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Forums - General - Argument from nonbelief

 

Do you agree with it?

Yes 17 34.00%
 
No 33 66.00%
 
Total:50
Jay520 said:
gooch_destroyer said:


Just saying.

EDIT: What is faith to you?


Knowingly believing in unsupported claims. 

Some people believe there is good support for the belief of God. I wouldn't say those people believe based on faith; I would probably find their reasoning flawed though.


I guess I'd better work on mine. I do have my reasons in believing.

 

Now some times faith doesn't have anything to do with religion. do you have faith in yourself? in others?

 



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Jay520 said:
gooch_destroyer said:

then should we be Agnostic?  I'm sorry if I don't see the benefits of being an Atheist. I love the idea of an after life...it beats just being in a box.


The existence of an afterlife isn't dependent on whether or not you believe there is an afterlife.

And it sounds like you would be a theists just in case there is a God. That doesn't sound like true faith to me, so I doubt a God would let you in anyway.


You know, i find that another funny aspect of religion. The devil and the right to enter heaven.

How do we go around justifying the existance of a satan? If god exists, created us and is omnipotent. Doesnt he have the power to prevent us from doing something that he doesnt want us to? Why would he feel the need to let us do it and later punish us with terrible horrors. Wouldnt he see us as children that dont know what they are doing, like we would see a 2 year old?  Then there was the need to personify this with the character of Satan. How absolutely curious that this enforcement was put in place so it could have a form.



Soleron said:

Yeah, my favourite thing to ask a religious person is: what are the odds you were born into the one true religion? Since they all contradict each other, isn't it miraculous that you decided that the same religion as your parents have is the true one?

No one believes in the Norse gods any more, what if that was right?

Reminds me of a funny meme

 



                            

gooch_destroyer said:

I guess I'd better work on mine. I do have my reasons in believing.

Now some times faith doesn't have anything to do with religion. do you have faith in yourself? in others?


Faith in myself?

What does that mean?



Jay520 said:
gooch_destroyer said:

I guess I'd better work on mine. I do have my reasons in believing.

Now some times faith doesn't have anything to do with religion. do you have faith in yourself? in others?


Faith in myself?

What does that mean?


do you believe in yourself whenever you're doing something like playing in a tough sport or trying to kill a boss in some random ass game?



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gooch_destroyer said:


do you believe in yourself whenever you're doing something like playing in a tough sport or trying to kill a boss in some random ass game?

Only when I have a good reason to. If I were playing against Kobe Bryant in Basketball or against CoD vets in CoD, then no, I would not believe in myself. If I were playing against a noob in either one of those competitions, then I would believe in myself. But that's not faith since I have a reason to believe in myself.



Jay520 said:
gooch_destroyer said:


do you believe in yourself whenever you're doing something like playing in a tough sport or trying to kill a boss in some random ass game?

Only when I have a good reason to. If I were playing against Kobe Bryant in Basketball or against CoD vets in CoD, then no, I would not believe in myself. If I were playing against a noob in either one of those competitions, then I would believe in myself. But that's not faith since I have a reason to believe in myself.


...ah I see. Peace.



In the Wikipedia article's "Would a perfectly loving God prevent nonresistant nonbelief?" section, the main criticism is the preconceived notion that God would want to "prevent inculpable nonbelief" in the first place; and personally that pretty much sums it up for me as well.

God (at least, the God as perceived in fundamentally Lutheran terms) may be "perfectly loving" but that doesn't mean he isn't going to let those he loves not reciprocate those feelings. A major motif within Christian circles is the idea of free will (which, granted, varies depending on the branch); if anything, God exercises his longing for a relationship with us miserably Hell-borne earthlings through the provision of choices which we have the freedom to choose from. One of those choices can also be not to love or not to want to have a relationship with him. Biblically, that choice is supposed to condemn your soul to Hell, regardless of your qualities as a person. Technically, however, God is still perfectly loving, and still perfectly loves those who don't love him.

The reason we're given that choice, though, I believe, is because that in order to start and develop a relationship you must be capable of making the choice to willingly be a part of it. If you don't, then it's not a genuine relationship. It's just a forced partnership with a complete lack of heart, and a high chance of falling apart. And if there is no genuine relationship with God, then man can fall again -- because even if God is supposedly "perfect", we technically aren't. His demands are strict, but in no rendition of him in any branch of Chrisitanity does he not provide us the choice to abide to them. In the New Testament, Jesus emphasizes the act of serving; however, it's also clear that it's out of his own will, out of his own desire to serve others, that he chooses to be a servant. If God instantaneously made all men, women, and children wholly serve him with a snap of his non-corporeal fingers then it's him who would be making the choice, not us -- and that, in turn, is slavery, not servantship.

Anyways, in the end, I think the argument made here is a good attempt but better ones do exist. The main nitpick would probably be with #3, which says "If there is a God who is always open to personal relationship with each human person, then no human person is ever non-resistantly unaware that God exists." because it suggests that God can not be perfectly loving while others don't openly love him as well, while I believe this is technically an untrue assumption. It can be considered exponentially tragic, then, for those who do believe in God and in the fact that those "non-resistantly unaware" of God's existence will be condemned to Hell, as that suggests that numerous amounts of people around the world have condemned fates and might not even know it, and probably would even embrace the idea if they were introduced to it -- however, that's where the New Testament's insistence on "spreading the gospel" comes in, being the reason behind evangelical missions and crusades and so on and so forth. It's because the responsibility was laid upon the people.



Faith can't be explained with science and logic as far as i'm aware.. This world has to be ruled by a God, nothing comes haphazardly.



I think all of this goes back to the "omnipotent god" argument, which itself is a very strong argument.