*PRACTICE DEBATE* Atheism: Why I Do Not Believe in God

[Hera Ledro]

THIS IS A PRACTICE DEBATE MADE SO THAT PEOPLE CAN PRACTICE RECOGNIZING DEBATE FALLACIES! While I encourage actual debating, note that it is completely within your rights here to point out fallacies. This is highly encouraged.

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This is simply for people to debate my beliefs against God. I'm not going to specify a God right now, my arguments and points will vary over the several different gods and deities of religion.

Please, feel free to bring up your own reasons for believing or disbelieving in God, it will help to strengthen my own arguments, as well as strengthen your own and inform any readers.

So, to get to the meat of the matter, I'll start of with the Abrahamic God, YHWH. (I actually have an essay I'm writing for this, I'll be sure to post it up once I'm done).

What is it that makes God great and glorious, his power? Seriously guys, if one is so shallow to admire or believe in God simply because he is omnipotent and omnipowerful, you need to take a few steps back. That is adhering to the common and shallow human instinct of brawns over brain. He's powerful, so what? So was Saddam, yet we all hate his ass like hell. There are so many things that must be observed when looking at our admiration of God.

Let's start with a big reason why I find his power to be such a foolish point, and why I don't believe him to be omnipotent (hell, I don't even believe in him in the first place, but we'll take it one step at a time).

It is said that he is omnipotent. Why then, in His own name, did he do the plagues like he did? I'm going to focus on the final plague: the death of the firstborn sons. Really, what did he think it would do? Firstly, why the fuck (pardon my french) did he take it out on the kids? Why would he ruin the chance for these kids to live up to their potential, to follow Him? By killing them, he robbed himself of potential followers and ended up incensing Egypt, or the Pharaoh-of-the-day, against him further.

Speaking of which, would it not have been more advantageous for him to kill the Pharaoh and the merchants/traders/governers/etc. of the day? This way, it would have show the kids that YHWH is a 'better' God than Ra, demoolished the Egyptian economy and society, and condemned any Egyptians that remained faithful to Ra and his cronies to absolute living Hell. For claiming to be an omnipotent, omnipowerful God, he seems to be extremely short-sighted.

Thoughts?

 

[der Astronom]

I would like to add that omnipotence and omniscience aren't really things to be lauded at. They're not admirable, nor are they impressive; it lends itself no explanation the same way science and math do--at least if we were to know something from either field, there was a way in which we found such things, and that is the most delightful thing in both cases. There is nothing that explains God's supposed omniscience or omnipotence--the fact that he knows everything and can do everything tells us nothing about how he knows everything or can do everything. Of course, this is all assuming that omniscience and omnipotence are even remotely possible, which they aren't, at least not logically. Whoever wrote God to be omnipotent and omniscience obviously wanted to scare us into submission, or somehow make us awe in wonder of his might and intelligence, of which he displays very little of, particularly the latter. Of course, the problem is fear which prevents people from thinking rationally, and they don't always take the time to analyze the validity of God's omniscience and omnipotence, much less, the validity of omniscience and omnipotence themselves.

I personally have no admiration for God, for I have no admiration for characters, men, divine, or not, who destroy people in the most horrid and disgusting manners of all, and do it for the most disgusting reasons as well, and he destroys people, regardless of their innocence, blame people for things they didn't do, demand things they either don't deserve or are impossible to demand, and are hypocrites. It is readily apparent in the bible that God's character are all these things.

People say we have no right to judge God, but on what basis might they say that? Because they don't like the fact that a simple reading of the bible lends itself to the disgusting and atrocious character of God, and that, his word, if it were to be unambiguous, should be interpreted to be foul rather than loving and enlightening? And then people say that his word is tarnished because humanity translates it poorly, but I would say that this is a red herring for God to allow people to translate his words poorly, and yet, want people to see his words. There are so many ways to attack the argument of not being able to judge God that I can't even choose which one I want to decide. Well, here's another one. How about if no one is allowed to judge God, then when you suggest that God is unconditionally loving, are you not also judging God? To put any judgment on God is to characterize him as being something, and for no one to judge God would imply that he is not characterizable, and therefore, we know nothing about him. He might not even exist at all. Another argument is to suggest that we do not read the bible any differently from any other book we might read and trust it just because it is a book. We read the bible with the same criteria we read any other book because it would be arbitrary and illogical to read the bible differently from another book, and by the same logic and rationality that we determine what is practical and what is not practical we judge the bible--at the very least, logic and rationality are consistent and work. That much we know at least.

It's hilarious because there are so many reasons to reject the bible and religion. One being that most of the stuff written in holy texts are bullshit. No offense, but most of them say the same things because they're adapted from mythology, and mythology, as just about everyone should know, are made up explanations as to why the world operates the way it does--however, they are not adequate explanations, and most of them contradict scientific findings. Another reason to reject religion is the wars it has caused because of its ideals. Now I do not doubt that part of it may have been caused by the people wanting to fight over the land, but had their holy bible not suggested it, they'd have less of a reason to do it. I also reject it for the violence and the disgusting things they did to non believers. It is because of their intolerance that they ignored the Greek's discoveries in science and math for the longest time, labeling them as heathen, prosecuted people like Galileo and Copernicus for their scientific findings which happened not to agree with their bible--once again, I do not doubt that the people are to blame for acting on them, but they would have less of a reason to do so if the book they trusted so much had not said any of these violent or intolerable things such as the torturing and killing of heretics. But the biggest reason of all to reject the bible are the contradictions in them. You might not care about the social reasons to reject the bible, or perhaps the scientific reasons to reject the bible, but if you were to, it would be because of what the bible says itself. For the bible is riddled with contradictions, inconsistencies and repetitions, and the whole thing together just makes no sense. There are accounts of the same event being told more than once, and being told in ways so different that all of them could not have happened, and the writers of the accounts were not there to observe the events they supposedly wrote about--all of these things were written hundreds of years after they happened. The validity of such events, being written from such a long period of time away from when they actually happened (ie, these writers were not casual observers of the said events; they might have made up the events or heard it from hearsay less accurate than the actual observations themselves) is at question. But it is surely no small coincidence that there are so many reasons for rejecting the bible. Because there are many reasons for rejecting the bible, the probability that it might just have been true is significantly low.

As for perfection, it might imply omniscience and omnipotence, but because a perfect being is precisely that, he needs nothing else to satisfy him, and does not need to create humanity to satisfy himself. If he did, then perhaps he might not be considered perfect because a perfect being, having already attained perfection, does not desire anything more--including creating humanity.

My personal reasons for not believing in God are similar to my above sentiments. I would also like to add that I do not know with certainty whether or not God exists--but the evidence is very convincing, and the probability of his existence, very low. However, I can say with certainty that I do not believe in things I don't know exist, and therefore, I do not believe in God.

 

[Soul Saver]

Do not forget "omniscient".

It's not that you don't believe he exists. It's not that you believe that power isn't to be admired. (I would differ on that opinion, as I believe that some forms of power can be admired and will bring about change and stability for the better.)
Yes, you are referring to "Yahweh". The supreme being which mostly Jewish people believe in. The God of the Old Testament. One which is defined by a book and a set of beliefs.
And indeed, I agree with the entirety of arguments against literal interpretations of a supreme being.
Who wrote them exactly? We do not know. But by science, we can see that alot of religious scriptures are based on superstition and exaggeration.

Events for which the people of the time had no scientific explanation were interpreted as acts of the supernatural. And indeed, you still get those accounts. Whether it be freak acts of nature, coincedence, or something else.
So, God is often used as a term to define anything which people cannot explain based on their current knowledge, and which seems like some sort of divine action. As is seen in mythology as well.
All the historical stories which seem like fairytales, may often have some sort of truth in them... unless their purpose back when they were created was to be fiction in the first place. How one sifts the truth from the superstition...

And this is what alot of the bible was based on. A bit of superstition, a bit of total fiction, a bit of truth.

But what about the historical figure called Jesus? It is most likely that he existed,yes. Due to the sheer amount of followers he had, and that there are historical accounts attesting to his existence.

His alleged magical powers, however, would appear to be superstition based on our scientific knowledge base. And yet there are still massive accounts of it. Was he just a very clever and charismatic manipulator, or something else entirely?

Yes, nine times out of ten, biblical interpretations of a God can be entirely disproved by science, and put down to superstition. However, the concept of a "God", a force more powerful than you or I can imagine goes far beyond that.

As I have said, humans use the term "God"/"Gods" to describe things that they cannot explain. Things against the odds, against their knowledge base. And also used some divine justification to commit acts which would otherwise be considered unspeakable.
Where knowledge and logic does not avail an individual and society, God and superstition takes over.
I'm not going to debate whether the concept of a God is good or bad just yet.
What I will say is that even the most intelligent physicist can believe in a supreme force or being.

 

[der Astronom]

It's interesting that you should mention the accounts of Jesus and the stuff that he did, but even that is subjected to the contradictions and inconsistencies in the bible--you don't even need science to tell you this. Apparently, there were four different accounts that detail how Jesus rose from the dead. One of them makes a mention of the dead rising when he was crucified, and the other three did not. Then some of them suggested that the disciples were instructed to meet in the mountains, and the other ones suggested that the disciples were told to meet at some house in Jerusalem--it clearly couldn't be both the mountains and some house in town. And, like all the other things written in the bible, the accounts were not written by his disciples. They were written by people hundreds of years after the disciples were dead. And when one knows this, it is easy to see how these contradictions arise--because none of them were there to see it and came across their conclusions from different hearsays, or things they made up on their own.

What I also don't understand is why people spend so much time praising God, something they don't understand, and someone who represents the things they can't explain. Why is the unknown praise worthy, when you don't even understand the nature of it? I might praise (although I prefer the term respect and admire) mathematics and science because we at least understand the nature of how they work and what they are, but to praise a God who represents the unknown and the things we are not familiar with is the same as admiring something that you can't validate--it just doesn't make much sense at all.

I do not doubt that scientists and mathematicians believe in God, but what they study usually has no correlation with God. In other words, there has been no scientific study that was deemed incomplete without the presence of God, or any scientific study that was about God, because no such evidence existed, and to speak of God in math is also absurd because any proof done in mathematics does not require God--in fact, it runs completely counter to the concept of God because a proof is based on what we are able to explain and know--a theorem is not a theorem if there is no proof or explanation for it, and God, if he is someone who represents the unknown, cannot account for an explanation of any mathematical theorem.

 

[Rockman X]

I would like to add that omnipotence and omniscience aren't really things to be lauded at. They're not admirable, nor are they impressive; it lends itself no explanation the same way science and math do--at least if we were to know something from either field, there was a way in which we found such things, and that is the most delightful thing in both cases. There is nothing that explains God's supposed omniscience or omnipotence--the fact that he knows everything and can do everything tells us nothing about how he knows everything or can do everything. Of course, this is all assuming that omniscience and omnipotence are even remotely possible, which they aren't, at least not logically. Whoever wrote God to be omnipotent and omniscience obviously wanted to scare us into submission, or somehow make us awe in wonder of his might and intelligence, of which he displays very little of, particularly the latter. Of course, the problem is fear which prevents people from thinking rationally, and they don't always take the time to analyze the validity of God's omniscience and omnipotence, much less, the validity of omniscience and omnipotence themselves.

I personally have no admiration for God, for I have no admiration for characters, men, divine, or not, who destroy people in the most horrid and disgusting manners of all, and do it for the most disgusting reasons as well, and he destroys people, regardless of their innocence, blame people for things they didn't do, demand things they either don't deserve or are impossible to demand, and are hypocrites. It is readily apparent in the bible that God's character are all these things.

People say we have no right to judge God, but on what basis might they say that? Because they don't like the fact that a simple reading of the bible lends itself to the disgusting and atrocious character of God, and that, his word, if it were to be unambiguous, should be interpreted to be foul rather than loving and enlightening? And then people say that his word is tarnished because humanity translates it poorly, but I would say that this is a red herring for God to allow people to translate his words poorly, and yet, want people to see his words. There are so many ways to attack the argument of not being able to judge God that I can't even choose which one I want to decide. Well, here's another one. How about if no one is allowed to judge God, then when you suggest that God is unconditionally loving, are you not also judging God? To put any judgment on God is to characterize him as being something, and for no one to judge God would imply that he is not characterizable, and therefore, we know nothing about him. He might not even exist at all. Another argument is to suggest that we do not read the bible any differently from any other book we might read and trust it just because it is a book. We read the bible with the same criteria we read any other book because it would be arbitrary and illogical to read the bible differently from another book, and by the same logic and rationality that we determine what is practical and what is not practical we judge the bible--at the very least, logic and rationality are consistent and work. That much we know at least.

It's hilarious because there are so many reasons to reject the bible and religion. One being that most of the stuff written in holy texts are bullshit. No offense, but most of them say the same things because they're adapted from mythology, and mythology, as just about everyone should know, are made up explanations as to why the world operates the way it does--however, they are not adequate explanations, and most of them contradict scientific findings. Another reason to reject religion is the wars it has caused because of its ideals. Now I do not doubt that part of it may have been caused by the people wanting to fight over the land, but had their holy bible not suggested it, they'd have less of a reason to do it. I also reject it for the violence and the disgusting things they did to non believers. It is because of their intolerance that they ignored the Greek's discoveries in science and math for the longest time, labeling them as heathen, prosecuted people like Galileo and Copernicus for their scientific findings which happened not to agree with their bible--once again, I do not doubt that the people are to blame for acting on them, but they would have less of a reason to do so if the book they trusted so much had not said any of these violent or intolerable things such as the torturing and killing of heretics. But the biggest reason of all to reject the bible are the contradictions in them. You might not care about the social reasons to reject the bible, or perhaps the scientific reasons to reject the bible, but if you were to, it would be because of what the bible says itself. For the bible is riddled with contradictions, inconsistencies and repetitions, and the whole thing together just makes no sense. There are accounts of the same event being told more than once, and being told in ways so different that all of them could not have happened, and the writers of the accounts were not there to observe the events they supposedly wrote about--all of these things were written hundreds of years after they happened. The validity of such events, being written from such a long period of time away from when they actually happened (ie, these writers were not casual observers of the said events; they might have made up the events or heard it from hearsay less accurate than the actual observations themselves) is at question. But it is surely no small coincidence that there are so many reasons for rejecting the bible. Because there are many reasons for rejecting the bible, the probability that it might just have been true is significantly low.

As for perfection, it might imply omniscience and omnipotence, but because a perfect being is precisely that, he needs nothing else to satisfy him, and does not need to create humanity to satisfy himself. If he did, then perhaps he might not be considered perfect because a perfect being, having already attained perfection, does not desire anything more--including creating humanity.

My personal reasons for not believing in God are similar to my above sentiments. I would also like to add that I do not know with certainty whether or not God exists--but the evidence is very convincing, and the probability of his existence, very low. However, I can say with certainty that I do not believe in things I don't know exist, and therefore, I do not believe in God.

Blah blah blah blah, what textbook or essay did you copy all that from? This isn't a lecture hall and it's not science 1010 or philosophy 1010.

People without the intellect to grasp science or the nerve to do things on their own rely on god and texts written about him for comfort and guidance. That's why people praise god.

Now, to leave you with a very simple answer, the existence of a god cannot be proven OR disproven. End of story. We're more likely to discover aliens before we discover a god.

Why? Because gathering from all the mythos about various cultures' gods, god is outside our dimension of time...and matter too, even. Jesus Christ supposedly teleported out of his tomb, then suddenly appeared inside the house the apostles were gathered at. That definitely shows the ability to leave our physical dimension. So none of our science is ever going to be able to penetrate dimensional barriers like that, at least not for a looooooong time.

 

[Erythritol]

I think I'm going to jump in here. I don't believe in/care about God one way or the other, but I'm sick of smug atheists patting themselves on the back for feeling superior. But *one* little thing first....

I would like to add that omnipotence and omniscience aren't really things to be lauded at

olololol. Look up definition of lauded and then look up the usage of prepositions. Kthx.

It's interesting that you should mention the accounts of Jesus and the stuff that he did, but even that is subjected to the contradictions and inconsistencies in the bible--you don't even need science to tell you this. Apparently, there were four different accounts that detail how Jesus rose from the dead. One of them makes a mention of the dead rising when he was crucified, and the other three did not. Then some of them suggested that the disciples were instructed to meet in the mountains, and the other ones suggested that the disciples were told to meet at some house in Jerusalem--it clearly couldn't be both the mountains and some house in town. And, like all the other things written in the bible, the accounts were not written by his disciples. They were written by people hundreds of years after the disciples were dead. And when one knows this, it is easy to see how these contradictions arise--because none of them were there to see it and came across their conclusions from different hearsays, or things they made up on their own.

Oh wait, no, you're completely wrong. Damn. And here you are talking about other people who don't know anything about the Bible. That's embarrassing and pretty ignorant of you. The Bible was-- as dated by historians-- written no later than 150 CE. It wasn't written by the disciples? Orly? Do the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ring any bells? I think they threw some pretty important chapters in there. If you're nitpicking little details, you're missing the point completely, and should just sit down and stop talking about the Bible. Because you'll never get it. Who the fuck cares were Jesus told them to meet? Does that matter in the grand context of the story? The answer is a resounding no. What matters is that Jesus was crucified and rose again. Every account stresses that. Uh-duh.

What I also don't understand is why people spend so much time praising God, something they don't understand, and someone who represents the things they can't explain. Why is the unknown praise worthy, when you don't even understand the nature of it? I might praise (although I prefer the term respect and admire) mathematics and science because we at least understand the nature of how they work and what they are, but to praise a God who represents the unknown and the things we are not familiar with is the same as admiring something that you can't validate--it just doesn't make much sense at all.

One: The idea of God comforts people. It always has and always will. It's not hard to understand. Two: Science and math are nothing more than tools to understand and explain the world as we perceive it. Science and math did NOT create the Universe. I'm not saying God did. I have no bloody clue what did, and hey, I'm in good company because neither does anyone else.

I do not doubt that scientists and mathematicians believe in God, but what they study usually has no correlation with God. In other words, there has been no scientific study that was deemed incomplete without the presence of God, or any scientific study that was about God, because no such evidence existed, and to speak of God in math is also absurd because any proof done in mathematics does not require God--in fact, it runs completely counter to the concept of God because a proof is based on what we are able to explain and know--a theorem is not a theorem if there is no proof or explanation for it, and God, if he is someone who represents the unknown, cannot account for an explanation of any mathematical theorem.

This paragraph here seems not only pointless but sort of stupid. But meh, I'll respond to it. First off, what the hell are you talking about with the presence of God in scientific experiments? Are you, in a very very poorly worded way, trying to say that because God cannot be quantified by science or math that he/she/it does not exist? And out of curiosity, what science or math HAS a correlation to God? If you mean biology, I think your shit has been ruined because there are lots of biologists who believe in God. Okay, let's talk math now. No proof in math requires God? Um, no shit. But proofs in math require mathemeticians to take certain things on faith. Sure, they're abstract as hell, but you gotta take things on faith. Not everything in math is 1 plus 1 equals two. A lot of it is proving abstract concepts and accepting certain things on faith.

 

[Hera Ledro]

Well number one: EVERYBODY STOP GETTING PERSONAL WITH PEOPLE. This is a debate, not a contest to see who can put forth their points by insults or quips and jibes.

Number two: I'm going to post now.

I think I'm going to jump in here. I don't believe in/care about God one way or the other, but I'm sick of smug atheists patting themselves on the back for feeling superior. But *one* little thing first....

I'm proud to say that I don't think myself superior. I am hardly patting myself on the back. The title is Practice (alright, it's accidentally spelt Practive, but you get the point) Debate. This is simply a practice debate for people to understand fallacies. Which brings me to my next point.

olololol. Look up definition of lauded and then look up the usage of prepositions. Kthx.

Ad Hominem. The first fallacy I noticed in this thread. You're attacking Angelus' grammar instead of her points here. While I support saying things such as "Your grammar could've used some improvement there," I am not going to tolerate attacking one's grammar.

Oh wait, no, you're completely wrong. Damn. And here you are talking about other people who don't know anything about the Bible. That's embarrassing and pretty ignorant of you. The Bible was-- as dated by historians-- written no later than 150 BCE. It wasn't written by the disciples? Orly? Do the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ring any bells? I think they threw some pretty important chapters in there. If you're nitpicking little details, you're missing the point completely, and should just sit down and stop talking about the Bible. Because you'll never get it. Who the fuck cares were Jesus told them to meet? Does that matter in the grand context of the story? The answer is a resounding no. What matters is that Jesus was crucified and rose again. Every account stresses that. Uh-duh.

The Bible itself was NOT written by the disciples. The Old Testament was several SEVERAL centuries old prior to the birth of Yeshua.

The fact that the New Testament does not coincide with itself is a challenge to its credibility. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula from Jon, Mina, Lucy, Van Helsing, Seward, etc.'s points of view. Who's to say this wasn't done with the Old Testament? By contradicting itself, the Bible challenges its own credibility.

And in that paragraph, you have made out one of my preffered points: how the Bible is simply a story. I do not deny that Yeshua was a historical figure, but I deny his 'miracles.' You stress the moral context of the story. That's all well and good, but when the Bible contradicts itself, it makes it seem more likely to be nothing but a story, based on a man's life.

One: The idea of God comforts people. It always has and always will. It's not hard to understand. Two: Science and math are nothing more than tools to understand and explain the world as we perceive it. Science and math did NOT create the Universe. I'm not saying God did. I have no bloody clue what did, and hey, I'm in good company because neither does anyone else.

Of course it does. It also gives people a conduit for which to pass their unexplanables onto. For those who believe in God and Satan, the good stuff that you can't explain is so easy to pass off as being that of a God. It's taking the easy way out; instead of figuring out what is really happening, you just say, "Oh, it is how it is," and move on. That is called Sloth, or laziness. For those out there who believe such things, you'll know that Sloth is one of the Seven Deadlies. It's not the worst form of Sloth (in fact, it's one of the less condemning parts), but it is still Sloth.

As per your second point, I do agree that math and science didn't create the universe, but that doesn't mean that they don't explain it. Though Angelus respects and admires math and science, it is because they can help to explain, not because they are the almighty-creators. You're right, nobody knows, but you can be damn sure that if you tell a Jehovah's Witness that they don't know, you'll get a boot stuck in your door for the rest of your life.

This paragraph here seems not only pointless but sort of stupid. But meh, I'll respond to it. First off, what the hell are you talking about with the presence of God in scientific experiments? Are you, in a very very poorly worded way, trying to say that because God cannot be quantified by science or math that he/she/it does not exist? And out of curiosity, what science or math HAS a correlation to God? If you mean biology, I think your shit has been ruined because there are lots of biologists who believe in God. Okay, let's talk math now. No proof in math requires God? Um, no shit. But proofs in math require mathemeticians to take certain things on faith. Sure, they're abstract as hell, but you gotta take things on faith. Not everything in math is 1 plus 1 equals two. A lot of it is proving abstract concepts and accepting certain things on faith.

From what I can gather from Angelus, she means that all scientific experiments were done without any support from religious ideals. That's not to say the groups didn't support it, but that the experiments had no coincision with any religion. In fact, a lot of experiments disproved ideas about religion. Currently, there is no logical way for a God to exist. Why? Because God is perfection. Perfection is, by definition, an impossible paradox. Perfection isn't "the best," it's perfect. It means that there are no flaws. To have no flaws automatically makes perfection a flaw, for if you are flawless, what have you left to improve? Your life will be wasted away doing things without satisfaction.

And math isn't as abstract as you think, or what it seems you think. Math has very complex and complicated ideas, but it is still 100% logic. Even I, a proud-to-be-hater of mathematics, understand that math is nothing but logic. 1+1=2? How do you prove it? You quantify and qualify. Holding up one finger and then holding up the other finger means you are holding up two fingers, so 1+1=2. There is very little that I have ever seen in math that is based on faith. BEDMAS itself is a very law of science as we know it.

[QUOTEVengefulRonin]Now, to leave you with a very simple answer, the existence of a god cannot be proven OR disproven. End of story. We're more likely to discover aliens before we discover a god.

Why? Because gathering from all the mythos about various cultures' gods, god is outside our dimension of time...and matter too, even. Jesus Christ supposedly teleported out of his tomb, then suddenly appeared inside the house the apostles were gathered at. That definitely shows the ability to leave our physical dimension. So none of our science is ever going to be able to penetrate dimensional barriers like that, at least not for a looooooong time.[/QUOTE]

But, though God cannot be proven nor disproven, logic itself is now dictating that there is likely not a god. I'm going to reference my previous example of perfection here, and how it is a paradox. God in and of itself is perfection, and as a result cannot exist. Since he is flawed in being flawless (reference previous example), this automatically cancels out and equals inexistence. For example, -1+1=0. The positive and it's opposite, when combined, cancel out into nothingness. Therefore, God himself would destroy himself because his flawlessness cancels out his flaw.

Once again, looking at your Bible example, I will argue that there is no proof of leaving the physical dimension. Could it be that Jesus' tomb was robbed of his body, and the disciples were hallucinating? Unlikely that they all do so at once, I admit, but far more likely than one coming back from the dead. The hallucinations don't fly in the face of physics and science, but resurrection does.

The way you made your point there made it seem as though you assumed that we all believed that Jesus really did teleport. I beg to differ, but your view is your view.

That's all for now, folks!

 

[der Astronom]

Blah blah blah blah, what textbook or essay did you copy all that from? This isn't a lecture hall and it's not science 1010 or philosophy 1010.

Actually, I didn't copy that from any textbook or essay. That's all purely my own words from what I have experienced, learned and thought about, and I can say without a doubt that I did not commit any cut & paste fallacies because you cannot prove that I used any URLs or Wikipedia links or copied and pasted any of its contents into my post. I admit that some of it might have been similar ideas from other stuff I have read before, but I posted them in my own words in order to make my point in my argument.

People without the intellect to grasp science or the nerve to do things on their own rely on god and texts written about him for comfort and guidance. That's why people praise god.

Comfort from the unknown? By use of ignorance and things that don't have evidence of their existence? It still makes little sense to me, but if it makes people happy, I wouldn't object to it. I still don't, but it's not a comfort I would accept for myself. I need no consolation for any kind of unknown. I accept it for what it is.

Now, to leave you with a very simple answer, the existence of a god cannot be proven OR disproven. End of story. We're more likely to discover aliens before we discover a god.

Well, if you can say the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, could you not also say the same of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?

Why? Because gathering from all the mythos about various cultures' gods, god is outside our dimension of time...and matter too, even. Jesus Christ supposedly teleported out of his tomb, then suddenly appeared inside the house the apostles were gathered at. That definitely shows the ability to leave our physical dimension. So none of our science is ever going to be able to penetrate dimensional barriers like that, at least not for a looooooong time.

And you have evidence that Jesus teleported out of his tomb? The only "evidence" we have of this happening is from the bible, and is, at best flitting. Therefore, this does not prove that any person or being has the ability to leave our physical dimension.

think I'm going to jump in here. I don't believe in/care about God one way or the other, but I'm sick of smug atheists patting themselves on the back for feeling superior. But *one* little thing first....

Did I say I was "feeling superior" just for stating why I'm an atheist and don't believe in the same things other people do? This is a common problem with other people who aren't atheists. They think that just because we're explaining why we don't believe they think we think we're superior over everyone else for not believing the same thing. Could I ask the same of all the other religious people who believe their religion is the best, and also have a history of beating up on people not of the same religion, particularly in the Medieval ages?

I'm sick and tired of having to include this everytime I engage in a religion debate, but my opinions about religion are mostly reasons why I have no interest in being religious, and if you don't agree with them, I don't particularly care. Furthermore, I don't post these things to make Christians or other religious people look bad, or to make other people become atheists; that's a choice you choose to make, and I don't take the blame for that. I might make the religion itself look bad, but only because of the things written in it, but I am not responsible for the people who choose or don't choose to buy it. That's entirely up to you.

olololol. Look up definition of lauded and then look up the usage of prepositions. Kthx.

"Laud" is a verb that originates from a first declension Latin verb, laudo, laudare, laudavi, laudatus, I can state all the active, passive voices, subjunctive, indicative moods, in all five tenses, and can furthermore conjugate the rest of the remaining verbal forms, and I know very well that this word and the English derivative both mean the same thing--to pray. What, pray tell, does this have anything to do with this argument? Not much more than what you asked me to do. Even if by some small probability, my grammar might have been a little bit off, it wasn't terribly enough that my message was unclear. If it were, you could have explained how, but clearly, you didn't. So I must conclude that was a red herring.

Oh wait, no, you're completely wrong. Damn. And here you are talking about other people who don't know anything about the Bible. That's embarrassing and pretty ignorant of you. The Bible was-- as dated by historians-- written no later than 150 CE. It wasn't written by the disciples? Orly? Do the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ring any bells? I think they threw some pretty important chapters in there. If you're nitpicking little details, you're missing the point completely, and should just sit down and stop talking about the Bible. Because you'll never get it. Who the fuck cares were Jesus told them to meet? Does that matter in the grand context of the story? The answer is a resounding no. What matters is that Jesus was crucified and rose again. Every account stresses that. Uh-duh.

I would be more interested in how these historians came across the idea that it was not written later than 150 CE than the actual date itself; the irony is in the fact that there was no external criteria needed to know of these inconsistencies and contradictions in the bible--or even that the writers were not there to witness the things they saw. It is because of the contradictions and inconsistencies that these writers could not have been there to see it--did they see the disciples going into a house in Jerusalem, or did they see the disciples going into the mountains? It couldn't have been both--unless the writers weren't actually there to see it, and wrote them independently of each other. I sincerely have doubts about how the historians came up with the said date above. If you know how they came across such a date, I would be curious to know. Now you ask what this has, if anything at all, to do with Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, but I would ask--if the validity of where the disciples met was at question, and the same people who wrote about these also wrote of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, would these details, written by the same people, also be at question? You can't simply assume that just because these details were the only details that didn't contradict each other that they must have been true--only that because there were contradictions in what the writer's wrote, the validity of everything else they wrote is at question.

Of course, since you're so bent on me not understanding the bible, could it be because you're not willing to explain it, or because you don't want me to understand it? I ask this not as an attack on your character, but on why you believe I'll "never get it".

One: The idea of God comforts people. It always has and always will. It's not hard to understand. Two: Science and math are nothing more than tools to understand and explain the world as we perceive it. Science and math did NOT create the Universe. I'm not saying God did. I have no bloody clue what did, and hey, I'm in good company because neither does anyone else.

As explained to the poster above, it may comfort people, but that doesn't mean it makes sense. It certainly doesn't comfort me, or rather, that I need no comforting, but that again, is in explaining my religious (or lack thereof) view. And that's probably why I have difficulty understanding it. You need to see that not everyone is comforted by the same things, and because we're not, we don't see the same things. Don't make this seem like it's obvious, because it clearly isn't.

Furthermore, I did not say that science and math created the universe, nor did I say I appreciate or respect them because they created the universe, so don't try to hit strawmen either; I did, however, say that I appreciate math and science because they explain how the universe exists and operates, and are consistent and reliable. I am not so much concerned with how the universe was "created", if that's how it was developed so much with how it works. If you believe they're not good enough because they won't explain how the universe was created, that's your opinion, but if science and math are only mere tools for explaining the universe, it's not a small wonder how it is that our living standards, technology, and everything else we take for granted takes a root in science and math, and we would not live the way we do without them. That much is undeniable.

This paragraph here seems not only pointless but sort of stupid. But meh, I'll respond to it. First off, what the hell are you talking about with the presence of God in scientific experiments? Are you, in a very very poorly worded way, trying to say that because God cannot be quantified by science or math that he/she/it does not exist?

Interesting that you should ask of this, because I would also ask how it is that we have such difficulty finding an "ubiquitous" omnipresent being as God in nature--unless he either doesn't exist in nature or isn't ubiquitous. However, there is no correlation between morality and science because science cannot necessarily be a study of anything if done carefully; it concerns itself with only things that are both natural and objective. If God is neither of these things, then it is of no concern to science. To suggest that God has a hand in any of these things is a violation of what science is. But in all sincerity, science cannot say anything about God. If people who studied science believed in God, their beliefs in God have nothing to do with their scientific studies. And they would do well to keep it that way.

And out of curiosity, what science or math HAS a correlation to God? If you mean biology, I think your shit has been ruined because there are lots of biologists who believe in God. Okay, let's talk math now. No proof in math requires God? Um, no shit. But proofs in math require mathemeticians to take certain things on faith. Sure, they're abstract as hell, but you gotta take things on faith. Not everything in math is 1 plus 1 equals two. A lot of it is proving abstract concepts and accepting certain things on faith.

What's wrong with biologists believing in God? I never said anything about that. All I said was that scientific studies, including those of biology were done without God, since he has not been observed either naturally or objectively. If their beliefs in God might have influenced their work in science, then perhaps creationism might be more valid, but it clearly isn't. In fact, many of these same biologists tend to find that evolution is still a strong theory about the history and diversity of life.

As for mathematics, you would have to explain to me how this has anything at all to do with faith because proving in mathematics does not hinge upon it. It uses logic and rationality. Now if you were to speak of the cases of proofs where you assume something to be true, this would usually be for the case of contradicting the assumption to show that the assumption cannot hold--in other words, proof by contradiction. If the proof was built upon the assumption itself with little to no explanation at all, it wouldn't be much of a proof. Furthermore, such an assumption does not require any kind of faith attached to it in order to work; you may or may not believe the assumption to work, and it doesn't change the fact that it's a contradiction. If you were to speak of the assumptions made for the sake of the question, such as a condition or supposition, these are conditions which are not at question in terms of faith--this is analogous to the hypothetical "if" case, in the case you do encounter something of the sort. You might also be speaking of the problems in math where we "hope" that the question boils down to a simple case that can be solved with the use of a known algorithm or theorem that we have already known and proven rigorously, but this has nothing to do with the proofs of the algorithms or theorems themselves--but regardless of what you hope for in that question, one need not assume that the question is unsolvable if it cannot be related to any of the theorems or algorithms you wanted to apply to it--one might suggest that the narrowmindedness with which you exert only a select few theorems or algorithms to work on that one problem is the problem itself. In other words, faith is a hindrance to mathematics, not a part of it.

Historically, you may have said this to be true of faith, but that is not true anymore. What used to have been proven on faith is no longer done that way anymore, and the same theorems may have many different proofs that have been made more rigorous when they first appeared centuries ago. But in that same way, I could suggest that science and math are the same--they are both self correcting.

 

[Erythritol]

Ad Hominem. The first fallacy I noticed in this thread. You're attacking Angelus' grammar instead of her points here. While I support saying things such as "Your grammar could've used some improvement there," I am not going to tolerate attacking one's grammar.

Oh please. Spare me your bullshit Latin and your weird sense of superiority. I attacked her grammar for two reasons. One: if you're going to use big words to try to make yourself look smart, use them correctly. Otherwise, you just look like an asshat. Two: I once got into another atheism debate with her. I offhandedly mentioned evolution and loosely defined it, but didn't go into detail because it was relatively irrelevant. She jumped down my throat and told me that I didn't know what evolution was because I had left out part of the definition. I'm just returning the favor. Kthx

The Bible itself was NOT written by the disciples. The Old Testament was several SEVERAL centuries old prior to the birth of Yeshua.

The fact that the New Testament does not coincide with itself is a challenge to its credibility. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula from Jon, Mina, Lucy, Van Helsing, Seward, etc.'s points of view. Who's to say this wasn't done with the Old Testament? By contradicting itself, the Bible challenges its own credibility.

And in that paragraph, you have made out one of my preffered points: how the Bible is simply a story. I do not deny that Yeshua was a historical figure, but I deny his 'miracles.' You stress the moral context of the story. That's all well and good, but when the Bible contradicts itself, it makes it seem more likely to be nothing but a story, based on a man's life.

My mistake. I accidentally typed Bible, I meant New Testament. The New Testament was, in fact, written no later than 150 CE. And parts of the New Testament WERE written by the disciples. Like I said before Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote pieces of it. Please learn more about the Bible before bashing it?

As per your second point, I do agree that math and science didn't create the universe, but that doesn't mean that they don't explain it. Though Angelus respects and admires math and science, it is because they can help to explain, not because they are the almighty-creators. You're right, nobody knows, but you can be damn sure that if you tell a Jehovah's Witness that they don't know, you'll get a boot stuck in your door for the rest of your life.

From what I can gather from Angelus, she means that all scientific experiments were done without any support from religious ideals. That's not to say the groups didn't support it, but that the experiments had no coincision with any religion. In fact, a lot of experiments disproved ideas about religion. Currently, there is no logical way for a God to exist. Why? Because God is perfection. Perfection is, by definition, an impossible paradox. Perfection isn't "the best," it's perfect. It means that there are no flaws. To have no flaws automatically makes perfection a flaw, for if you are flawless, what have you left to improve? Your life will be wasted away doing things without satisfaction.

What? What crackpot philosophy teacher taught you that one? How is perfection a flaw? Because you have nothing left to improve? Who gives a damn? That doesn't make it a flaw. Because your life will be wasted away doing things without satisfaction? God isn't a person and doesn't have have "a life". God is an entity. God can be perfect. Just because you've never seen perfection doesn't mean it can't exist. I've never seen the Taj Mahal; that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

And math isn't as abstract as you think, or what it seems you think. Math has very complex and complicated ideas, but it is still 100% logic. Even I, a proud-to-be-hater of mathematics, understand that math is nothing but logic. 1+1=2? How do you prove it? You quantify and qualify. Holding up one finger and then holding up the other finger means you are holding up two fingers, so 1+1=2. There is very little that I have ever seen in math that is based on faith. BEDMAS itself is a very law of science as we know it.

Um, mathematics itself is extremely abstract. It's simply using things we can comprehend (numbers, letters, symbols) to explain very abstract, non-physical things. You take it on faith that one will always be one, right? Do you know what infinity looks like? No. Hell, math even uses imaginary numbers. There is a LOT of math that is based on faith, or rather, assumptions.

 

[Rockman X]

Actually, I didn't copy that from any textbook or essay. That's all purely my own words from what I have experienced, learned and thought about, and I can say without a doubt that I did not commit any cut & paste fallacies because you cannot prove that I used any URLs or Wikipedia links or copied and pasted any of its contents into my post. I admit that some of it might have been similar ideas from other stuff I have read before, but I posted them in my own words in order to make my point in my argument.

Nope, I have no proof, it just seemed so dry and textbook-ish.

Comfort from the unknown? By use of ignorance and things that don't have evidence of their existence? It still makes little sense to me, but if it makes people happy, I wouldn't object to it. I still don't, but it's not a comfort I would accept for myself. I need no consolation for any kind of unknown. I accept it for what it is.

Exactly. People are scared of what's after death (the unknown), thus they dream up heavens and afterlives. They don't like people they deem bad, so they dream up purgatories and hells for the bad people to go to. Never underestimate the cowardice and irrationality of the human race.

That's one of the main purposes of a god. The second is to explain things that cannot be explained by logic or the current level of science.

Thirdly, god and religion serves as a crutch for weak-minded and weak-willed people who aren't brave enough to live their lives on their own and confront their own problems.

Well, if you can say the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, could you not also say the same of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?

No, you couldn't. Their stories can be traced back to the original people who started them. Gods of various religions can be discounted as simply legends, but the possibility that SOME sort of god/higher power/force is always there. Who or what set everything into motion? The chances of life on this earth were remote, and the chances of it evolving the way it did were even more remote. Was there something or something who got it going, despite the odds? It doesn't have to be any of the gods humanity has thought up over the centuries.

And you have evidence that Jesus teleported out of his tomb? The only "evidence" we have of this happening is from the bible, and is, at best flitting. Therefore, this does not prove that any person or being has the ability to leave our physical dimension.

I know that........I was saying that any time godlike beings are portrayed in religion, they always have attributes beyond human ability. Read my post more carefully. If there is a god of some sort out there who designed everything, then it is obviously beyond our human ability and cannot be found by human science.

 

[der Astronom]

Oh please. Spare me your bullshit Latin and your weird sense of superiority. I attacked her grammar for two reasons. One: if you're going to use big words to try to make yourself look smart, use them correctly. Otherwise, you just look like an asshat. Two: I once got into another atheism debate with her. I offhandedly mentioned evolution and loosely defined it, but didn't go into detail because it was relatively irrelevant. She jumped down my throat and told me that I didn't know what evolution was because I had left out part of the definition. I'm just returning the favor. Kthx

I did not use "big words" to make myself look smart. I just used that word because it was the first thing that came to mind. If you don't like it, that's nice, but it doesn't have anything to do with this argument.

I don't believe I recall exactly under what circumstances I might have been bothered to go into detail about evolution, but if you're going to mention it, at least mention it correctly. But since that debate has nothing to do with this one, it might be better for no one else to mention more about it after this.

What? What crackpot philosophy teacher taught you that one? How is perfection a flaw? Because you have nothing left to improve? Who gives a damn? That doesn't make it a flaw. Because your life will be wasted away doing things without satisfaction? God isn't a person and doesn't have have "a life". God is an entity. God can be perfect. Just because you've never seen perfection doesn't mean it can't exist. I've never seen the Taj Mahal; that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

If omniscience and omnipotence are characteristics of perfection, then it clearly doesn't exist in reality. This is because omnipotence is a contradiction in reality and cannot exist, and omniscience and free will (which God supposedly let us have) don't work together at all. At least I know Taj Mahal exists because there are pictures of it, people can tell me how it looks inside and what it's like (and if they were lying, there would be no consistencies in their descriptions), and I can go there on a plane and see it for myself.

Um, mathematics itself is extremely abstract. It's simply using things we can comprehend (numbers, letters, symbols) to explain very abstract, non-physical things. You take it on faith that one will always be one, right? Do you know what infinity looks like? No. Hell, math even uses imaginary numbers. There is a LOT of math that is based on faith, or rather, assumptions.

For what reason do you need to assume that one won't be one? That doesn't seem to be very logical. "One", furthermore, is a convention by which we assign a particular value--in the abstract, a particular quantity, which if it becomes something else is no longer considered "one", and in reality, corresponds to a given number of things--if it becomes something else, then it's a different number. The only way in which "one" becomes something else is if it were to be put in a different base (ie, binary), but it is normally a given as to which base you are using. There's nothing arbitrary about that at all.

As for infinity, as it is with any other problem in mathematics, one need not know what infinity "looks" like in order to study it. Infinity is studied extensively in calculus, and pii, and other irrational numbers have an infinite number of decimals, but just because it has an infinite number of decimals doesn't mean we can't know that sin pii is 0, that piir^2 is the area of a circle, or 0.999...=1 (in fact, this has been proven in several different ways)--let me ask you--do you need to know the exact value of 3^2008 to know what its last digit is? I can tell you that I do not need to know that. The last digit is 1. I know this, not because I know the exact value of such a number, but because of congruency, a topic well discussed and well known in number theory, a field in mathematics.

Imaginary numbers, or the complex numbers, are well studied extensively in mathematics as well. They are even used in quantum physics. There is nothing faith based about them either--they work on similar principles as the real numbers, even if they are slightly different, and there is even a complementary complex plane that you can put these imaginary numbers on, similar to the way you graph a function on a Cartesian coordinate system. Imaginary numbers also follow particular rules, as real numbers do, even if they aren't the same, and furthermore, it has been discovered that the complex numbers exist in 2, 4, or 8 dimensions, but never any other dimensions--this has even been proven. If imaginary numbers had anything at all to do with faith, then they would be arbitrary and wouldn't follow particular rules, but they do. Most people used to think they didn't exist because the notion of -1^1/2 was ridiculous--but it turns out they are workable. Don't think that just because "imaginary" numbers bear that name that they might have anything to do with faith. If people feel that is true, it may just be because they don't understand the subject.

 

[Mitsuki]

Currently, there is no logical way for a God to exist. Why? Because God is perfection. Perfection is, by definition, an impossible paradox. Perfection isn't "the best," it's perfect. It means that there are no flaws. To have no flaws automatically makes perfection a flaw, for if you are flawless, what have you left to improve? Your life will be wasted away doing things without satisfaction.

Okay, just wanna point this out. I'm not going to have a go with any of you guys because this isn't really my thing, you see. However, I have to say something about this particular quote. First of all, perfection and flaws are in the eyes of the beholder. How can you deem something perfect and assume that the person besides you holds the same view as yours? You may see something as flawed, but someone else may see something as perfect.

Second of all, when you said "Perfection is, by definition, an impossible paradox." - who exactly wrote that definition? What or who are you basing it from? A faulty human, correct...? The definition is faulty because a human defined it. Someone who is imperfect. We must all understand that perfection is beyond our understanding because true perfection is not something feasible for any person to accomplish.

And...how exactly is something a flaw if there is nothing left to improve...?

Third of all, let's get into science. I'll ask the ever-so-repetitive question, "How can you disprove the existence of God?" Now let me clarify that science is not being used to disprove God, but people tend to use science to prove the existences of everything through scientific methods and theories - and completely removing God out of the equation, and therefore, it is an attempt to disprove God indirectly.

Oh but yes, you can try to use science but what theory are you basing it from? The Big Bang? Evolution? Well, the common scientific theories lack substance due to its origins, because the origins cannot be explained either. The common thing that all these scientific theories have is that they can all be traced back as far as chemistry. But then...how did chemistry come into existence? The particles always were...? So does that make chemistry the omnipotent one?

I may have posted more than what I intended. My point is, we think we know so much, but there are so much we don't know. We can't even begin to imagine. So many questions without answers, so how can we possibly even begin to fathom what omnipotence is like? We cannot base it off of human logic because it is beyond us or any human reasoning that may exist.

 

[Donald Trump]

We cannot base it off of human logic because it is beyond us.

so, therefore we are all flawed?

So does that make chemistry the omnipotent one?

life is formed from proteins, proteins from amino acids(which is odd as you need something like 1600 amino acids in exaclty the right order to get proteins), amino acids from the big bang, the big bang from the singularity that existed before that, but before that, is unknowable as the big bang is t=0.

First of all, perfection and flaws are in the eyes of the beholder

to an extent,
but nothing (excluding god) can be perfect

if i thought i was perfect it would mean im arrogant, thus not perfect, also perfection gives something a ceiling, which is therefore not perfect.

also the nature of somethings makes them incomprehensible to humans. eg infinity, god as a concept, the universe itself and even life

 

[der Astronom]

Okay, just wanna point this out. I'm not going to have a go with any of you guys because this isn't really my thing, you see. However, I have to say something about this particular quote. First of all, perfection and flaws are in the eyes of the beholder. How can you deem something perfect and assume that the person besides you holds the same view as yours? You may see something as flawed, but someone else may see something as perfect.

I'd post in response to this, but only because I want to make a response. Please don't think I'm doing this to get you to keep posting about this.

Third of all, let's get into science. I'll ask the ever-so-repetitive question, "How can you disprove the existence of God?" Now let me clarify that science is not being used to disprove God, but people tend to use science to prove the existences of everything through scientific methods and theories - and completely removing God out of the equation, and therefore, it is an attempt to disprove God indirectly.

I use what I know from science to judge that certain things in the bible could not have been true. Of course, I realize that scientific knowledge was not discovered or concluded upon for the sake of disproving what is in the bible, but I conclude from my own opinion of what I know from science that I don't believe in God. Even in using science, you can't really conclude that God doesn't exist unless you admit that's your opinion based off of what you know of science--you can, however, say that the probability God exists is low, based on what you have seen--the fact that God is said to be ubiquitous, but there is no evidence of him in nature, or the fact that he might exist to right wrongs, yet that doesn't happen, or the fact that he uses natural disasters to punish people, yet natural disasters strike arbitrary in relation to morality, but makes the most sense in terms of meteorology and geology. Science has told us what can and can't happen in nature, but whether or not you choose to see if God exists or not is entirely up to you. People just choose to base their opinions off of science because they find it is reliable and acceptable. And others prefer to rely on the bible, so they believe in God, and even if science has found certain things to be untrue in the bible, they still continue doing it. Why they do it is a mystery to me, but that's not really my problem.

Oh but yes, you can try to use science but what theory are you basing it from? The Big Bang? Evolution? Well, the common scientific theories lack substance due to its origins, because the origins cannot be explained either. The common thing that all these scientific theories have is that they can all be traced back as far as chemistry. But then...how did chemistry come into existence? The particles always were...? So does that make chemistry the omnipotent one?

It is not the goal of science to explain the "origin" if it is not observable or natural. However, the Big Bang was clearly observable from the evidences found in space and the expansion of the universe, which was why it was even suggested. Perhaps we're not exactly clear of the details in which the Big Bang happened, but as people who study a continuous means of discovery, scientists may discover more about it eventually. Of course, you could say that about any scientific study, that we are never going to know "enough" about something because we can keep studying it--but that's where probability comes in.

On another note, I just wanted to mention that evolution has nothing to do with the origins of life--it explains the history and diversity of life, but not how it started. That would probably be abiogenesis, but that theory is not necessarily connected with evolution.

I may have posted more than what I intended. My point is, we think we know so much, but there are so much we don't know. We can't even begin to imagine. So many questions without answers, so how can we possibly even begin to fathom what omnipotence is like? We cannot base it off of human logic because it is beyond us or any human reasoning that may exist.

Scientists don't suggest they "know" so much as they discover and continue to refine on observations of natural phenomena they have seen previously. You might considered Newtonian mechanics as a body of knowledge, but scientists see it as a discovery that continues to become refined and improved--and this is what happens when Quantum mechanics was discovered. It improves our knowledge of physics that was previously explained with Newtonian mechanics, but this does not make Newtonian mechanics completely incorrect; just less accurate. Also note
that Newtonian mechanics works fine for particular experiments, and the difference between using Quantum and Newtonian mechanics in these cases are small enough to be insignificant--Newtonian mechanics are still useful to some degree. We only "know" in so much that we know the probability of how accurate our predictions or studies might be. But real scientists never suggest that they absolutely "know" what will happen. If they did, there would be no real reason to conduct an experiment. It is only the people who don't understand science that think it means they know a lot.


But with omnipotence, this is a human defined term, so we should know what it is. But as with the math argument I explained above, one need not know what infinity is exactly to work with it, or one need not have seen the crime happening in order to know who the murderer is, or one need not know what dinosaurs or other ancient organisms looked like exactly to know they existed--these are all things that we know through reasoning and other traces of evidence. Through reasoning, we know how omnipotence is a paradox. What I would also like to ask is how the bible writers, humans, would know what the term omnipotence means if they were to describe God in their writings--if omnipotence is unfathomable, how do they even know that God is omnipotent?

But on the matter of not having enough answers to the many questions around the world that we see, I do not worry or wonder at how it is we don't have an answer or answers for everything. I have long given up worrying or wondering at such things. For I know that there are an infinite number of questions that could be asked about many things, which could fill up more than a lifetime to seek--it also doesn't scare me that they remain unanswered and unknown. It is a part of life that I accept, and if the unknown did not exist, there would be no reason for science to exist either. Just because science might never discover all the things there are that could exist that could be discovered is not a reason to stop discovering things, and the fact that we don't know certain things now is also not a reason to stop learning anything at all. If science didn't exist, our living standards would not increase. Just because I might not be able to learn every single language in the entire world doesn't mean I should stop learning Latin. Just because I might not encounter every single math problem that exists or learn of every possible theorem that might exist in math doesn't mean I should stop doing it. I learn Latin because I enjoy it. I learn math because it is not only enjoyable and beautiful, but also useful.

The fact that we may never know everything by the end of our lives or even by the end of humanity is not a reason to fear the unknown.

 

[Dark Adonis Wilt]

Well I'll put this in terms so everyone can understand. There is no God, I think it's extremely naive of people to believe that there is a heaven, and that in some way death is escapable. There are no angels watching over those that are "good", nor is there an omnipresence watching your every move to make sure your life goes the way you want it.

To be honest it's extremely childish of people to think so. Ya, it gives you a safety net to know "someone" is watching over you. Why not watch over yourself? Why not realize the world isn't perfect and certain things happen. One thing I find funny, anytime something good happens in the world it's by the hands of God, but when bad comes around God has a plan for it. Why not just accept it for what it is, a coincidence.

Praying can be fun, to hope that your wildest wishes will come true. I wish I had a magic button to press anytime I had something bad happen to me too. But I don't get to my knees, cry like a baby and ask God "Why me!?". I deal with it, life throws shit at you all the time, if you expect yourself to live problem free you should grow up. And the whole heaven and hell thing is just stupid, you die to go to live with God? If God is all knowing why does he not just create those who are good to live in heaven with him, or does he enjoy torturing his loyal ones?

I'd say the Devil has the right idea, defiance against a turd sandwich like God is a good thing. Why rule under the thumb of a freak who's moral values make it okay to rape women and murder gays. I like how the bible has been rewritten so many times all that is gone, why would anyone want something to contradict their faith anyways right? God teachings are quite cruel by today's standards, and as for his son "Jesus". If a person who came around preaching he was the son of God in our time he would be deemed a crackhead. Yet people worship a crackhead who died over 2000 years ago, why is that again?

That freak died over 2000 years ago, and guess what? He isn't coming back, same thing will happen to every single living thing. We all die people, we can't escape death, we can delay it, sure. What makes us so unique to think only we, humans, get to die and live beyond that. When planets die, do they go to planet heaven with planet God? Do trees have a tree Jesus? If they did I'm guessing he's part of green peace and PETA.

I can understand where the thought of death can scare some, and thinking you will be "reunited" with those you have lost can be a comforting thought. But that's just false hope, and maybe this is why people live their lives miserable. Because they figure fuck this world when I can have my wildest dreams come true in heaven, too bad they will never know how stupid they were when they die, lucky I guess in that sense. Bugs die, leaves die, galaxies die, humans die. See a pattern? Live life to the fullest guys, we don't have any second chances, and always appreciate those around you, never know what will happen to them.

You hope for paradise when you have everything you need right around you, and some people ask me why some are born with disorders, disabilites and such. Fact is, they're weak and were never meant to survive in the first place, Darwin has it right. I take pride in being strong, and knowing I can take care of myself, everyone should be. The human race created God, not the other way around =/.

 

[Fair_Game]

Wow, so much for practice...and yeah I had a problem with the whole 'definition of perfection' thing too.

Just seems off. God doesn't exist because he's perfect and perfect doesn't exist because it doesn't make logical sense. Therefore since perfect doesn't exist God equally doesn't exist? Flawless is flawed. That really sounds like a lot of double talk and definitions eating themselves.

But much like the fact that I can't comprehend non-existence, I can't comprehend something that just 'is'. Human definition says God can't exist, but what if God doesn't speak in human definable terms?

I think perfection is unattainable but I don't think its impossible to be perfect. I can't become an apple but that doesn't mean apples don't exist. Maybe the word perfection is another word for God? The definition of an entity...so God is Perfect now and since God defines perfect and perfect, God...humans try and define perfect to define God and can't. Why would they be able to? They'd have to be perfect to define perfection, they'd have to be God to define God.

Really I think if there was a all-powerful creator would he be foolish enough to creat a race that could one day prove his existence? Lets say, for the sake of argument, that God wants to test people...yeah the goal is to believe when nothing supports the idea and nothing contradicts the idea...we've got a faulty book and a whole lot of humans and their different views on it. Would the God of THAT situation make it easy to find him?

Couldn't God just be using all these Laws of Science and Math to do his work...he's a smart guy lets assume so he decides 'I'm going to make an untraceable link between me and evolution so that humans (when they get smart) will look back and not be able to figure out what caused this mess.' And all the natural disasters and plagues are traceable to natural events...isn't that an even better mask?

Lets say he knows everything...he knew when moses would need to part the sea, so he sets up a fissure to go off underground at exactly the right moment...he'd know exactly when and exactly where...so he moves plates around to put them on a collision corse for that time and date. Doesn't sound too impossible does it?

But then comes the question of Fate and Free Will. Man has been given the will to choose, does that mean that God doesn't know what man will choose?

There are only 2 perspectives that any God-believer can KNOW OF (those with free will but believing in a being that is all-knowing, Note : those not believing in god only know of 1 perspective...haha God-believers pwn j/k) and that is there own perspective and that of God's perspective. Of the two they can only KNOW one, there own. So God knows what you are going to do...and you know what you are going to do... You come to a crossroad and you can pick left or right. God Knows you are going to pick right, You know you are going to pick right...does that mean God made you pick right? No its just what you picked, and he knew you would.

Its like that one guy said...Is there a possibility that something could exist apart from time. Time, I don't know much about math but isn't that a factor in like all physics? The clock is ticking but for everything on the planent, everything in existence by human definition is acted upon by time...but is there a possibility that something 'is' outside of time?

Anyway, I've got one other thing to say. I'm a pretty brave guy. I've done some things that other people scratch their heads over... and go 'that takes guts'. (haven't worn bullet ant sleeves yet but I'd try!) And I believe in God.

Just saying not everyone turns to God as a crutch, some of us turn to him as a companion...and thats not so bad. I don't need God (if I can't know his perspective then I can't know what he does for me so I assume I don't need him, to the same degree I assume that he does do things for me so I thank him blindly...not so bad?), in my belief He needs me...and thats really cool. Trusting in God to do great things sounds stupid? But if there is no God then you're really just trusting yourself right? So isn't that the same thing as doing things yourself, you just have a different name for it. Some guys name their equipment, I name my bravery...not so bad?


(edit: could those who find fallacies in my argument tell me about them? I really can't tell when I do it and don't mean to.)

 

[Donald Trump]

Just saying not everyone turns to God as a crutch, some of us turn to him as a companion...and thats not so bad. I don't need God (if I can't know his perspective then I can't know what he does for me so I assume I don't need him, to the same degree I assume that he does do things for me so I thank him blindly...not so bad?), in my belief He needs me...and thats really cool. Trusting in God to do great things sounds stupid? But if there is no God then you're really just trusting yourself right? So isn't that the same thing as doing things yourself, you just have a different name for it. Some guys name their equipment, I name my bravery...not so bad

if you were referring to savvy's post just ignore it, it's a generic " I H8 GOD AND RELIGONZ DHEY ARE UBER EVIL N WEAK. I R MUCH BETA RELIGONZ R WEAK I R BETA.

but is there a possibility that something 'is' outside of time?

yes but it is unknowable, or to be more exact, undefinable.
it's the reason Einstein(who believed in god) became disillusioned(kinda). he thought that there is no way that god would make something unknowable.

Really I think if there was a all-powerful creator would he be foolish enough to creat a race that could one day prove his existence

but thats unprovable either way as far as i know.

I think perfection is unattainable but I don't think its impossible to be perfect. I can't become an apple but that doesn't mean apples don't exist. Maybe the word perfection is another word for God? The definition of an entity...so God is Perfect now and since God defines perfect and perfect, God...humans try and define perfect to define God and can't. Why would they be able to? They'd have to be perfect to define perfection, they'd have to be God to define God.

apples are tangible, perfection is a concept.

therefore if something were to be perfection, it would logically be a concept?

 

[Dark Adonis Wilt]

I like how Placebo ignores everything I say, religious people always throw fits when you contradict their faith, sorry sweetheart. Glad to see living proof that I'm right though haha, congratulations.

And both of you are wrong, perfection is an opinion. What I may find to be perfect others my find wrong. Same way with good and evil, just an opinion, just a useless label religious people use. Here's my impression of religious people, *clears throat* *cough*,

"God says I have the right to judge people, so I decide what is truly evil and good because God loves me and is all knowing! Whenever people contradict the things I was brought up to believe in I automatically attack them with stupid jokes just to sway the subject from religion to a personal attack!"

Pretty good eh?

 

[Erythritol]

This thread is turning into garbage, honestly. At least the people who started it were refraining from trashing religious people completely.

Honestly, this debate is pointless and will be fruitless. You can't outargue or outlogic someone out of their beliefs, especially religious beliefs. Just like someone said their is no religion in math, there is no math in religion. You cannot try to "prove" anything in this debate. Waste your time with all the logic you want. You still haven't actually proven anything. The belief in God goes beyond any of your logic, science, math, or the Bible. It has always been with us, and probably always will be. As far as I'm concerned, the idea that there is a God is just as "logical" as the idea that there isn't.

Moving onto something else...Savvywilt, let me put this in terms that you'll understand: you're an intolerant little douchebag. If the thought of a God comforts people, let them be comforted. You criticize Christianity for being intolerant. You attitude shows that you are JUST as intolerant.

 

[der Astronom]

Wow, so much for practice...and yeah I had a problem with the whole 'definition of perfection' thing too.

Just seems off. God doesn't exist because he's perfect and perfect doesn't exist because it doesn't make logical sense. Therefore since perfect doesn't exist God equally doesn't exist? Flawless is flawed. That really sounds like a lot of double talk and definitions eating themselves.

Let's look at this in terms of symbolic logic, shall we? Suppose that we have the condition, A --> B. A being "perfect" and B being non-existence (in this case, you may want to use the condition A --> /B "not" B, and in this case, B is existence, but it doesn't really matter, because it's really just the same argument). This reads perfection implies it does not exist. Now take God, who is perfect. According to the syllogism, [A --> B ^ A] --> B, (A implies B and A) A is true, so B must be true. If A is true and B is false, then there is a contradiction. In other words, God does not exist according to symbolic logic and the statement that perfection does not exist.

There is nothing flawed in the logic itself, though I thought the other debaters were suggesting that we are not capable of comprehending perfection in a non symbolic logic manner, though I would suggest that it be prudent to actually prove that this is the case--that we aren't capable of comprehending the perfect just because we aren't perfect. Otherwise, I once again refer you to my argument examples I posted before: We can know about irrational numbers, even though they have an infinite number of decimals, we know who the murderer is, even though we haven't seen the crime happen, and we can know the last digit of a large number without knowing what the number itself actually is.

But much like the fact that I can't comprehend non-existence, I can't comprehend something that just 'is'. Human definition says God can't exist, but what if God doesn't speak in human definable terms?

I think perfection is unattainable but I don't think its impossible to be perfect. I can't become an apple but that doesn't mean apples don't exist. Maybe the word perfection is another word for God? The definition of an entity...so God is Perfect now and since God defines perfect and perfect, God...humans try and define perfect to define God and can't. Why would they be able to? They'd have to be perfect to define perfection, they'd have to be God to define God.

This is actually an example of what I posted before. Once again, one need not be alive when dinosaurs were living to know they existed, and one need not see someone else's brain to know they have one. Otherwise, I could say the same for a variable number of things--do we have to be a fictional character to define what they are, or do we have to be our friends to know what they are, do I have to be Gauss to know that he's a genius, or do I have to be a moron to know someone is stupid? Obviously not. I might suggest the reason people make these kinds of arguments is because they don't like the fact that their God is being judged by other people, or that he's being characterized in a way they don't like.

Really I think if there was a all-powerful creator would he be foolish enough to creat a race that could one day prove his existence? Lets say, for the sake of argument, that God wants to test people...yeah the goal is to believe when nothing supports the idea and nothing contradicts the idea...we've got a faulty book and a whole lot of humans and their different views on it. Would the God of THAT situation make it easy to find him?

I don't see what's wrong with that. What's wrong with having his existence made known? Would you say it's a responsible creator that would make his existence known so that a person might have a better role model to look up to, and is being reaffirmed by the fact that he exists, and he can be seen, rather than someone who cannot be seen? Where's the love and the admiration in that? We love people because we can see and interact with them--we can know who they are, and love them for who they are--one would think that's a better reason to let yourself be known to the beings that you might create. And an omniscient being also has no reason to test anything he creates. He would already know what they are capable of. And I also don't think that testing people is a good way to be friends with people. You can normally observe people the way they are without "testing" them.

Couldn't God just be using all these Laws of Science and Math to do his work...he's a smart guy lets assume so he decides 'I'm going to make an untraceable link between me and evolution so that humans (when they get smart) will look back and not be able to figure out what caused this mess.' And all the natural disasters and plagues are traceable to natural events...isn't that an even better mask?

The assumption that he is smart is invalid for the reason that his actions in the bible show him to be not very intelligent. However, there's no mechanism that explains how these things could have happened by divine intervention, even if he were to use the laws of science--how should he be able to withhold the water vapors in the sky from falling? They fall simply by their own weight--and nothing changes that, unless you wish to concede it could be done by some supernatural force--then it ceases to be natural, and not relative to the laws of science.

Lets say he knows everything...he knew when moses would need to part the sea, so he sets up a fissure to go off underground at exactly the right moment...he'd know exactly when and exactly where...so he moves plates around to put them on a collision corse for that time and date. Doesn't sound too impossible does it?

The question is in how he would move these plates--it would take a sheer force to be able to do such a thing, and if he ever used technology, there should be traces of it somehow--if it were none of these things, it's quite likely that supernatural intervention was involved--once again, these have nothing to do with the laws of science. Now even if you were to assume this was even remotely possible, you have no evidence that this happened. If the plates moved in such a way, there should be evidence of that, but I can't seem to recall the plates being moved in that way for that given reason.

But then comes the question of Fate and Free Will. Man has been given the will to choose, does that mean that God doesn't know what man will choose?

There are only 2 perspectives that any God-believer can KNOW OF (those with free will but believing in a being that is all-knowing, Note : those not believing in god only know of 1 perspective...haha God-believers pwn j/k) and that is there own perspective and that of God's perspective. Of the two they can only KNOW one, there own. So God knows what you are going to do...and you know what you are going to do... You come to a crossroad and you can pick left or right. God Knows you are going to pick right, You know you are going to pick right...does that mean God made you pick right? No its just what you picked, and he knew you would.

That's not the reason why omniscience and free will contradict each other. They don't work because if I changed my mind, God would know that I did that. If he didn't, he wouldn't be omniscient. Or if I decided not to choose, or decided to let someone else choose, he would know that too, and whatever free will I have is redundant because someone exists who knows what I will choose, and it might as well not have existed.

Its like that one guy said...Is there a possibility that something could exist apart from time. Time, I don't know much about math but isn't that a factor in like all physics? The clock is ticking but for everything on the planent, everything in existence by human definition is acted upon by time...but is there a possibility that something 'is' outside of time?

And what do you have to gain from exploring such a possibility when there's no evidence for such a thing?

Anyway, I've got one other thing to say. I'm a pretty brave guy. I've done some things that other people scratch their heads over... and go 'that takes guts'. (haven't worn bullet ant sleeves yet but I'd try!) And I believe in God.

Just saying not everyone turns to God as a crutch, some of us turn to him as a companion...and thats not so bad.

But why would you need God as a companion when you could have real people whom you can see, interact with, talk to and do things with in real life as companions instead? They'll play, laugh, cry and do more things with you than God ever would for you. And because you admit that perfection is unattainable and not understandable by us, why would you want such a character who is perfect to be a companion for you? Wouldn't it make more sense to want a companion who can relate to you--someone just as imperfect as you?

I don't need God (if I can't know his perspective then I can't know what he does for me so I assume I don't need him, to the same degree I assume that he does do things for me so I thank him blindly...not so bad?),

Why even go to waste the effort of thanking someone you can't even see, and might not even be a benefactor for you at all?

in my belief He needs me...and thats really cool. Trusting in God to do great things sounds stupid? But if there is no God then you're really just trusting yourself right? So isn't that the same thing as doing things yourself, you just have a different name for it. Some guys name their equipment, I name my bravery...not so bad?

I can't see how that shows trusting in God is the same as trusting in oneself.

This thread is turning into garbage, honestly. At least the people who started it were refraining from trashing religious people completely.

Honestly, this debate is pointless and will be fruitless. You can't outargue or outlogic someone out of their beliefs, especially religious beliefs. Just like someone said their is no religion in math, there is no math in religion. You cannot try to "prove" anything in this debate. Waste your time with all the logic you want. You still haven't actually proven anything. The belief in God goes beyond any of your logic, science, math, or the Bible. It has always been with us, and probably always will be. As far as I'm concerned, the idea that there is a God is just as "logical" as the idea that there isn't.

I have no idea who told you we were intent on forcing other people to be atheists, as I've already made that clear--we are not posting these things for the sake of bashing religious people, or forcing them to change their religion. That's entirely up to them. We are only here in explaining why we choose not to believe or believe, whichever the case may be--the only things we had wanted to have proven was the reasonings behind why we're atheists. You may believe that math or logic has no relevancy to religion at all--in which case, that's also another good reason why I have no interest in subscribing to it. But when you say that there is no logic in religion, then you should not compare the concept of God with logic, which I see you have done in your last sentence. Try not to contradict yourself.

But apparently, there's more--decency in a debate and reasoning used in a debate, of which I dwell on the latter. To say that logic and religion are separate would imply that debating about religion is pointless because then there seems to be no basis whatsoever for debating about it, but I could suggest that the reason people are trying to cling to such notions of the irrelevancy of logic and religion is simply because certain people do not like to see it dissected apart, and to try to derail the topic, simply say they have no relevance. They have no relevance in the sense that religion is not very rational--a good reason why a great number of us are atheists. However, we, who build our perspectives of life and everything else around us from logic and reason cannot help but see religion in light of logic--and it is for this reason that we dissect religion in the ways that we do. Telling us that logic and religion are irrelevant only confirms what we've already known, and perhaps it is a sign that you are basically just giving up debating about this or concede with our reasons for disbelief.

Moving onto something else...Savvywilt, let me put this in terms that you'll understand: you're an intolerant little douchebag. If the thought of a God comforts people, let them be comforted. You criticize Christianity for being intolerant. You attitude shows that you are JUST as intolerant.

I might have missed the previous ad hominem over the grammar and spelling, but I will point out another one here for the douchebag comment--as if that makes his arguments less valid. Furthermore, I'm fairly sure he didn't say that Christians shouldn't be comforted by God, only that he has difficulty seeing why that should work at all.

And just so that you know, it's dangerous to be chucking stones from a glass house.