Religion (God)

he exist...end of story :D

ya sorry zasch, that was a little harsh, maybe this would've been better...
"many have discussed religion, but few have practiced it." Ben Franklin

Gwino wrote:ya sorry zasch, that was a little harsh, maybe this would've been better...
"many have discussed religion, but few have practiced it." Ben Franklin

Except this doesn't prove religion true (or really anything about religion)

i'll have to disagree. if you havent really practiced or experienced it yourself, who are you to be a judge of it? try taking sex tips from a 10 year old. they may know the what happens, but they have no personal experieence and are unaware of the true essence of its being.
you have yet to see the true bases of these beliefs.

Gwino wrote:i'll have to disagree. if you havent really practiced or experienced it yourself, who are you to be a judge of it? try taking sex tips from a 10 year old. they may know the what happens, but they have no personal experieence and are unaware of the true essence of its being.
you have yet to see the true bases of these beliefs.

The quote you gave above, if you are going to use it for this argument, is defined in such a way that you essentially get to pick and choose who has "really" experienced religion. If I point to someone who appears to be religious and make some criticism, you are always able to say "Aha! But he didn't [i]really[i/] experience religion!"

You are trying to say that my supposed inexperience with religion disqualifies me from speaking on the subject. However, the subject is not on the subjective experience of religion (though I think there is enough literature on that to allow one to at least engage in a discussion): It is about the objective existence of a God, or the objective truth of some religion. On the discussion of objective fact, rather than subjective experience, experience adds very little.

If a particularly smart 10 year old were to get into a debate with you on, say, the effect that sex has had on social development...you would not be able to dismiss him based on his lack of experience with sex itself, because experience is irrelevant.

Furthermore, it is an ad hominem, and these are weak for the reason I will thus demonstrate:
I used to be a Mormon, with the whole "Hey pray to jesus!" thing going on. Hence, I have more experience with religion than I might really like.
But that doesn't change ANYTHING I've said: You stopped arguing against what I was saying and started to argue against me. Whether I have experience with religion or not doesn't make any of my statements any more or less true than they were just a moment ago when you thought I had no experience with religion. If it doesn't affect the truth value, then ultimately it seems to be irrelevant to the conversation.

i'll pray for you.
God bless.
=]]

That's nice. :)

I stopped reading at about page seven.
But, I just wanted to say, no, I do not believe in god.
I am an atheist.

One point I would really like to make, about the bible being written by man.
Have you ever played the game "Telephone"? One person whispers something to the person next to them, the object is to tell the next person down the line what you heard.

At the end, it is usually NOWHERE near what it started off to be.
The Bible. Written by man. Man is by no means perfect. And with all the translating and hand copying, I am sure that something was lost in translation.

But, even as an atheist, I think the bible has some good points. I don't, or ever did, even when I was of the Christian affilitaion, believe the bible as the truth. Or hold it as god's words, exactly. I think that it is stories, that are supposed to show you guidelines and teach you morals. I don't believe that everything in the bible actually happened. I believe they are stories.
I haven't read other bibles, as far as other religions are concerned, so I can't quote anything or make references.

I don't try to force anyone to give up their beliefs in their chosen God. One of my best friends is a very very religious Christian (this is not said in a negative way). I think that if someone wants to believe in something, sure, let them believe it. No one should discriminate. I certainly try not too. Because it really doesn't matter to me.

I don't appreciate when someone comes up and tells me that I need to pray to god to forgive me of my sins or I am going to hell. I am not saying that all Christians do this, but I have experienced it, and I think its wrong.
If what you believe in makes you happy, then by all means, you do that.
Because that is really all we have, the things that make us happy.

Just wondering--what happens when someone gets happiness from child molestation?

Moving on from Zasch and friends’ amusing battles of wit and random quotes, here’s to me adding my two pennies into the pot:

Armando;15047 wrote:What do you think?

What is your view on the subject?
I’m a Christian or at least, I claim to be one. I think that means my spiritual beliefs revolve around wholly worshipping God and some commandments. Whoops. Some people might subtly cough that I’m not that great of a Christian, and if a person’s religion is measured by Holy Scripture, I’m frankly not. I’m an awful believer, really, with liberal and often time even condescending perspectives on Christianity—my beliefs include killing fetuses, the death penalty, and the nonexistence of heaven.

But I believe in God, definitely, and also that a pretty mellow dude named Jesus voluntarily accepted an agonizing death for no reason except to pardon my mistakes. I believe in love but not the burning eternal atonement of an unfortunate afterlife. I believe in the concepts of goodness and love and happiness and some fateful karma of God’s doing that balances out everything. Christian at the word’s most rudimentary terms is “Christ-like” or a follower of Christ, and I think I have that. I don’t see Christianity as a strictly disciplined religion but as my faith in following the path of truth within my heart.

karaloveless;66201 wrote:
One point I would really like to make, about the bible being written by man.
Have you ever played the game "Telephone"? One person whispers something to the person next to them, the object is to tell the next person down the line what you heard.

At the end, it is usually NOWHERE near what it started off to be.
The Bible. Written by man. Man is by no means perfect. And with all the translating and hand copying, I am sure that something was lost in translation.

But, even as an atheist, I think the bible has some good points. I don't, or ever did, even when I was of the Christian affilitaion, believe the bible as the truth. Or hold it as god's words, exactly. I think that it is stories, that are supposed to show you guidelines and teach you morals. I don't believe that everything in the bible actually happened. I believe they are stories.
I haven't read other bibles, as far as other religions are concerned, so I can't quote anything or make references.
Furthering your argument, the controversial history of this faith needs to be taken into account--power struggles, crusades, selling children to slavery, naughty bishops and more! For example, King James’ translation of this book has some hundred thousand times billion errors in regards to the original Latin translation. Another example, before Constantine’s age, the followers of Christ were fed to lions. Soon afterwards, anybody of any other religion was fed to the lions. Much of the Bible’s text is influenced by a limited number of powerful individuals in a very chaotic world, and I accept that.

The Bible isn’t perfect, and to quote the book with utmost conviction will, at the most, just make you seem loony. This was proven back during the Scopes Monkey Trials when the stories of the Bible were made into a logical mockery. I don’t believe in the Bible as God’s Word; the Ten Commandments are our morals, the Beatitudes are the teachings of Jesus which nobody really tends to look at ever, and the other thousand something words often makes for good reading.

So why is the Bible’s ultimate perfection preached? Because human nature demands it. Being the haughty, greedy animals that we are, what reasoning do we have to suffer morals? Seemingly none, unless by God’s will. Thus, the Bible transformed into the history textbook of Life and Reason in a very chaotic world.

Of course, this is coming from a fellow whose knowledge of the Bible consists of the bare minimum: the first half page of Genesis, the story of Joah and the whale, and the Christmas birth day of Christ. Make whatever validity of it as you wish. ;)

Armando;15872 wrote:My question(s) are:

If God does exist, and God is all powerful and what not, why doesn't he make it so everyone believes in him? Why would God not make everyone believe he exists and pray for him and praise him?

First off, all the preachers--save the southern Baptists ones--I’ve known offers God as a compassionate and loving God. Think warm feelings; images of fathers and shepherds are way to go here. According to the Bible, he’s also occasionally a vengeful (Smite me, all might Smiter!) and jealous (Thou shalt not worship other Gods blah blah) God—almost humanlike. That evens things down to a father (Our Father in Heaven… ). Think loving daddy who cares about you enough to give you a whipping when you need it, leading to my example:

When you were but a wee lad or lass of two months, you were a pathetic, helpless thing. For the next several years, your life was in the hands of your then all-powerful parents. If they wanted to, they could have very easily trained you into a mindless, worshipping servant. “Fetch me the remote and I’ll feed you.” But they didn’t and chose to suffer a teenage rebellion instead. Why? Because as wonderful and heartbreaking owning a spiteful zombie slave sounds, living with one for the rest of your life is overrated. A horde of zombies would be a horror movie. Pun intended. :eek:

Which brings about my second point: what is the purpose of getting worshipped? Satisfaction? Happiness? Bronze sculptures, marble temples, and fifteen pyramids mean nothing to an all-powerful God. Being creator of everything, what does God want with tangible objects? Compared to the stars, the Eighth Wonder of the world would be, at the most, like a nice looking sand castle on a beach of crappy sand castles that looks awfully like all the other crappy sand castles He’s witnessed devoted to Him in the last two thousand years.

I’m convinced that He knows He’s all-powerful; by being God, He knows everything. Hopefully. With that in mind, if he wanted a world of worshippers he could just create one rather than go through the trouble of defeating Chuck Norris in one-on-one combat. But He didn’t, and He doesn’t. Maybe that means he just wants to raise his kids and watch them grow up. Satisfaction? Check. Happiness? Check.

:)

Solarflare;66563 wrote:Just wondering--what happens when someone gets happiness from child molestation?
Someone will get energy kicked in the face by me, arrested, and won't be having too much fun with or without soap in jail. Forever. But at least Jesus still loves someone. :D