So, God didn’t design and create us to worship him, but he will crush us like bugs if we don’t. It’s funny that you compare it to a parental relationship. Will you punish your children for eternity if they don’t do the dishes?
It rather reminds me of a meme I saw last week.
Jesus is knocking at the door.
Jesus: “Please let me in”
Person: “Why?”
Jesus: “I’m here to save you.”
Person: “From what?”
Jesus: “From what I’m going to do to you if you don’t let me in!”
Why, the original Yiddish, of course.
Well, have you ever convinced one to try?
…And a Darwin walking fish.
Trending on YouTube - LOLPilotz.
The real reason is that they can’t stay away from the milk bar before the flight.
Glossolalia, natch. Hard to transcribe, though.
[/jedi hand wave]These are not the contradictions you’re looking for. [/jhw]
It is VERY irritating (as much as caps are) when people use “facts”, which are already being challenged in order to prove other “facts”.
The best example in this thread being:
Q: There is as much hard empirical evidence for the existence of god as there is for the existence of the flying spagetti monster. Seriously. If God does exist then there is absolutely no difference between our universe and a universe where he doesn’t exist.
A: If God didn’t exist, we would never have been, so I can’t really agree there. You are assuming what you set out to prove.
OK. Now this is pure dumbness and is a very distasteful answer, as it provides no real answer, is contradictory to the question (in a way the makes it invalid, not from point of view) and adds nothing to the debate.
When someone asks what reason to believe, don’t say because you wouldn’t be here if he didn’t create us.
The question is, why believe he created us, obviously. Your vague and deliberately given answer is useless.
It’s like saying I believe in God because the Bible tells me to do so and the Bible was written by God itself so it must be universally true. See what I mean there? It’s a paradox, until you see the possibility that some lonely guy who wanted friends created a pseudo-religion (Christianity).
Adding to that seeing that there are many fallacies in the Christian Bible (The New Testament) and that it has been overwritten at least 10 times, indicating that changes has took place meaning that the “God’s words” were altered, taking the last drop of legitimacy from the Bible and Christianity is enough to not to believe in the existence of such an entity; at least one which is Christian.
Not a paradox, exactly, but very certainly circular reasoning. And definitely irritating, and terribly, terribly commonplace.
I knew a guy who belonged to one of those Christian offshoots who hold that, if you start off the day “right with God,” you cannot be hurt that day. Well, he stopped believing that nonsense when he had a serious auto accident and lost a leg. He realized that he had been set up with circular reasoning.
“Wait, wait, I was hurt that day!”
“Well, then, you must not have been ‘right with God.’”
What’s sad is that it took such an accident for him to see through the logical fallacy.
(It was almost a logical phallusy, too, because the injuries didn’t stop at the top of his leg.)
Well, I thought we’d killed this thread. Oh yeah, we had, which is why it’s not officially a zombie!
While I agree with your post, especially as improved by Trinopus, I wish people wouldn’t trot out this dog because it just won’t hunt.
There’s a big difference between God and the FSM. The latter is fairly well-defined, known fiction. The former is an ill-defined concept, but by some definitions might be worth considering in terms of discussion. Is it possible that we all have a creator? Yeah, that’s conceivable. There’s no evidence for it, but it’s certainly a more worthy question to ponder than whether the Tooth Fairy exists. And while there may be no evidence, there may be philosophical arguments to support it.
None that I buy, though. It certainly isn’t a simpler answer to the question of existence, and it’s a circular one as well.
And even if we all were created by some being does that give that being the right to define morality? According to Sartre et. al., no, and I have to acknowledge the wisdom of their arguments. Oops, wrong thread.
Apparently, you’ve never cracked it open, then.
Please explain to me why god is (apparently) making this so difficult.
Also, I’d love to see a demonstration that YOU are proficient in “its original language.” (Hint: there is more than one language that appeared in original bible texts. English isn’t one of them, not even King James’s English, just FYI.)
Indeed. What we see is there is no god. Or gods.
Little of the behavior ascribed to god in the bible makes a lick of sense.
I’m pretty sure every single human experiences death.
That’s true. Faith is something gullible people use to cling to beliefs that are in direct contradiction to reality.
Let’s see your proof. I’m interested.
If this is true, there’s little of it evident in the bible.
no – while every single human may “die” - to say they “experience death” suggests that there is something to experience once “dead”.
You can experience “dieing” - you can’t experience “dead” (or atleast, no one has lived to describe what that experience was)
Well obviously, if you start from the position of “this cannot possibly be wrong”, then you can find a way out of any conundrum. The bible could contain a passage saying “God’s nature is perfectly merciful and this means explicitly that he would never kill a human”, and then the next passage could contain “God smote Jeckel for picking up sticks on the sabbath with lightning”, and you’d find a way around that.
What’s more, your way of getting around this is funny, in that it completely discredits the bible. No, seriously - your claim that any perceived error is a translation problem means that basically every contemporary bible is a flawed, unreliable document that cannot be trusted. Whoops. And because we don’t have the founding documents in their original form (and indeed, that’d be no guarantee we’d know how to read them, or that you could even translate it in the first place!), that means we’re basically SOL. If the bible had a message for us, oh well - we can’t get at it.
Math: has nothing to say about god. Is essentially made-up frameworks that by design often have uses in describing or understanding the real world.
Science: has done nothing to confirm the existence of god, but has done a lot to destroy the historicity of the bible - such as demonstrating quite convincingly that Noah’s Flood could not have been global or have lasted very long, that the earth is neither flat nor the center of the universe, and that the Israelites were never enslaved within Jesus.
Medicine: Hoo boy. Do you really want to talk about medicine when the nicest thing you can say about faith healing is “if people don’t know you are praying for them, it doesn’t make things worse”?
Yes, and if they choose not to share that relationship with you, you lock them in the basement and set them on fire for a few years. That’ll teach 'em!
Demons are always picking up sticks on the sabbath. Stupid demons.
Please tell me that you don’t think you made an important point with this bit of inane pedantry.
I thought “we all experience death” meant that we are all exposed to death at some point. We lose family members, or pets. We see dramas with murders and suicides and death from disease. We experience it as a real part of the overall experience of life.
Pedantic or not, religion gets its power based on selling an expectation of experience “after death”.
Martyrs for Islam are promised 72 virgins in the “after life” -
Christians are taught heaven vs hell -
etc.
Your statement “everyone experiences death” (aside from Trinopus take on the comment) - is exactly what religion teaches their followers to fear - and/or what they must do to get a “reward”. It’s how religion holds its power over people.
So yeah, maybe needlessly pedantic - I know what you meant - that “death” is the reality that everyone must face and that there is nothing after.
It’s simply not an “experience”.
I wonder why if God is better than a human father, why does he need his children to beg for what they need. I am a human without the full knowledge of what is best or harmful to my child, and I would not kill them because they disobeyed me.
Why is it that one doesn’t really Get to know God Just believe, A good father makes sure his children know him. and they give or reject what their parent know what is good for the child, and to me prayer means a lack of trust that the heavenly father holds back until a certain amount of prayers are said for their needs
According to the Bible, Jesus said his purpose in coming was for the lost sheep of Israel not to save the world.