Mojo_PeiPei

Why are so many people opposed to the idea of a God? Does the notion scare you guys or something? The fact that you would put more faith in humans (who are flawed) is baffling.

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CSflim

WHAT!? I'm not scared of the notion of God. I just don't believe he exists. Hell, life would be fine and dandy if God existed...everlasting happiness sounds pretty jovial to me!
I don't have any "faith" in humans...but I can certainly see that they are real.
This is one of the most ridiculous accusations that I have ever heard.
What is baffling to me is that "you guys" would put faith in to something that you cannot even prove exists or not.

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Mojo_PeiPei

You can't prove that he doesn't exist... whats your point?

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debaser

Well, you can't prove that Santa Clause doesn't exist either, so there!

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Mojo_PeiPei

Well actually I can... You see Saint Nick, the man himself died some 1500 years ago. But that still leaves the problem of the Easter Bunny...

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debaser

Exactly...

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CSflim

This is the most idiotic line of reasoning that I have ever come across. This type of logic is what gives theists a bad name.
Perhaps you would like to take part in one of the many debates that are already going on in this board? This question has already been discussed. Most people accepeted that the onus is on the theists to prove the existence of God. Not vice-versa.
As I explained in other threads, I cannot prove that there is living under my bed an invisible purple llama. I also cannot prove it is not there. But just because I can't prove it doesn't exist, does not IN ANY WAY WHAT-SO-EVER make me likely to believe in it.
Do YOU believe that there is an invisible purple llama living under my bed? No? Why not? You can't PROVE that its not there.

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Mojo_PeiPei

Well If there was said Invisible purple llama under your bed you could physically touch it, no? I mean unless the laws of physics don't apply to this magical invisible llama.

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debaser

Have you ever physically touched God?

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CSflim

Nope...it follows that being invisible to light, it is also invisible to all other forms. This is a scientifically, experimentally verified fact. I've poked under my bed with sticks, and felt nothing. I think its a fairly safe accertation to make that being invisible and purple the normal laws of physics indeed do not apply. He's a very special llama.

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Mojo_PeiPei

in·vis·i·ble ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-vz-bl)
adj.
1.Impossible to see; not visible: Air is invisible.
2.Not accessible to view; hidden: mountain peaks invisible in the fog.
3.Not easily noticed or detected; inconspicuous: “The poor are politically invisible” (Michael Harrington).
4.Not published in financial statements: an invisible asset.

Invisible refers to what you can or can not see, not the fact that you can or cannot physcally touch something.

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CSflim

Hey....like I said, hes a very special llama.

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CSflim

OH, and by the way, I am also well within my right to move the goal posts of the argument whenever I feel fit. Thats just the way things are when you're dealing with invisible purple llamas.

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Mojo_PeiPei

fair enough...

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To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

CSflim

So you accept my point? Great! So you believe in the invisible purple llama?

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lurkette

I think a lot of people are "opposed" to the idea of god (which is a strange way of putting it - lack of belief does not necessarily equate to opposition) because it's a little weird to think about basing your entire life around something that may or may not exist, and the worship of which has caused much pain and suffering in human history. For me, there's no real reason to believe in god, just as there's no real reason not to.

And I'm not sure why you're baffled why we'd put more faith in humans - I can see other humans, I can observe their behavior and its effects, speculate as to its causes, predict future behavior. Why should I put faith in some, to me, mythological being who may or may not exist, and for whose existence there is no evidence? And don't give me that Pascal's wager bullshit.

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CSflim

Agreed! Douglas Adams said it best with:

Thanks to Greg700 who posted the link to that interview.

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bermuDa

I have little faith in humans, and less faith in beings fabricated by humans. The idea of a god doesn't scare me, there are plenty of beings out there more powerful than I. I don't believe everything I'm told.

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papermachesatan

For the sake of maintaining my privilege to participate in this community, I do believe I shall abstain from posting anything.

Mantus

In the beginning when man was still a tribal half animal there was no concept of God. There was only ritual. We belived that we had the power over everything. We believed that it is because we danced every morning that the sun come up. We believed that throwing a rock in the river made it rain. We believed that we controlled the world though their actions, for we had no science, and questions about how the world worked had to be answered. Then one day we overslept and so missed the morning dance…yet the sun still came up!

So after much thought with the primitive logic we had we came to a conclusion. If we didn’t make the sun come up. Then some guy that was bigger then us did it!

Zeld2.0

grab the popcorn kids its another debate!

XenuHubbard

Well, the notion of a god doesn't scare me.
It's just that after reading the Bible, I kind of decided that I don't like him/her very much.
Now it's up to him/her to prove me wrong.

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joeinparis

The notion doesn't scare me, but it doesn't inspire me either. I think for people to believe or have faith in a deity, they need to be inspired by the deity.

I guess I draw inspiration from abstract concepts that I <B>don't</B> call "God", and also from people, who aren't all bad all the time

One problem I have with the idea of a God is that some people use it as an excuse ("we can't change it for the better, it's God's will", and that sort of thing).

Fallon

I view religion as I view life. If I see it, I'll believe it. So far, I haven't seen anything that will make me believe anything. That, I believe, is where most people stand on the issue. The idea of a god or some supreme being doesn't scare me, nor does it inspire me. It doesn't do anything for me. In my day-to-day life religion has shown me other people ridculing those that shout out their beliefs and those that believe that can't keep their mouth shut without every single thing they say is some shape or form religiously formed with a few people placed in between.

sportsrule101

read lurkette's post
i disagree with everything else he says in other posts. But what he said is the best answer you will get from non-believers.

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Jesus Pimp

I'm not opposed to the idea of God, but I am opposed to other people who think they know God and how God thinks, and have the nerve to tell me how to worship God.

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CSflim

You expect anything less on a philiosophy board?

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MacGnG

I believe in God, call it blind faith or whatever you want but nothing is EVER going to change my mind.



"IF a perfect being is possible THEN it exists"

linky
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this is not a good argument how ever you look at it:

supersix2

I believe in God. I think of it as a scientific theory that is widely accepted. It is able to be proven with evidence, however no one has had the ability to experience it and tell about it. For example the Big Bang. It is widely accpeted by scientists that the Big Bang was the creation of the Universe. However, no one was there to see it. Yet all evidence points to it. The fact that the Universe is expanding,the fact that not all light has reached us nor has the universe reached thermal equilibrium therefore it has not exsisted for an infinite amount of time but rather had a beginning, and so on and so on.
Same way with God. The Bible is filled with stories of how God has affected people. The fact that every civilization in the world has or had a religion believing in a higher power. This shows me that somewhere along the line God has directly been involved in the lives of people showing that he exists. The story has changed but God is still there. The fact that scientists and archaelogists are finding evidence to prove stories in the Bible. The fact that the Universe was created and that it was created outside the laws of science.

lurkette

So is a book of Greek Mythology.

Quote:

The fact that every civilization in the world has or had a religion believing in a higher power. This shows me that somewhere along the line God has directly been involved in the lives of people showing that he exists.

It could just as easily point to an essential human psychological need to believe in (and invent) a higher power to explain inexplicable phenomena.

Quote:

The story has changed but God is still there.

Albeit in such disparate incarnations that it's hard to believe they could be talking about the same thing. Look at Hinduism vs. Taoism, or Islam vs. native American shamanism. So yeah, there's some conception of a "higher power" but that doesn't mean it exists, see above. And some religions don't really have a defineable higher power at all (Buddhism, Taoism has the Tao, but that's not really a higher power, it just is everywhere, etc.)

Quote:

The fact that scientists and archaelogists are finding evidence to prove stories in the Bible.

That only proves that the events happened and someone wrote about them, not that the accounts about the events, and therefore the rest of the Bible, are true. It's pretty clear that Jesus existed. That doesn't prove that he was the son of God. It's pretty clear that there was a huge flood at some point. That doesn't prove that God was punishing mankind for being evil.

Quote:

The fact that the Universe was created and that it was created outside the laws of science.

??? As far as I know the laws of science are perfectly capable of accounting for a number of possible "causes" of the creation of the Universe that don't include a capital-G God.

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supersix2

No, the law of general relativity breaks down at the singularity know as the big bang. This is because there was a single point of infinite mass that some how exploded with energy. However, the problem is the infinite amount of energy required by general relativity to cause that point to expand. That infinte energy had to come from somewhere.
It is also very clear scientifically that the Universe and time itself has a beginning. This beginning was 15 billion years ago and it has been called the big bang. Something had to create the universe. Why is it so hard to believe that we were created by something bigger than we are. Look at all we create. We can genetically alter simple organisms. If they were capable of intelligent thought I'm sure they would not readily be able to understand how they were created. Yet we know they were created because we made them.
Same way with God. He created us, yet because we are lesser creatures we are unable to fully understand how and why we are here. So we develop our own theories. Some can be proven by are methods some cannot.
Our entire universe can be the size of a grain of sand in something much larger. We are limited in our ability to think and therefore we can never know the entire picture.

debaser

The above statement is false, the Big Bang did not involve infinite mass.

But if it had:

Mass is energy. If you have infinite mass, you have the infinite energy needed to move it.

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Casdin

I am not afraid of God. I am afraid of organizations that use God for their own personal gain/money grubbing. (aka 99% of all organized religion)

cph44

I am a graduate student in mathematical physics, and though I don't study big bang theories myself, I know enough about them from osmosis to say that your presentation here is specious pseudoscience.

First:
>No, the law of general relativity breaks down at the singularity >know as the big bang. This is because there was a single point >of infinite mass that some how exploded with energy. However, >the problem is the infinite amount of energy required by general >relativity to cause that point to expand. That infinte energy had >to come from somewhere.

General relativity is a model of reality, not reality. It is a system of mathematical rules and relationships studied by physicists because it makes meaningful predictions about the observed universe. You are right in saying those laws break down near the big bang. But that doesn't mean the universe didn't have governing principles then. It only means that our scientific model no longer applies there. Scientists are still actively researching the first moments after the big bang, and no existing theory applies all the way back to the singularity. Incidentally, some of these theories suggest that the singularity was "created" by the collapse of another universe. The universe may have been snapping open and closed into the infinite past. And I put "created" in quotes because causality as humans understand it doesn't really exist at a space-time singularity, and thus the concept of "creating" doesn't make much sense. This, by the way is fundamental flaw in your argument.

>It is also very clear scientifically that the Universe and time itself >has a beginning. ... Something had to create the universe.

The ideas of "a beginning" and of "creating" are human inventions, born from the structure of the human brain and from human experiences. The human experience and the structure of the human brain are predicated on the laws of physics as they exist today. Common sense like "something had to create the universe" is absurd nonsense in the moments after the big bang unless a scientific theory gives it a rigorous meaning.

Now,
>Why is it so hard to believe that we were created by something >bigger than we are. Look at all we create. We can genetically >alter simple organisms. If they were capable of intelligent >thought I'm sure they would not readily be able to understand >how they were created. Yet we know they were created >because we made them.
Fine. I can't prove God doesn't exist. Science is merely a description of the observed physical world. It is not reality itself. To the extent that we observe things inconsistent with our science, we can change our theories to better mirror reality as we observe it. Since God is outside observed reality, science will never reach him. This is basically what you said. So I don't find it hard to accept the possibility of a creator. I do question his relevance to my life as I experience it.

>Same way with God. He created us, yet because we are lesser >creatures we are unable to fully understand how and why we >are here.
This is an analogy, not an argument. Why do you attempt to woo nonbelievers with rhetorical devices that only appeal to believers?

Finally
>We are limited in our ability to think and therefore we can never >know the entire picture.
I agree wholeheartedly. Science doesn't claim to have the whole picture. Only organized religion does. Do you see now why agnostics are so uncomfortable? We are supposed to have faith in a religious vision because of the insufficiency of our reason. But if you don't already have faith, you look around and see about 75 ready-made faiths to choose from. Am I really supposed to choose one at random and adhere to it?

Sorry for the aggressive tone of this message, but I get testy when people appeal to science to make arguments that science isn't intended for. You steal the authoritative tone that science has in our culture without submitting to the rigorous constraints imposed by the scientific method. But almost everyone does this from time to time. I'm guilty of it myself, I'm sure. So please don't view this message as a personal attack. I really did appreciate reading and thinking about your views.

archer2371

Well the First Law of Thermodynamics proves there is at least a Divine Creator. It tells us that matter can neither be created nor destroyed by natural causes. I believe that design is a very valid statement, because there can be no creation without a designer. Buildings didn't just appear out of nowhere without someone first thinking them up. Something HAD to be there to create the Universe, and our Earth. Since God is not natural, He is beyond being natural, he can create matter or destroy it. And by destroying it, I mean completely, no trace, nothing left of it, and no natural cause can do that, because matter will always continue to exist (unless God wishes it so). Burn a match, it's destroyed isn't it, unusable by our standards, yet it is still matter, just in a different form. Thereby with a quick use of just ONE law of physics, proves the existence of a Divine Creator at least, and at most proves the existence of The Holy Trinity (God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son). It's just logical. Another point, the brain can compute twenty thousand, trillion calculations per second ! This three pound package can do more calculations than any computer on this Earth can. Because the creation cannot be greater than the creator, amoebas are not greater than humans, they're on the lowest scale of life, they only perform few functions at best, we could not have evolved from amoebas. Granted, I will concede the point that there probably was a more primitive man (and by primitive I mean less intelligent, because in the past man has always been less intelligent than it's posterity) and that we adapted and became acclimated to our climates and environments, but we did not evolve from a different species (that's my opinion and theory, that's not proven fact, but then again, neither is the THEORY of Evolution). That's my reasoning of it.

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debaser

The first law of Thermodynamics cannot be applied to a singularity.

Thank you, try again.

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weiistone

Problems with God eh? Well have you ever considered the posibilites that GOD does not LIKE you?! Maybe we are his unwanted children, everything is a drag. And you live your life hoping for a chance, of what? Stop living for death, love god, hate god, the only solid thing is your mind and your existance, and sure argue that you don't exist, fine then. I'll live my life to the fullest and you can contemplate this stuff. ENjoy

weiistone

I think the idea of God is the inate fear of man, the fear of death. If you fabricate a "god" that can promise you that your death was not just you decomposing into organic matter, but isn't it? tear open those coffins and what do see, a rotting corpse. The idea of a soul is also I believe a crutch, for those who have no will to well, get a will to run off of. The idea of God is a good one, its gotten more than half the world hooked into this idea. Thats what you call good endorsement and propoganda. Good business management

mepitans

So I guess I am God. And I sure as hell believe in me.

archer2371

WTF??! I wasn't talking about a singularity, I'm talking about matter, matter must be created by something that is not natural as the First Law of Thermodynamics states. This only leaves one option. A Creator. I'm not saying it's Yahweh, Allah, God, Buddah, what have you. I'm simply saying that a Divine Creator must exist (my personal viewpoint is that it is God, but I'm trying to present a small viewpoint and work up to the bigger picture). Thermodynamics deals with energy, and is not a singularity energy, and therefore wouldn't this law apply, something had to cause the Big Bang. (Which is what I assume is what you're talking about). The singularity had mass, which is made up of matter, which had to be made by an outside source that was NOT NATURAL. Thermodynamics applies to what the Big Bang started out as, a point no bigger than a period that had quite a lot of mass (made up of matter), it has quite a bit of energy, but it had to have an outside energy source to provoke it to explode, and thus spewing matter and energy (part of Thermodynamics mind you) everywhere and creating Universes and Worlds and a great many other things. Surely a person who is obviously well versed in the laws of physics must concede this point.

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"Hey Grif, Chupathingy...how bout that? I like it...got a ring to it."

"I have no earthly idea what it is I just saw, or what this place is, or where in the hell O'Malley is! My only choice is to blame Grif for coming up with such a flawed plan. Stupid, stupid Grif."