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Forums - General - There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life

Wookaroo on 08 April 2009

I dislike the ad, but that's because it conflicts with my own personal beliefs. People have the right to say whatever they want though as long as they don't get aggressive or say things that are completely false and slanderous. ...Oh wait...that happens every day. My bad.

Actually, there's something else I dislike about that ad. "Stop worrying and enjoy your life"? What the heck? Just because you believe in a higher power doesn't mean you can't have just as much fun as anyone else. That's degrading. If people are always worrying about their faith or sins or whatever, then perhaps they should seek some sort of counsel or somethin'. I don't think anyone should live life like that no matter what they believe in.


@lolita

I'm sure people will eventually find 'logical explanations' for just about everything miraculous. I enjoy looking at all of the possible scientific causes of these 'miracles'. It's fun using science to theorize the great mysterious of our past and present. Just because I have faith in things that are seemingly illogical doesn't mean I'm not capable/willing to analyze the science behind the so called 'fallacies'.


I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to get out there in your last paragraph. I mean, I don't feel 'special' for believing things that others don't. I'm the same walking meatbag (HK47 reference) as everyone else, atheists, believers, whatever.

I have a feeling a lot of people bashing religion in this thread have had religion attempted to be forced down their throats or something which is totally wrong, imo. It just seems like a lot of the complaints are about overzealous religious folk trying to convert atheists. That and churches pulling in major $$$ which is true to an extent, but you can't lump us all into that category! :(

Anyway, lots of good points on both sides here. It's awesome to have such a diverse community to argue with until your fingers fall off and the thread eventually dies until a new one pops up and it hits half a billion posts and on and on.



Person 1: Does Valkyria Chronicles have trophies?
Person 2:  No.
Person 1: Forget it. I'm not buying it.
Person 2: Wait! It's amazing! Unique, charming, drop dead gorgeous... Hello?

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thanny on 08 April 2009
Rath said:
thanny said:

I can definately see where you are coming from here, a church i know in my area basiccaly fell apart because they spent all their money ona  fancy new building.

Not all churches are like that, the church i go to has recently moved to a "torn down" suburb because we really believe that that area needs some help. We also run a non-profit shop to help the poorer people living there, and the effect has been unbelievable, we have so many greatful people.

Im just curious, and this question is at the atheists.... What do you say to people who have seen a 'supernatural' healing/miracle take place through prayer?

 

I say that anecdotal evidence proves nothing. Give me a scientific study of healing through prayer and I'll be more impressed.

 

Thats not what i asked though. I asked what you would tell a christian who has seen something that is definately not possible logically. Theres no point trying to convince them that they are wrong by saying "I dont have proof that it happened" when the person knows that it happened. Im not asking why dontn you believe it, im asking how you would 'prove us wrong'

 



 

 

 

 

 

Check out my pyro tf2 vid :)

 

Bet With routsounmanman: By the end of Q1 2008 Capcom WONT have announced a RE5 Wii Edition OR a new RE (classic gameplay) for the Wii (WON)

 

Rath on 08 April 2009
thanny said:
Rath said:
thanny said:

I can definately see where you are coming from here, a church i know in my area basiccaly fell apart because they spent all their money ona  fancy new building.

Not all churches are like that, the church i go to has recently moved to a "torn down" suburb because we really believe that that area needs some help. We also run a non-profit shop to help the poorer people living there, and the effect has been unbelievable, we have so many greatful people.

Im just curious, and this question is at the atheists.... What do you say to people who have seen a 'supernatural' healing/miracle take place through prayer?

 

I say that anecdotal evidence proves nothing. Give me a scientific study of healing through prayer and I'll be more impressed.

 

Thats not what i asked though. I asked what you would tell a christian who has seen something that is definately not possible logically. Theres no point trying to convince them that they are wrong by saying "I dont have proof that it happened" when the person knows that it happened. Im not asking why dontn you believe it, im asking how you would 'prove us wrong'

 

 

I couldn't prove you wrong, its actually extremely difficult to prove anecdotal evidence wrong, even if it is.



thanny on 08 April 2009
Rath said:
thanny said:
Rath said:
thanny said:

I can definately see where you are coming from here, a church i know in my area basiccaly fell apart because they spent all their money ona  fancy new building.

Not all churches are like that, the church i go to has recently moved to a "torn down" suburb because we really believe that that area needs some help. We also run a non-profit shop to help the poorer people living there, and the effect has been unbelievable, we have so many greatful people.

Im just curious, and this question is at the atheists.... What do you say to people who have seen a 'supernatural' healing/miracle take place through prayer?

 

I say that anecdotal evidence proves nothing. Give me a scientific study of healing through prayer and I'll be more impressed.

 

Thats not what i asked though. I asked what you would tell a christian who has seen something that is definately not possible logically. Theres no point trying to convince them that they are wrong by saying "I dont have proof that it happened" when the person knows that it happened. Im not asking why dontn you believe it, im asking how you would 'prove us wrong'

 

 

I couldn't prove you wrong, its actually extremely difficult to prove anecdotal evidence wrong, even if it is.

thats entirely true but wasnt exactly what i was getting at

i was getting at the approach from some atheists - and i have no idea if you have this or not (not attacking you)- that when you tell them what you saw happen, a mircale or whatever it may be, they try and tell you that it didnt happen as you saw it, or you were just seeing it wrong, when if a person is sure of what they saw then it is a stupid arguement to make

 



 

 

 

 

 

Check out my pyro tf2 vid :)

 

Bet With routsounmanman: By the end of Q1 2008 Capcom WONT have announced a RE5 Wii Edition OR a new RE (classic gameplay) for the Wii (WON)

 

WessleWoggle on 08 April 2009
mrstickball said:
The lottery is a predictable event. Someone will always win, and at specific times.

This was a totally different type of indecent - the man had no knowledge of where his daughter was, and was told to call a place in China (the man lived in the US), at a very specific restaurant, and ask for his daughter.

Not only do you have the odds of calling a specific restaurant - 1 in 1,000,000, but the odds of his daughter being at this specific restaurant, at this specific time. Do you know how much higher those odds are?

It's about as likely as you giving the coordinates to an astronomer to look for 10th planet thousands of AU away, describing the atmospheric composition, and being 100% correct on all accounts. Big difference between that and winning the lotto.

 

 

You seem to think getting lucky is reason enough to believe in god. If something like that happened to me I would just think I was very lucky, and be happy, and be thankful to where I ended up on the chain of cause and effect.

You should take things for what they are, not assume that they came from a god just because you presupposed that belief. God is not needed for something like that to happen. It can happen by coincidence, or, if you think there just MUST be a force that guided you, why not try to wrap your mind around some other concepts(collective unconciousness, karma, source) instead of just assuming the concept of your religion is the correct one.



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WessleWoggle on 08 April 2009
mrstickball said:
deathgod33 said:

how do we know if Christianity is the correct religon and not Islam or anything else?

You could always pray and tell God to his face that if He's real, he needs to show you somehow, in some way.

Works for a lot of people that are now Christians. You don't have to believe in a God based on faith alone. If He's real, and really wants to be in your life, than He will show you He's for real. I've tested him countless times in 23 years, and God's always proven himself to be real to me.

 

I tested him countless times when I was 13, before realizing that if you pray all the time, eventually a lot of the coincidences you perceive to be gifts from god, are just that, coincidences, and god has nothing to do with it.

Go try praying to a milk jug, and goldem ram idol, satan, or a pencil. Same results.

If you prayed to a pencil all your life, eventually it might answer a lot of prayers, and give you very good reason to believe in it's power.

Let me tell you something about the golden ram idol I have, it's freaky, one night I was making a youtube video when my internet was down, the video was about prayer. I prayed to the christian god and nothing happened, then I prayed to my golden ram idol in the name of satan and the internet started working full speed.

 Proof for the power of satan or idol worship, or just a coincidence? Proof that satan is trying to trick me?



WessleWoggle on 08 April 2009
thanny said:
Rath said:
thanny said:
Rath said:
thanny said

 

 

thats entirely true but wasnt exactly what i was getting at

i was getting at the approach from some atheists - and i have no idea if you have this or not (not attacking you)- that when you tell them what you saw happen, a mircale or whatever it may be, they try and tell you that it didnt happen as you saw it, or you were just seeing it wrong, when if a person is sure of what they saw then it is a stupid arguement to make

 

 

 

When someone tells me about a miracle, I say:

Even if the miracle did happen, how do you know it was from your God specifically and not from some other force or god? How do you know it was not highly abnormal natural phenomena that just made what happened look impossible when it actually wasn't?

 



WessleWoggle on 08 April 2009
deathgod33 said:
mrstickball said:
deathgod33 said:

how do we know if Christianity is the correct religon and not Islam or anything else?

You could always pray and tell God to his face that if He's real, he needs to show you somehow, in some way.

Works for a lot of people that are now Christians. You don't have to believe in a God based on faith alone. If He's real, and really wants to be in your life, than He will show you He's for real. I've tested him countless times in 23 years, and God's always proven himself to be real to me.

 

I believe in God too.

 Personally, i think that people turn to atheism not because of science but just because they want to use it as a reason for being able to do whatever they want.

 

 

 First of all, few turn to atheism because of science, and few turn to atheism because of immorality.

People turn to atheism because too many people are deluded into thinking they know god, when what they call god is really just their own thoughts on the subject. Things like "God hates fags", people who say that are obviously not in touch with god, or are in touch with god and just assume god agrees with them for no apparent reason.

Most people turn to atheism because they see no proof for god. Like me as a little kid, 5 years old before I knew anything about science, I saw no proof for god so I didn't believe in god. It was that simple.

I did not "turn to" atheism. I've been atheist since birth. Besides, being an atheist didn't make me a bad person, I used to believe in the concept of karma when I was a little kid, so that made me stay in the green.

Now that I've grown up though, I'm no longer an atheist(i'm agnostic). I don't need the unproven concept of Karma or God to be a good person, I'm just a good person because I have empathy, if I cause harm I feel bad. Also, if I were to do something bad to someone, if the same thing happened to me, I would think "I deserve this". I would never want to think I deserved something horrible if it happened to me.



thanny on 08 April 2009
mrstickball said:
The_vagabond7 said:

The same works for alot of muslims too. Plus that thinking again would lead to...shoot what's that called, some term that refers to the idea that god fore-ordains who goes to heaven and hell before they are even born, was made up by the calvinists I think. But it goes down that same road, why doesn't go reveal himself to everyone? If he really wants you to be in his life he'll reveal himself to you. Does that mean god already decided he doesn't want me in his life? I spent the first twenty three years of my life studying religious faiths. I prayed for truth and found atheism, what does that say about god? Everyone already knows what it's like to be an atheist, because you are all atheists towards some religion. Christians can look at muslims and say "Wow, they are way off base. Their scriptures are flawed, their life style is crazy, and they have nothing to base their beliefs on other than they 'feel allah' in their lives. They just don't get it". Which is how atheists see religious people. But most religious people never turn that sort of thinking in on themselves. They just "know", but they all "just know" even if they all contradict each other. That being said, I agree with most of the religious people in here. I think the "New atheist" movement is rapidly moving towards a new fundamentalism. If you go down the check list they essentially have the same attitude as all the other fundamentalist religions. Claims of moral superiority:Check. Lack of Pluralism:Check Us versus them mentality: Check Broad sweeping generalizations about specific groups:Check Feeling that the world would be better off if it consisted entirely of ones own group: Check So hi to the new boss, same as the old boss. Religion isn't the problem, ignorance, xenophobia, pride, hate, the lust for power, these are the problems of mankind. And they would exist with or without the belief of an invisible man. Atrocities have been committed in the name of god, they have been committed in the name of man, and they have been committed for no reason at all. At the end of the day people will find ways to justify their fears, and their greed and they don't need a religion to do it.

Spacing helps, FYI.

Your referring to predestination. Yes, 5-point Calvinists believe in that, but the Muslim faith believed it much earlier in history than when the Calvinist movement started....Calvinism has been around for under 300 years, while Islam has been around for over 1,300.

As for the question of God revealing himself to everyone: We (Christians, at least) believe that God revealed himself to us through Jesus Christ. Of course, he got murdered for claiming that, and there are many people out there that love disproving that Jesus didn't even exist, despite the evidence to the contrary. Christians believe that the source of the issue of why God doesn't magically come out of the clouds has to do with our rejection of God, and the fact that God is bound by laws that we've rejected, and thrown in his face.

Otherwise, I agree with a lot of your later statements. Man is intrinsicly evil, and uses whatever he can for his own gain. The difference is that Christians, at least, seek to curb that evil and make the person better, by following the example of Christ - the perfect man. Few can argue that if everyone had the morality and value system of the NT Christ, the world would be a worse place.

just adding to this.... God is all about people loving him and worshipping out of their own free will (except from a Calvanist perspective). If God just revealed himself clearly and openly to every person in the world including those who didnt ask, everyone would have no choice but to worship him and accept that he is real. This eliminates the 'free will' part of it...

 

and @ Wessle, if you pray to God and ask him to reveal himself to you, you have to do it with an open mind, because if something does actually happen and you just pass it off as coincidence or whatever then that kinda defeats the purpose of asking for proof in the first place.

 



 

 

 

 

 

Check out my pyro tf2 vid :)

 

Bet With routsounmanman: By the end of Q1 2008 Capcom WONT have announced a RE5 Wii Edition OR a new RE (classic gameplay) for the Wii (WON)

 

WessleWoggle on 08 April 2009
mrstickball said:
Wessle - not really..

Satanism says there is no afterlife at all. So that one is irrelevant to the conversation.

From the Al Jilwah(black book of satan):

"None shall live in this world longer than the time set by me; and if I so desire, I send a person a second or third time into this world or into some other by the transmigration of souls."

"All my teachings are easily applicable to all times and all conditions. I punish in another world all who do contrary to my will."

"But those who keep my secrets shall receive the fulfillment of my promises. Those who suffer for my sake I will surely reward in one of the worlds."

In theistic (not LaVeyan) satanism there's reincarnation on this earth and others, and different spiritual planes that we can go to when we die.