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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
LuccaCardoso1 said:
Egann said:

Yes.

If you've studied philosophy, you're probably aware that when you remove God from the equation epistemology and morality break down. A lot of people disregard this because they think they can know things and be personally moral without God, but the shared social framework holding criminal justice and academic discipline breaks down. This is exactly why Postmodernism is a thing and why it came about shortly after Godel's theorems of incompleteness proved mathematics itself was unprovable within its own assumptions.

EDIT: I suspect this lack of shared social framework is also part of the reason the Left has become far more vocal and shrill as of late. It doesn't have any actual moral high ground, so the major way they pressure people is via the bandwagon argument. 99% of scientists, etc. When that illusion starts to break down the only path forward is to abuse people into submission.

If you dislike religion because it tends towards orthodoxy, take note; academia and the agnostic left are going down the same path because orthodoxy is a result of the human condition and not a problem unique to organized religion.

Oh, morality can only come from a god? That's not true at all. Take some things into consideration:

1. Morality is not exclusive to humans. Read this article. Other primates were shown to also have a sense of morality, and we don't see them reading the bible or praying, do we? Primates have morality because it helps to reproduce and move on your genes when you don't go around killing everyone from your group. Sharing food makes it more probable that more members of your group will survive, trying to save a member of your group (and saving it) will make it more likely that you can pass on your genes. Moral genes were passed on because it helps the species survive.

2. Morality is subjective. If morality really did come from a god, everyone would have the same morality, right? So how do you explain slavery being a moral thing until a few centuries ago? How do you explain possession of women being moral until a few decades ago (and still being moral in some cultures)?

Agree.  You don't have to believe in God to know that stealing, murdering or lying is wrong.  This is common sense.



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WolfpackN64 said:
setsunatenshi said:

1. i started by saying this argument has false premises which I have clearly demonstrated.

2. the fact you accepted time and the universe to have begun at the same time (which is intellectually honest of you) absolutely disproves the premise of the universe having a cause. 

3. I'm not under any delusions that now you'll find yourself an atheist and negating your faith and beliefs because at the end of the day that's what they are. you believe those things because you were conditioned since you were a child, you hold on to those beliefs as a victim of your own sociological context and the beliefs of those around you. 

4. More importantly to one of my first points, there's nothing in this argument that points to the specific deity you defend. It uses a special pleading argument that for some reason makes you ignore the impossibility of a cause to the universe but you're happy to ignore a cause to your deity. 

5. The usual leap in logic that occurs after the premises i stated is "therefore god caused the universe". I didn't state it on purpose to see if you would do it. But doing so would necessitate somehow we all agreeing that your deity didn't "begin to exist" which is a laughable special pleading :)

1. I disagreed and shown why clearly enough.

2. Also shown why that isn't necessarily true

3. I have to dissapoint you, I'm a reborn Catholic

4. Necessary beings have no cause, that's the whole stick of the argument

5. If God didn't exist, he couldn't come into existence, since a necessary being that is a first cause is always prior to existence. Since God is prior to the universe and time, he is in the only position to be the first cause.

1. You may disagree, but it's still true for both cases. You may cover your ears and ignore it, but that's your prerogative. I showed why both premises are false and even if you want to question the first one, the sheer fact that you conceded time existing only as the universe exists, it clearly shows the universe has no cause. It's really not something you can argue, sorry.

2. No, you haven't. Why would you think that was the case? A cause requires time preceding the event. Please show me a causality without a unit of time before? It's both logically and scientifically impossible. If you can't grasp that concept then I'm sorry for that but it's you, not me.

3. I won't even get into how exactly you thought you could jump from a universe with a cause to believing there's a guy in Rome that is infallible, yet changes his mind all the time. You're still that because you've been persuaded by others (hence the victim of your sociological context). Pretty sure if you were born in Japan 1000 years ago you wouldn't reach the logical conclusion Catholicism was the right religion lol

4. You can't dictate necessity, you must demonstrate it. Only the universe is necessary in this argument (as it is has no cause and marks the beginning of time), nothing else. You don't cause that which needs no cause ;)

5. Assertion with no evidence. You're trying to define some deity into existence, not show evidence of it's existence. That argument will only convince an already believer. If you have no problem believing X (whatever god you believe) has no cause, why would you struggle to believe the universe has no cause? At least the universe we all know exists, your god is only inside your imagination as far as I'm concerned.



JWeinCom said:
WolfpackN64 said:

1. I disagreed and shown why clearly enough.

2. Also shown why that isn't necessarily true

3. I have to dissapoint you, I'm a reborn Catholic

4. Necessary beings have no cause, that's the whole stick of the argument

5. If God didn't exist, he couldn't come into existence, since a necessary being that is a first cause is always prior to existence. Since God is prior to the universe and time, he is in the only position to be the first cause.

Yeah... that's special pleading.  You can't say everything needs to have a cause, and then create a class of things that don't.  You'd also have to justify that something can exist outside the universe and time, and I'm not sure how that can be done, or if it is even a sensical statement.  The only experience of existence we have is temporal and spatial.  I don't know what existing absent of time and space means.

JWeinCom said:

I would disagree that the reasons you've provided so far are good reasons.  They at best point to a deistic god, but the premises of each are flawed.  I've yet to hear a solid reason to justify belief.  

I'd also quibble about the definition of knowledge.  Most of the time I see that definition it includes the word "justified".  I can have a belief that is true, but that may not be justified.  For example, I can say I know that your favorite color is blue, because my psychic powers told me.  Your favorite color may actually be blue, but it really wouldn't be accurate to call it knowledge, because I have no way to justify it as of now.  Justified true belief also has some issues as a definition for knowledge, but it is stronger.

I'm probably not grounded in philosophy well enough to really debate this.  To my knowledge there is no universally accepted definition of knowledge, as they are all flawed.  But I would argue that to claim one knows something would require justification of some sort.

Back to the example I gave, let's hypothetically say your favorite color is blue.  Did I know that when I originally said it?

Depends, if you truly would posses psychic powers that are always spot on then you have a reliable process of gaining knowledge. If you merely guessed it and claimed it was because you have psychic powers, then you did not have a reliable process and you gained a true belief based on luck. A true believe alone is not enough for knowledge however.



Qwark said:
No, I don't believe in any higher supernatural power or a god. Religions and mythologies are man made creations. Often their stories are inspiring, but rarely they are fully true or in many cases nog possible.

Pretty much this.  



WolfpackN64 said:
JWeinCom said:

Yeah... that's special pleading.  You can't say everything needs to have a cause, and then create a class of things that don't.  You'd also have to justify that something can exist outside the universe and time, and I'm not sure how that can be done, or if it is even a sensical statement.  The only experience of existence we have is temporal and spatial.  I don't know what existing absent of time and space means.

I'm probably not grounded in philosophy well enough to really debate this.  To my knowledge there is no universally accepted definition of knowledge, as they are all flawed.  But I would argue that to claim one knows something would require justification of some sort.

Back to the example I gave, let's hypothetically say your favorite color is blue.  Did I know that when I originally said it?

Depends, if you truly would posses psychic powers that are always spot on then you have a reliable process of gaining knowledge. If you merely guessed it and claimed it was because you have psychic powers, then you did not have a reliable process and you gained a true belief based on luck. A true believe alone is not enough for knowledge however.

Then, I'm not sure of the distinction you were making before.  It seems that you are saying that I do need some sort of justification.



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setsunatenshi said:
WolfpackN64 said:

1. I disagreed and shown why clearly enough.

2. Also shown why that isn't necessarily true

3. I have to dissapoint you, I'm a reborn Catholic

4. Necessary beings have no cause, that's the whole stick of the argument

5. If God didn't exist, he couldn't come into existence, since a necessary being that is a first cause is always prior to existence. Since God is prior to the universe and time, he is in the only position to be the first cause.

1. You may disagree, but it's still true for both cases. You may cover your ears and ignore it, but that's your prerogative. I showed why both premises are false and even if you want to question the first one, the sheer fact that you conceded time existing only as the universe exists, it clearly shows the universe has no cause. It's really not something you can argue, sorry.

2. No, you haven't. Why would you think that was the case? A cause requires time preceding the event. Please show me a causality without a unit of time before? It's both logically and scientifically impossible. If you can't grasp that concept then I'm sorry for that but it's you, not me.

3. I won't even get into how exactly you thought you could jump from a universe with a cause to believing there's a guy in Rome that is infallible, yet changes his mind all the time. You're still that because you've been persuaded by others (hence the victim of your sociological context). Pretty sure if you were born in Japan 1000 years ago you wouldn't reach the logical conclusion Catholicism was the right religion lol

4. You can't dictate necessity, you must demonstrate it. Only the universe is necessary in this argument (as it is has no cause and marks the beginning of time), nothing else. You don't cause that which needs no cause ;)

5. Assertion with no evidence. You're trying to define some deity into existence, not show evidence of it's existence. That argument will only convince an already believer. If you have no problem believing X (whatever god you believe) has no cause, why would you struggle to believe the universe has no cause? At least the universe we all know exists, your god is only inside your imagination as far as I'm concerned.

1&2. Brute-forcing the argument won't win you anything.

3. Maybe not, but does that matter? Circumstances vary for all of us.

4. Again, you can't just claim that

5. Did I ever assert this argument was deductive?



Yes (Catholic).
Why? It's been great to know Him! :)



Scisca said:
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.

You're right. When the topic is enlightenment and science, they say they're all because of the modern era, but when the topic is slaves, then it was the Christians.

The era where the discoveries and slavery started was exactly the era where Christianity was falling as source of power. European rulers were turning their backs to the high clergy.

It wasn't the Christian Theology or the saints teachings that validated the idea that African people were inferior. It was science with their nasty race theories.

As a matter of fact, it was the Church who ended the slavery back in the ancient era of the Roman Empire. It was the modern era "let's free ourselves from the Church power"-guys that brought it back.



God bless You.

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When PS4 will hit 100m consoles sold: Before Christmas 2019

There were three ravens sat on a tree / They were as blacke as they might be / The one of them said to his mate, Where shall we our breakfast take?


WolfpackN64 said:
setsunatenshi said:

1. You may disagree, but it's still true for both cases. You may cover your ears and ignore it, but that's your prerogative. I showed why both premises are false and even if you want to question the first one, the sheer fact that you conceded time existing only as the universe exists, it clearly shows the universe has no cause. It's really not something you can argue, sorry.

2. No, you haven't. Why would you think that was the case? A cause requires time preceding the event. Please show me a causality without a unit of time before? It's both logically and scientifically impossible. If you can't grasp that concept then I'm sorry for that but it's you, not me.

3. I won't even get into how exactly you thought you could jump from a universe with a cause to believing there's a guy in Rome that is infallible, yet changes his mind all the time. You're still that because you've been persuaded by others (hence the victim of your sociological context). Pretty sure if you were born in Japan 1000 years ago you wouldn't reach the logical conclusion Catholicism was the right religion lol

4. You can't dictate necessity, you must demonstrate it. Only the universe is necessary in this argument (as it is has no cause and marks the beginning of time), nothing else. You don't cause that which needs no cause ;)

5. Assertion with no evidence. You're trying to define some deity into existence, not show evidence of it's existence. That argument will only convince an already believer. If you have no problem believing X (whatever god you believe) has no cause, why would you struggle to believe the universe has no cause? At least the universe we all know exists, your god is only inside your imagination as far as I'm concerned.

1&2. Brute-forcing the argument won't win you anything.

3. Maybe not, but does that matter? Circumstances vary for all of us.

4. Again, you can't just claim that

5. Did I ever assert this argument was deductive?

1,2- argument is valid for anyone else to see. i won't force you to accept it but i saw no refutation

 

3- it maters in the sence you came to that conclusion based on societal pressure, not out of logic necessity and good arguments. and i'm sure you're as sure of your god as the peasants in old japan were of the 1000000 gods they held true. but i'm sure only yours is the right one :)

 

4- i showed logical necessity. a cause requires time. without time there is no cause. don't just cover your ears and ignore it. take that and actually ponder the consequences of that statement. 

 

5- you're doing special pleading for an imaginary entity, pure and simple



0D0 said:
Scisca said:

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.

You're right. When the topic is enlightenment and science, they say they're all because of the modern era, but when the topic is slaves, then it was the Christians.

The era where the discoveries and slavery started was exactly the era where Christianity was falling as source of power. European rulers were turning their backs to the high clergy.

It wasn't the Christian Theology or the saints teachings that validated the idea that African people were inferior. It was science with their nasty race theories.

As a matter of fact, it was the Church who ended the slavery back in the ancient era of the Roman Empire. It was the modern era "let's free ourselves from the Church power"-guys that brought it back.

the Bible specifically allows slavery and instructs to take slaves from the heathens around you.  Christian theology does support slavery.  That doesn't mean all christians do, but if they oppose it it is not because of the teachings of the Bible.