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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

I do believe in a God, even after being exposed with endless and endless anti-theist propaganda on the internet and on TV. It's not like I totally and completely refute the Big Bang Theory, but I just feel there is a being that somehow controls some of the things that happen and have happened in this world. It's what makes sense for me, and being denominated as someone with an inferior intelligence by some random person on the internet wouldn't make me care, let alone, become an atheist in the foreseeable future.



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I don't believe, because there's not a shred of evidence to back up such a belief. Well, I guess if there was evidence then it wouldn't be a question of belief anymore.
If you tell me that you have five bucks in your pocket, I can take your word for it because it's not an outlandish claim and it doesn't impact life and reality in an important way. The existence of an all-powerful creator being that nobody can see is quite another matter, I'm afraid I'm going to need something substantial to be convinced. Dragons and fairies fall into that category as well.
I'm not trying to be snarky either, this is just how I sincerely feel and view the world.



Scisca said:
Baldeagle8 said:

But isn't that what humans tend to do anyways? You see it now in American politics. You have a good amount of people on the right "worship" Trump, and on the left worship government. It seems to be a human trait to worship an ideal, in whatever form that may be. 


@Flilix - you are wrong. These are all Marxist regimes, and as we know, rejection of God is the very foundation of Marxism and Marx's materialism. It's not a by-product. It's the starting point.

You know that Germany and the USSR were on opposite sides during the Second World War, right? Stalin defeated Hitler, after all.



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LuccaCardoso1 said:
WolfpackN64 said:

Again, the ontological argument isn't perfect. But what is extremely flawed is the argument of the problem of evil.  Because for no evil to exist, free will would need to be nonexistant. It's a big element of the Christian God that he gave men free will, it's one of THE most important aspects of our religion. For him to deny the possibility of men to do evil would be to deny free will. Basically, God can create a world in which there would be no evil, yet he gave us one where the possibiliyu of evil exists, so we can live in freedom. The problem of evil is such a terrible sham argument it makes my blood boil whenever someone brings it up.

"Free will" doesn't answer the problem of evil. Evil doesn't come only from what humans choose to do. Down syndrome is an evil, I think we can all agree on that, and it has nothing to do with what humans choose to do. It's a genetic error. The same works for any genetic disease.

WolfpackN64 said: 

Intelligent design is a product of the teleological argument, but the teleological argument isn't the same as intelligent design and in many respects, the argument is much more complex.

No, the teleological argument is literally the same as intelligent design. They're synonymous.

WolfpackN64 said: 

The cosmological argument doesn't necessarily use time, but in the variant which uses time, it starts from the assumption that time has a beginning (which is in all likelihood true).

And saying "god did it" doesn't actually answer anything.

Down syndrome is an evil? I think your sense of morality on the matters of genetics are a bit twisted. These are things atheists like Stephen Fry don't get. Nature in itself, and certainly in biology are morally neutral. Morality springs forth from interaction between beings, one of which must have at least primitive reasoning or social skills. There is nothing moral about Down, or kids getting cancer. It's a tragedy, but in itself it has no overlap with the field of morality.

I've written a paper on the ontological, teleological and cosmological argument and I can assure you they're not synonymous. Intelligent design implies teleology, teleology doesn't imply intelligent design.

The cosmological argument eventually boils down to: the inference to the best explanation is that only God could have done it.



Dante9 said:
I don't believe, because there's not a shred of evidence to back up such a belief. Well, I guess if there was evidence then it wouldn't be a question of belief anymore.
If you tell me that you have five bucks in your pocket, I can take your word for it because it's not an outlandish claim and it doesn't impact life and reality in an important way. The existence of an all-powerful creator being that nobody can see is quite another matter, I'm afraid I'm going to need something substantial to be convinced. Dragons and fairies fall into that category as well.
I'm not trying to be snarky either, this is just how I sincerely feel and view the world.

Carl Sagan's "The Dragon in My Garage"



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WolfpackN64 said:
palou said:

"which is probably correct concerning our universe."

 

 

why?

Because the Big Bang would have been one massive singularity. It kickstarting the universe would also mean time begins at this point. There is no time before the big bang. Time itself in essence has a start.

No. That's a bit of a misconception. The current big bang theory does not comment on the origin of time. It assumes the existence of time at the event. 

 

The big bang is simply the limit of what we can describe; since no information preceding the event could physically be observed from our stand point. 

 

It's the beginning of the *observable universe*. We simply have 0 information (and know to have 0 information) of the universe outside of the observable universe (equivalently, in both time and space), by definition. 



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palou said:
WolfpackN64 said:

Because the Big Bang would have been one massive singularity. It kickstarting the universe would also mean time begins at this point. There is no time before the big bang. Time itself in essence has a start.

No. That's a bit of a misconception. The current big bang theory does not comment on the origin of time. It assumes the existence of time at the event. 

 

The big bang is simply the limit of what we can describe; since no information preceding the event could physically be observed from our stand point. 

 

It's the beginning of the *observable universe*. We simply have 0 information (and know to have 0 information) of the universe outside of the observable universe (equivalently, in both time and space), by definition. 

It's not a misconception, It's a very plausable hypothesis even pushed by the late Stephen Hawking himself.



WolfpackN64 said:
LuccaCardoso1 said:

"Free will" doesn't answer the problem of evil. Evil doesn't come only from what humans choose to do. Down syndrome is an evil, I think we can all agree on that, and it has nothing to do with what humans choose to do. It's a genetic error. The same works for any genetic disease.

No, the teleological argument is literally the same as intelligent design. They're synonymous.

And saying "god did it" doesn't actually answer anything.

Down syndrome is an evil? I think your sense of morality on the matters of genetics are a bit twisted. These are things atheists like Stephen Fry don't get. Nature in itself, and certainly in biology are morally neutral. Morality springs forth from interaction between beings, one of which must have at least primitive reasoning or social skills. There is nothing moral about Down, or kids getting cancer. It's a tragedy, but in itself it has no overlap with the field of morality.

I've written a paper on the ontological, teleological and cosmological argument and I can assure you they're not synonymous. Intelligent design implies teleology, teleology doesn't imply intelligent design.

The cosmological argument eventually boils down to: the inference to the best explanation is that only God could have done it.

Out of curiosity, how do you view natural disasters then? I mean an all-loving god shouldn't allow people to be killed by random natural disasters that have nothing to do with maintaining their free will right? One could easily imagine a world where people are allowed to be evil but there aren't earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. Or what about disease, why is that necessary for there to be free will?



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WolfpackN64 said:
LuccaCardoso1 said:

"Free will" doesn't answer the problem of evil. Evil doesn't come only from what humans choose to do. Down syndrome is an evil, I think we can all agree on that, and it has nothing to do with what humans choose to do. It's a genetic error. The same works for any genetic disease.

No, the teleological argument is literally the same as intelligent design. They're synonymous.

And saying "god did it" doesn't actually answer anything.

Down syndrome is an evil? I think your sense of morality on the matters of genetics are a bit twisted. These are things atheists like Stephen Fry don't get. Nature in itself, and certainly in biology are morally neutral. Morality springs forth from interaction between beings, one of which must have at least primitive reasoning or social skills. There is nothing moral about Down, or kids getting cancer. It's a tragedy, but in itself it has no overlap with the field of morality.

Down syndrome is not an evil to nature, but it's an evil to humans. We, as humans, find that disabling someone from birth is immoral. And since you believe that our morality comes from God, God would also think that Down syndrome is an evil. Then why would he let people have down syndrome?

WolfpackN64 said: 

I've written a paper on the ontological, teleological and cosmological argument and I can assure you they're not synonymous. Intelligent design implies teleology, teleology doesn't imply intelligent design.

Teleology is one thing, the teleological argument is another. Teleology is not necessarily tied to evolution, but the teleological argument is intelligent design.

WolfpackN64 said: 

The cosmological argument eventually boils down to: the inference to the best explanation is that only God could have done it.

But then again, saying that God did it doesn't actually answer anything. We still don't know how he did it, what he used to do it, nothing. You're just saying that God did it because humans are afraid of not having an answer.



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Yes as a Christian I do believe in God. There are enough personal experiences I have witnessed in my life which proof to me that God exists.

In my opinion everyone should feel free to believe in that what he wants.