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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
WolfpackN64 said:
setsunatenshi said:

that's true... it's just a shame that the arguments used to persuade atheists are still the same no matter which year you have the discussion :)

argument from ignorance, appeal to emotion, Pascal's wager, infinite regression,...

 

did I forget any?

The arguments are many and they remain the same (with some new additions every once in a while) because while they aren't conclusive to hardcore atheists or skeptics, it's pretty hard to refute any one of them in their entirity.

Actually, it's pretty easy to refute the arguments. Problem is, theists will not accept that they're wrong and will always revert the burden of proof. "Since you can't prove that God doesn't exist, I'm right". And it's kinda impossible to prove that the dragon in your garage doesn't exist.



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WolfpackN64 said:
LuccaCardoso1 said:

Well, revelations aren't actually proofs. I can write a book right now saying that I talked to a giant spaghetti monster and he told me everything about the world and convince 10 of my friends to do the same. Wouldn't make it proof that this monster actually exists.

True, but if thousand of people had revelations and attributed it to the same phenomena, then you must realize the revelations aren't so easily dismissed. That's why the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster utterly fails as religious sattire. A mock religion with no real foundation mocking religious institutes over 2000 years old with a long history of philosophical engagement and tradition. Just goes to show they just don't get religion at all.

They attributed to the same phenomenon because they were Christians. If they were from any other religion, they would attribute them to the respective god.



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LuccaCardoso1 said:
WolfpackN64 said:

The arguments are many and they remain the same (with some new additions every once in a while) because while they aren't conclusive to hardcore atheists or skeptics, it's pretty hard to refute any one of them in their entirity.

Actually, it's pretty easy to refute the arguments. Problem is, theists will not accept that they're wrong and will always revert the burden of proof. "Since you can't prove that God doesn't exist, I'm right". And it's kinda impossible to prove that the dragon in your garage doesn't exist.

Many of the responses to the cosmological argument (which is in my eyes by far the strongest) have been pretty weak and pretty much come down to "well, you just can't claim it is so" or they deny metaphysics in their entirity. Just to show, that both sides need to really try to cover their philosophical shortfalls. And atheists are no exception



SpokenTruth said:
WolfpackN64 said:

Depends on where you think his direct involvement in designing the universe or even earth goed. He can have everything to do with it or very little. Something to note about omniscience is that, just because God has the power to do things doesn't mean he does. If we have free will, God will have the freest of wills.

Humans cannot live on Earth without plate tectonics.  He had to include them or Earth would never be able to sustain life as it is.

Why can't humans live without tectonic plates?



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LuccaCardoso1 said:
WolfpackN64 said:

True, but if thousand of people had revelations and attributed it to the same phenomena, then you must realize the revelations aren't so easily dismissed. That's why the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster utterly fails as religious sattire. A mock religion with no real foundation mocking religious institutes over 2000 years old with a long history of philosophical engagement and tradition. Just goes to show they just don't get religion at all.

They attributed to the same phenomenon because they were Christians. If they were from any other religion, they would attribute them to the respective god.

Perhaps, but then you have a problem of the criterion. Did people attribute it to the same God because they innatly felt it to be the same phenomena, or did they already know the phenomena and thus attributed it to the same God?



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No, because there is no proof and according to all written accounts of him, he's an asshole.



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WolfpackN64 said:
LuccaCardoso1 said:

Actually, it's pretty easy to refute the arguments. Problem is, theists will not accept that they're wrong and will always revert the burden of proof. "Since you can't prove that God doesn't exist, I'm right". And it's kinda impossible to prove that the dragon in your garage doesn't exist.

Many of the responses to the cosmological argument (which is in my eyes by far the strongest) have been pretty weak and pretty much come down to "well, you just can't claim it is so" or they deny metaphysics in their entirity. Just to show, that both sides need to really try to cover their philosophical shortfalls. And atheists are no exception

The cosmological argument is not strong at all. It's just god of the gaps. You can say that it was god, as you can say that it was a huge spaghetti monster or a cute puppy, and all of them would have the same number of evidence: zero.



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LuccaCardoso1 said: 

Filix already responded pretty well to the "authoritarian regimes were atheist" argument, but I want to point two things:

1. Most revolutions lead to a lot of deaths, it's not exclusive to the French Revolution. And the French Revolution also led to a huge wave of scientific advances, that sped up technological and medical research. Let me cite some other events that killed a huge number of people (I'm using the geometric mean estimate) (for reference, the Reign of Terror killed ~26k people): 

- 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.

2. God, according to the Bible, killed every single human but 8. That'd have been the largest manslaughter ever. And he also created abortion, natural abortion is a thing.

Sadly, Your arguments are very flawed out of ignorance.

Reign of Terror at 26k? Are you kidding? That's not the number of victims, that's a very conservative estimate of people sentenced and executed. All the victims are hard to estimate, due to lack of precise data, but some estimates are up to 600k.

 

Colonization - the absolute majority of people died because of illnesses. For a long time Europeans weren't even aware that people in America were dying by the millions.

Moreover, The Church actually has a great card when it comes to how it reacted to discoveries and colonization. When missionaries from the Dominican Order told the Pope what the cutthroats and fugitives (who most sailors were at that time, not "strongly Christian" xD ) were doing in America, he issued the legendary bull "Sublimis Deus" (1537), which said that all people Europeans discover are fully rational human beings with souls, had the right to freedom and private property, even if they didn't convert and chose to remained pagan. Has anyone other than the Catholic Church condemned slavery in the next 300 years of enlightment? Don't think so.

Sublimis Deus came with Pastorale Officium, which enlisted harsh punishments for enslaving natives and robbing them of their property. Punishments that the Church enforced, which caused huge tensions. What is more, in order to protect the natives, the Church built Jesuit reductions, where natives could find shelter from bandeirantes and other slaver bandits. They were arming locals, so that they could defend themselves, which even led to a war. This is also the only reason why the Guarani culture and language survived and is now spoken by 7 mln people and is the official language in Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia.

That's what the Church did, these were Christian values in action. Bandits and European rulers blinded by greed and lust for conquest acted against the Christian values, laws, the Church and Pope, so claiming that this is a stain on Christianity is unacceptable. When the Church saw, what the secular rulers were doing, it came to the aid of the oppressed ones and paid a big price for it - the Holy Roman Emperor paid the Pope a "friendly visit" only a year after the Pope banned slavery of the natives...

The Crusades - contrary to what most people today think, crusades were defensive wars and saying that they happened "because of Christianiaty" is blasphemy. The crusades happened, because the Christian Middle East was invaded by Muslims. Let me remind you, that at that point in time the population of Middle East where Crusades took place was Christian and Jewish (and possibly Zoroastrian), while Muslims were only the invaders from outside. That region has been the very core of Christianity for centuries at that point with leading Christian think-tanks, cultural and religious places. Christians were defending their land and people. Unfortunately we lost. You have a flawed perspective, because today Middle East is Muslim, but that wasn't the case back then.

Hundred Year's War and other wars - people aren't perfect - all the more reason why we need to trust God instead of humans. Just because Christians sin and break the rules of their faith, doesn't invalidate or discredit these rules or imply that we should abandom them. Nobody is perfect, even the Pope has his own confessor...

 

AD. 2 - God is God and isn't bound by human rules. Also, Catholics don't take The Old Testament literarly, but in the light of the teachings of Jesus. Jewish vision of God is brutal, but Christian God is merciful and loving.



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WolfpackN64 said:
LuccaCardoso1 said:

They attributed to the same phenomenon because they were Christians. If they were from any other religion, they would attribute them to the respective god.

Perhaps, but then you have a problem of the criterion. Did people attribute it to the same God because they innatly felt it to be the same phenomena, or did they already know the phenomena and thus attributed it to the same God?

Research any religion that was once popular. Every one of them will have multiple revelations of their own. Why do you think Christian revelations only started to happen after Christianity started to spread? Why isn't there a single people that believed in polytheism that makes reference to the Christian god, or any all-powerful single god, for that matter?



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LuccaCardoso1 said:
WolfpackN64 said:

Many of the responses to the cosmological argument (which is in my eyes by far the strongest) have been pretty weak and pretty much come down to "well, you just can't claim it is so" or they deny metaphysics in their entirity. Just to show, that both sides need to really try to cover their philosophical shortfalls. And atheists are no exception

The cosmological argument is not strong at all. It's just god of the gaps. You can say that it was god, as you can say that it was a huge spaghetti monster or a cute puppy, and all of them would have the same number of evidence: zero.

It could not as easily been one of these other options because God would have a form that incorporates all qualities. A spaghettimonster or puppy is out of the question. And the cosmological argument is just that, an argument. No religious person would see God only as a deity with qualities from the cosmological argument. So a "God of the gapps" is a weak refute.