to reply to you, under the reigns of reason, since I don't like being wrong. So my emotions, though fallible, are often under the robust supervision of my reason. As such, my emotions are fallible but not incapable of benefit. They drive me, since I am a passionate person, but my reason keeps them in the realm of truth as I'm also very adamant about being right and logical.

I could be wrong, of course, and yes that is a reasonable saying. I will agree with you that God is, if you included a 1 chance in infinity, could be false, but as for me I don't believe God is probably a lie. He is possibly a lie, in a very, very, very minute possibility, which amounts to zero chance in the real world, but I can't say he is certifiable by any means. I just personally believe the odds of us coming to being from nothing (abiogenesis) is virtually impossible. The only other option I see is special creation. As of that point, truly the only option that makes sense to me is the God of the bible, given his awesomeness, but I agree that some portions of the bible make me doubt the integrity of his description throughout the book, and as such he, as a specific God, may be a lie. But I would tend to think that I'm misunderstanding him more than anything.

I'll have to add this to the conversation:

If you went to an elementary school grade, that consisted of say... 40 kids. Each have their birthday on one of 365 days of the year. So the odds of all the kids having their exact birthdays on the days that they have them is 1:40*365 = 1:14 600. Does this make it logical to postulate an intelligent designer of this entire grade of kids?

I just had to bring it up, because this is my favourite argument when someone brings up the probability of life.

EDIT: No wait, is the probability (1/365)^40? Argh i'm too tired for math atm. but the point is, the probability is insanely low.