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Originally posted by filtherton
No, actually i think it is accurate. What person two is saying in your example really boils down to "you can't prove god exists." You can use whatever clever little phrase you want, but what you are saying is the same. You haven't disproven anything. Just made all the readers aware of the fact that you misunderstand the extent to which faith, however irrational, permeates everything that we do as human beings.
As for faith, it takes a certain amout of effort to ignore the fact that if not for everyday plain old faith, life would be very different. Do you have faith in your physician? Do you have faith that the person stopped at the red light isn't going to just peel out and hit you as you cross the street? Faith, however irrational, is the grease of life. Without it you'd never get out of bed in the morning. Do you know that the sun is for sure going to come up tomorrow? If you say yes, than you are a liar. Do you know that your parents, or girlfriend, or boyfriend, loves you? How can you be sure? I bet you act as though they do love you. Because you have faith.
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Originally posted by papermachesatan
God is a possibility right along there with the pink elephant. I do not dispute the possibility. I just challenge the notion that faith in something without any supporting evidence at all is a rational thing.
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My position has been that God has no supporting evidence and consequently, faith in him irrational. Yes, most of the debate revolved around God's existance. My summariziation does include what my last response to GakFace's post covered, however.
There's a far greater amount of evidence in my physician's competence - Medical degrees, laws, etc. than there is in God. I don't know that the car stopped at the red light won't just peel out other than the probability is low and they most likely know of consequences of doing such; even then, I procede across cautiously. Faith is the grease of life and faith in things with evidence supporting their dependability is
not irrational. And you are correct than I cannot be 100% certain that the sun's going to come up or that my parent's love me. The sun has consistently come up and gone down for all of recorded history; it's safe to assume it will come up. I also have evidence of my loved one's love towards me. God has no evidence what-so-ever. Faith in something with evidence is far different in something faith without evidence. That's where the boundry of the rational and irrational lie.
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You'll never find a scientific way to describe what belief in god and the afterlife describes. And you'll never win an argument about what happens when you die if the only tool in your shed is rationality.
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I'd be highly interested in hearing what makes a spirtual assessment of what happens when you die so accurate.
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Shit, theres enough irrationality going on under the guise of culture and economics in the living world. Just because something is irrational doesn't mean it isn't accurate.
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If you're refering to faith, see the above.
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Everything you have said is just a variation of, "Well, you can't prove it" because that is all you have.
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See the above quote taken from one of my earlier posts.