“The universe as a subset of God” - definitely got a ring to it. Might catch on.
Incidentally roger, on the subject of beliefs**, is yours still that humans and modern mammals lived with trilobites and dinosaurs and somehow stopped their remains fossilising for all but the most recent 1% of their time on Earth?
Ah, the Meat Mantra! I had begun to miss it.
No, I’m still not sure about neo-Darwinian evolution. But even Karl Popper was sceptical about it until he was 70 odd. So, as dopers love to say, you’ll have to cut me a little slack.
And the chase makes the conquest so much more enjoyable!
“The universe as a subset of God”.
Just noticed you can reverse it and it makes as much sense. But still sounds good…
Well, that wasn’t the specific question I asked you, but I will indeed cut you some slack in the hope that if you ever accept that humans and modern mammals didn’t exist when the dinosaurs existed, you’ll courageously come and tell us explicitly.
There are people that believe that they didn’t?
Fundies, right?
I’ll let roger spek for himself and didn;t mean this to become a hijack, but (as bodswood) he accepted that the Earth is billions of years old (which ‘Fundies’ don’t) and that human/modern mammal fossils are only found in the very top strata representing the most recent few million years. However, he could not bring himself to admit that this is because they didn’t exist before. He believes that there is some reason why their fossils don’t show up for all those billions of years (eg. horses, tigers, humans, birds etc. etc. ate the corpses for billions of years but suddenly stopped doing so, or something).
That seems a really advanced way of not making sense. Whence such a strange notion? (whether any poster on this board advances it or not).
To those who tell us they KNOW God exists because of some personal experience:
You know, it’s cool and everything to believe that you have thoughts and visions and conversations in your head that no one else can know or understand and that you can’t prove. But don’t suggest that that means what you are feeling is some sort of universal or omniscient or all-encompassing God. By your own description it is in your head only. This is fine. You are allowed your voices, imaginations and delusions-- just don’t dare to ascribe your pet noises to the rest of the world.
In other words, if your definition of God is the yakking in your head, then wonderful–God exists. But that ain’t much of a definition, is it? I might just as soon claim God is a pencil, and wouldn’t you have just a little laugh at that one?
If, however, you define God as some Universal, well, then you really have no way at all to back up the universality of your tales do you? (other than similar stories from folks that go to your Church and read the same religious tales) Because all you have to offer are your unsupportable claims.
And in turn you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, nor can you prove that God does not speak to people. You have to take their word for it. And those people believe in the existence and divinity of God.
That’s why it’s called faith. You either believe or you don’t. I respect your beliefs, I’d appreciate it if you’d back the hell up about mine.
Airman… I admitted in my above post that God does indeed exist, it just depends on how you define God. I do respect your beliefs. I just respect them as your personal beliefs that have no bearing outside of your own experience. I have no problem with people believing whatever they wish. But to imagine that one’s personal thoughts are anything other than just that-- to think that the conversations in your head indicate some sort of higher consciousness… well, frankly that’s just rather arrogant, isn’t it?
I don’t think so. Our thoughts are the thoughts of the Divine. We are part of the Divine, not separated from it.
Damn it, you noticed! I must have evolved a devious side, or you’ve evolved highly perspicacious abilities. Or, of course, both.
Actually that’s not entirely true. If a God’s characteristics are contradictory, such as a God being all just and all merciful then that God can be said not to exist-just like square circles can be said to not exist.
The problem with God is that many people just assume God exists without even realizing that their conception of God has no true positive primary characteristics. Sure, God has many secondary negative characteristics (the omni’s, which only tell us that God is without limits) and some positive secondary characteristics (ie, God loves everyone).
The problem of not having primary characteristics is that all other characteristics can not be meaningfully ascribed to the said being. I don’t know if I’m being clear, but I’ll explain in an example that I’ve picked up from Francios Trembly.
When describing something, you need to know what the primary characteristics of that something are. Is it made of matter? Is it material? etc, etc-before you can ascribe a secondary characteristic (In my example I’ll use a color, red).
The cape is red.
This can be true, because we know that capes are material and can be red.
The sound is red.
This can not be true because sound is a wave and can not be a color.
The soul is red
This can not be comprehended because souls are supposedly not made of anything in the natural world, and therefore how can we say whether it’s red or not?
So what of God? God is normally considered to be immaterial-but what does that actually mean? God is not part of the natural world or is made from something other then the natural world-again though, what does that actually mean?
In short, before we offer evidence or ‘proofs’ of whether a God exists or not, we have to define God a little better, or else the concept is meaningless and does not need to be disproved.
Now I’ve probably butchered this a bit, and since I had a bit of time I was able to go to where I got this idea, so if you are interested-check out this debate: Francois Tremblay
Groups/gene pools evolve, individuals don’t.
No more or less arrogant than it is for you to presume to tell me that my belief in God is “delusionary” or based upon “pet noises”.
“I respect your delusionary beliefs” is a completely incongruous posture, and that’s the stance you’re trying to take.
I’m just curious, but what’s the difference between this sort of personal evidence and the personal evidence that people in mental wards have?
Honestly, I’m not trying to be insulting-so please don’t take it that way-I’m just trying to understand.
When millions upon millions of people worldwide have the same “delusion”, one tends to think that it’s not a delusion after all.
Every single believing Jew, Muslim, and Christian believes in the same God. It is entirely possible that we could all be wrong, but that’s really not for anyone to say, now is it?
Contrast that to the guy that licks the paint off of walls and describes the purple elephants that the tinfoil hat couldn’t keep out. He may be right, but nobody shares his experience, therefore he stands out as a loon. Theists have the force of millions to confirm their beliefs.
That’s an extremely weak argument, Airman Doors. 800 million Hindus have a set of beliefs that are entirely different from, and contradictory to, those of the 1 billion or so Roman Catholics. One side or the other has got to be wrong. (Or quite possibly all 1.8 billion of them are, of course.) Two billion Christians believe that Jesus was God become man; a billion Muslims are convinced the idea is blasphemy. Either way, a heck of a lot of people are wrong. Up until a few centuries ago, the great majority of all humans then alive believed the Sun revolved around Earth rather than the other way around; that didn’t make it right. And many, many people have believed that Earth is a flat disk rather than a more-or-less sphere.
Understand, I’m not trying to directly compare belief in God with Flat-Earthism, just pointing out that the argumentum ad populum is rightly considered a logical fallacy. It doesn’t prove anything at all about whether or not something is true.
And I’m not trying to argue truth. I’m trying to argue faith. I admitted that we could all be wrong, but that’s not even relevant to the discussion. And the fact is, we’ll never know the truth until we die anyway, because there is no evidence either supporting or rejecting the existence of God. It’s based solely on faith and the determination that God either did or didn’t have a hand in our creation and our current lives.
What is relevant is that there is a significant number of people who believe in God, and we are being maligned by others for our “delusions” and “pet noises”. Why is it so hard to understand that some of us consider it to be a personal affront when we get an atheist who is free to believe whatever he/she wants maligning our beliefs as “delusionary” and “arrogant”?
I think the arrogant label is being applied to the wrong people. Who’s being arrogant here? The people who are making a good faith effort to defend their core beliefs, or the people who dismiss them as “delusions”?
Believe whatever the hell you want. But don’t dare to tell me that my beliefs are wrong and your beliefs are right, because in that respect you don’t have a leg to stand on.