Re: Re: Re: Prove to me God doesn't exist Ah, yes. The free will argument. Let me put it this way, God's a dick if he lets people suffer and starve to death when he could easily give them food and water, like he supposedly did in Exodus to his people and when Jesus held his sermon on the mound. If you say God can't interfere with us because of Free Will then you must also committ logically that God can not interfere in any other situation. He can not heal the sick as stated in the Bible, or how people talk about today. He can do nothing. And since he does that according to the Bible the Free Will Argument falls flat on its face. As a side not, I've got no problem with you believing in God if you want. It's your life. I just enjoy intellectual debates sometimes, and since your post didn't sound anything like a troll I responded. =)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Prove to me God doesn't exist Yeah he's such a humanist he came close to wiping out humanity if you believe His PR material. What a wacky prankster He is. Get rid of the Judaic underpinnings and a lot of what Jesus is reported to have said sounds humanistic (of course, what Jesus really did and did not say is almost unknowable due to the inaacuracy and spinning of our primary sources for His story). Too bad that arch-theist Saul had to go and mess with The Message.
Just to add some things from a different background. (A physics major at a public university who went to a private Christian high school) I don't know about the biology end of things, but the big bang (physics) is not very scientific and is mostly guess work. They do not have as good an idea of what went on then as they do of even the newest research (neutrino mass, some solid state things, etc.). I've been told by a professor that it does not truly belong in the things that we are studying.
So were Nietzsche's, Voltaire's, Jefferson's, Jung's, the surrealists, the Dadaists, etc., etc., etc. Anyway, it is hardly surprising the folks in your list resonded to the overwhelmingly dominant religion of their society. Guess what, everything Nagarjuna, the Ajanta cave painters, Wonhyo, the author of Journey To The West, the author of the Tale of the Genji ever did and thousands of Asian art masterpieces were a direct response to Buddhist principles, not Christian ones. Should this amaze anyone? Not really when you think about it.
I laugh at the idea, that we live on average of 70 years on Earth and then we are judged on our life in a possibility of living life in Heaven for Eternity. LOL, let's face it, a human is an organism that shits and breathes, reproduces etc.....a bit like Bacteria. When we die (IMO) that's it, just skeleton, then in a milion years we'll become oil, and that's if the Earth hasn't blown up by then. Maybe my idea is based in the society I was brought up in, the UK isn't really a religious country.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Prove to me God doesn't exist Jesus changed everything. God got a lot less angry after he had a kid. He can do whatever he wants, and since Christ's birth we can too. That is, until death...then our asses are either living it up forever or REALLY SUFFERING forever. What seems like a whole bunch of suffering to us is a drop in the ocean compared to eternal life in heaven, or hell. In other words, it's worth it. We've really gotten away from from orginal intent...but isn't that human nature? It's really not worth debating, however, because Christians minds are as usually even more closed than secular minds. It would be like trying to convince me that there isn't someone who pisses in Joe's Corn Flakes each and every morning. There is no debate, to Christians it's an absolute. That's the only way it can be possible. You don't get into heaven with doubt.
What's worth it? The suffering? So people who don't suffer have a harder time getting to heaven? Huh? Sorry, I don't follow your post really. Maybe it's because I'm groggy from a cold but I really don't understand what your post had to do with mine.
Whatever experiences you encounter on earth, good or bad, is worth a lifetime in heaven. It's not a matter of God being a dick or not, our human lives are dictated by our decisions and the decisions of other humans...past and present. It's what I believe, and I guarantee it sounds silly to non-believers...just like the belief that the USA would be a blown call away from possibly advancing to the World Cup semifinals.
What? I'm from Irish descent you piece of shit. My parents are both Irish. There isn't any Irish coming over here and kicking our arses in the UK you dumb shit.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Prove to me God doesn't exist great. let's cut out the middle man and keep the costs down. we can be humanists without god, and at the very least it will be one less justification for wholesale murder. i find it amuzing (in a disturbing kind of way) that those who so profess their faith in god (osama, bush, rumsfeld...) are the first ones to lash out when provoked. the thousands of innocent afghanis murdered in response to the thousands of innocent americans, were slaughtered to the tune of "god bless america". somehow the principles of humanism were lost on those who deployed the troops. or is "kill'em all and let god sort them out" a humanist idea? humanism has a better chance of prevailing if it is arrived at through argument, then simply stated as "god spoken". the funny thing about people who passively accept truths, is that they seem to readily respond to anyone in uniform.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Prove to me God doesn't exist I've always considered this a completely bankrupt argument. First of all, everyone from Muslims to Mormons can say the same thing, with as much validity. If Christianity can't be disproved, neither can any other religion. Secondly, if the basis of Christianity is the threat of hellfire, then what was the point of all that yammering in the Gospels about loving thy neighbor and turning the other cheek? Thirdly, is religion really so intellectually and philosophically empty, that it can't offer any better justification for civilized behavior than a glorified ghost story? Heaven and hell are basic - insultingly basic - carrot and stick, good cop-bad cop routines. It deserves no more adulation on a spiritual level than any other naked threat. Fourthly - if the Almighty God really has no better idea for his creation than to torment them for all eternity, then he doesn't deserve worshipers. He becomes a boy kicking an anthill - and we become ants pretending that only the bad ones were killed, and good citizens obedient to the queen are spared. Fifth, of course, "Ha ha, you're going to hell" is hardly a sign of divine enlightenment. Sixth, since by far the vast majority of believers simply adopt the faith of their parents or their community, hell really becomes an accident of birth. Seventh, the very idea of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity precludes the idea of Satan. That an infinitely complex and mysterious universe should provide a cartoon villain simply for dramatic tension is possible, but highly - well, dumb. And so on and so forth. I suppose it's theoretically possible that the Creator is a stupid, blinkered bully, but unless the message of Christianity is simply "might makes right," that's still no reason to worship such a monster. If I was God, no one would doubt it - Too Much Joy
Yes, but my point was that humanism is not the alternative to judeo-christianity. Sure they may hate each other, but they're kissing cousins.
Jeez, what a sensitive rascal you are. Lighten up Francis. It's okay that jolly old England no longer rules the world. (Kicking your asses. As by a nice economy by the Irish in recent years.)
I was saying he's a dick if he's all powerful, able to interfere -which he can, according to the Bible- and he lets people suffer that badly and starve to death.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Prove to me God doesn't exist To be honest, Loney, I really have appreciated your posts in the past. This is really bush league of you. You take arguments, many of which many people who call themselves Christians don't even support, and then attack them. I don't know anyone who goes to my Methodist church who would say that the "basis of Christianity is hellfire". I know you've read the Bible in college. The new testament is not particularly obsessed with hell. Judaism isn't particularly concerned with it either. You read a religion like a simpleton, then I guess you get a simpleton's simplistic answer.
And by the by, while I would label myself as a christian with a small c, I probably should say that I don't really support stogey's arguments at all. As the guy who played Woody Allen's father said, "How do I know why there were Nazi's, I don't even know how the toaster works." As Loney said, this is a complicated universe. No method of thought, or religion, is complete. I'm certainly not going to base everything on a heaven or hell bargain. I find the character, Jesus, to be a pretty compelling character. I find the study of what lead to the creation of this character to be compelling, and worth study. There is lots more as well. I just don't think this forum provides a good enough opportunity.
Stogey Avoided it Spejic's question is still unanswered, Stogey - just what is this thing that we are supposed to disprove? I'd appreciate something more than just "the omniscient guy who created us". It must be something concrete and detailed enough to either prove or disprove.
For you Christians out there, if you idea of religion is correct, then why isn't the majority of the earth Christian?
Not enough room in heaven. I've got it on good authority that hell is about 25-30 times bigger than heaven due to an engineering oversight, hence they have to play around with the numbers a bit.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Prove to me God doesn't exist Actually, this is fair. I did not quote the person who said that because he believed in the Bible, he believed in hell - but because he believed God was merciful, that hell was empty. So in the interests of fairness, I should have pointed that out. But, many people who call themselves Christians wholeheartedly support the arguments I addressed. Okay, but - and I don't mean this really as a personal attack on Stogey, but he was the one who brought up hell, and the horrible things that will happen if you choose the wrong frosting on the donut. Well, okay, it's pretty sleazy of me to trash someone's dearly held beliefs and then say, "Nothing personal." But there are sects who build their faith around nothing more than the simple contractual deal between and among Jesus, Satan and the human race, and the resultant obligation of humanity to conform to the contract on Jesus' terms or default to Satan's final decision. And yes, there's a reason I phrased that in such callously legalistic language. "In college." I read it again this past week. The respect you people have for me is awesome. I know. Nor is the Bible particularly concerned with abortion, or homosexuality. That hasn't prevented some Christians from reading a whole lot into what they choose to parse through. Okay, so I reread my post, and I see how a honestly faithful person, as opposed to the mindless fundamentalist we see so often, would see how I'm misinterpreting their faith. I am not, however, misinterpreting fundamentalism. I would say that it is fundamentalists who read religion like a simpleton. I just take the arguments and run with them. Now, I do hold beliefs that probably no practicing Christian could even pretend to tolerate. I think I lose everyone but the Unitarians right out of the gate, since I disbelieve the divinity of Jesus and the story of the Resurrection. While I realize that hell isn't the centerpiece of many Christian denominations, the carrot of eternal life through Jesus certainly is. And I believe there is not a philosophical difference, but simply a matter of emphasis.
Amusingly enough, he didn't. LaVey pretty much used the Satan imagery to get across a message of fairly strident atheist secularism. The Internet age would have called him a troll. He was much more about annoying and infuriating Christians than anything else. I don't see how this logically follows. God and Satan don't need each other, except in a good guy-bad guy scenario. I was going to be insanely offensive and say without Satan, there is no Jesus. After all, without Satan, there would be no one to punish the sins that Jesus is supposed to be so important in redeeming. But in reality, this goes back to what I've been saying about how the fairy tales connected to Jesus obscure the teachings of the Gospels. Things like the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection and prophecies of the destruction of the Temple and all those miracles were all added after his death to encourage the growth of a church amongst people who were, well, credulous. The genius of Christianity's growth was its appeal to the rejected of the world, and the Apostle Paul did have a canny ear for what people needed and wanted from a faith. And what apparently people need and want, even today, was lifted almost whole cloth from the tales of Dionysus, Orpheus and Hercules. But turning Jesus into a Dionysus who spoke Aramaic diminished the impact of the Gospels, excepting the parts added later to emphasize the magical deeds. It's no coincidence that the earliest books of Christianity were books of his sayings, nor is it a coincidence that those books were all lost or suppressed. The teachings of Jesus in the Gospels aren't entirely original with him - it's a pity the name of Rabbi Hillel isn't more widely known in the Christian world - but to me at least, it's certainly a more noteworthy accomplishment to have propounded such an ethic, that to have been alleged to have been born without benefit of sexual intercourse. Why Greek audiences were impressed with yet another retelling of a typical Zeus parentage is unknowable, I suppose. In any case, there's no Satan, full stop, so God and Jesus do not enter into it.