X-Slayer, you ended any chance for an intelligent discussion long ago.
I have this same problem with my girlfriend.
She grew up Baptist, and hopes for my good that I am saved.
We go through all kinds of discussions, most of them end up mocking me for beliving in things like history, and not God. (“You believe what is in the history books, but not the Bible!?” or “Maybe George Washington doesn’t exist, how do you KNOW?”)
::sigh::
Faith isn’t logic(al).
You’re right, no matter how many times you write “I’m gonna make a million dollars,” chances are you won’t. But that’s not what we are talking about here.
We are talking about belief systems, replacing bad thoughts with good ones, and eventually knowing within our hearts we are ok for anything life hands us. There are many reasons why things happen to us, we don’t always know the answers, but we can control how we react to them.
We are all going to die, at different times, for different reasons, some of us young and others old. I believe what matters most is how we use the time given us. How we enjoy things, how we love things and other people.
If you are not offended by this post, we can continue in another place if you wish.
Love
Leroy
Oh, I agree with all that—and I’m an atheist and don’t believe in gods or afterlives. You don’t need to, to believe in what you’ve posited.
That’s true, what I propose is working with thoughts, and understanding the underlying beliefs that cause them. In this manner we can improve our personal relationships and obtain a fuller, more enjoyable life.
Using positive affirmations in a negative environment helps us to gain a wider perspective of life. It enables us to rise above the irritants of daily living. It allows us see beyond the maze of “dead ends” to find the exit signs.
Over the years I have developed a list of affirmations. It is not “the” list, or even the “ultimate” list, but it has helped a great many people. I get a lot of email about them.
Perhaps you could look them over and see what you think. Let me know how you see them.
Love
Leroy
If you want to win arguments, don’t try to win them.
Talk to your girl friend about truth. Find out if she believes in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus says to not judge others, to love your enemies, to forgive 70 times 7, and many other things that teach us to show kindness and compassion to our fellow man. Judgement is left to God, and He judges no one.
God is love, unconditional love, He harms no one, and asks His followers to do likewise.
Ask what kind of God she believes in, a God of anger, wrath, and punishment, or a God of love. We can’t have both because they are mutually exclusive and God never changes.
Good luck, and God Bless
Love
Leroy
Unfortunately for that theory, I am by nature an evil-tempered, cynical bitch with a bitter laugh.
(chuckle) That would be your assessment, but not necessarily mine. Affirmations are not true or false statements, they work slowly over time replacing our negative images with more positive ones. We can’t make good judgements if we only see one side of the question.
Love
Leroy
Interesting dialogs here! I have enjoyed this thread very much…but now for my $0.02.
I have many atheist friends and we have enjoyed this very discussion many times over the years. The funny part is that while I dont worry for their souls (I like to think of God as loving, not vengeful), I think they worry for my mind. After many of these discussions they have just thrown up their hands and asked “how can someone smart like you believe in something that cannot be proven?” Of course I always come back with, “I dont know, I just know im right.”, and well needless to say the discussion ends there. haha
I would like to consider myself a critical thinker. I question everything, and I mean everything! And it honestly disturbs me sometimes that while I will question say UFO’s, or ESP, I take something like God and need no proof. I need no proof, no lab studies, no third-party verification…I need nothing to believe in God except for the fact I know he exists. And yes, if someone came to me and said I saw a leprechaun, I would need proof…I mean real verifiable proof, I dont care what he thinks he saw.
Does that make me a hypocrite? Yea, by definition I would think so. Do I care? No. I know God exists, and I also know that leprechauns do not exist. So how am I so sure that God exists without any proof? Well simply because I feel it, I feel it from the top of my slightly(and I do mean SLIGHTLY) balding head, to my rather large feet! Is that a good answer? hahah…to a critical thinker? Nope. But its all I can give you.
Now, to the OP. Sounds to me the only thing that would change your mind is proof. Real, solid, hold in your hand, proof. And that is not something that anyone can give you. Faith comes from within, you cannot hold it, and you cannot measure it, it just well, is. You need faith to believe in God, and I dont know how to give someone faith.
btw…lekatt, you seem like a real nice person truly. But nothing kills me more than a person of faith calling Evolution “just a theory, not fact”. Stuff like that gives bad impressions!! Evolution is a theory because in science a Theory is used to explain observable FACTS. And Evolution is a fact. Also, lets not confuse Religion with Faith. I think Religion is a bad idea, but having Faith is not.
Dob, I find your honesty refreshing. You stated what you believe, but you didn’t try to claim that your faith is something that it is not, and you didn’t tell anyone else that they have to believe the same thing as you.
Thanks for the compliment, but I am not a person of faith. As a near death experiencer I met God, stood in His presence. I know He exists, and don’t need faith as such.
Now for evolution. Theory and fact are mutually exclusive, just as a God of love and a God of punishment. You can’t have it both ways in my opinion. I can explain my experience and you can read hundreds of NDEs, but if you’re not there you can’t feel the emotional impact of something as awesome and life changing as a near death experience. Many question it’s validity and I understand their concerns, but can only say what I experienced.
So if you weren’t there to observe the beginnings of our universe and life happening, and experiencing it, you can’t really know what or how it happened. Theory or speculation is the only logical conclusion.
Scientists think they can artifically induce NDEs, as they think they can recreate the beginnings of life. I think they are wrong on both accounts.
If, for instance, they really could recreate NDEs, they could solve the problems of the world. NDEs change people into kind, compassionate individuals who no longer wish to hurt anyone. Our world could be a utopia in a couple of years.
Love
Leroy
Of course this is a debating forum, but on this lets just agree to disagree okay? 
blowero thanks!
You seem to truely not understand what a scientific theory actually is. Scientific theory and fact are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a scientific cannot exist without facts on which to base the theory.
Joe Random already explained the misunderstanding of scientific theory, so I’ll skip that part.
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The beginnings of the universe is very different from the beginnings of life. The universe (may) have come to exist from the big bang. However, life did not arise for several billion years.
Lekatt, you keep saying we never saw evolution, but in fact, we CAN see evolution! For Instance, look at this proof that bacteria can and do evolve through natural selection
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And I think you have no idea what you’re talking about. There are several theories on the beginning of life, but as is indicated by actual evidence, old earth makes a hell of a lot more sense, and has actual evidence to back it up. As there are many theories on the beginnings of live, we can at least assume the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Now, how live exactly started is unimportant, as it could be a number of factors. (Asteroid impact, methane and lightning and chemical combinations, gamma rays mutating something etc. etc.) The thing is, single celled organisms can evolve and we can observe these changes.
About recreating NDE’s, this site has a way of explaining NDE’s. Fighter pilots can experience these NDE’s when high g’s cause blood to drain out of the brain.
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If I went through an experience that told me there was an everloving god, it would in no way change my cynical opinion about the world.
You are right, of course, I don’t understand all the reasons people claim what they claim. Why science can claim theory is fact, or why religion can claim you must believe in them or die a horrible death.
But I don’t really need to know all those things. I want to know the truth, so I look for truth, not doctrine or theories or explanations why these things are truth, and why I must believe them without any knowing or experience.
One thing I do know, no human existed here on earth to observe the birth of life. Therefore no one knows how or why or by what method it took place. Life is simple, why complicate it?
Love
Leroy
I won’t comment on the fighter pilots, the story bears no relation to NDEs.
To answer your last comment: NDEs happen to people when they least expect it. An accident, a heart attack, etc. The experience doesn’t “tell” anything, it shows you who you are and what you are doing here. You are surrounded by it, in it, you are it. Once you know, there is no returning to the way you were. It would be like trying to unlearn language or worse.
But I don’t push it, believe what you will.
Love
Leroy
Science doesn’t claim that a theory is fact.
Now, in the case of evolution, there are two seperate entities. One of these is the “theory of evolution”. The other is simply called “evolution” (or possibly the “fact of evolution”). They are not the same thing. Evolution has been observed to occur, and is accepted by the scientific community as fact. The theory of evolution is the attempt to explain how the observable fact of evolution works. People constantly confuse one for the other, or think that they’re both the same thing, and that’s where most of the confusion comes from.
Also, it is worth noting that the term “evolution” refers simply to the change of allele frequencies in gene pools from one generation to the next. The whole “man evolved from earlier primates” is merely a logical extension of the very basic, observable fact of evolution as defined above.
How do you propose to find the “truth”, then? Do you have an actual methodology?
You’re assuming that direct observation is necessary to unserstand how something happened, and that is simply not the case.
No one was around to observe the formation of the Grand Canyon, or the Himalayas. No one was around to witness the KT asteroid impact. Yet we still know how those things happened.
As for the very first origins of life, true, we’re not 100% positive on that. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have some very good ideas on the subject, though. And after the origins, we’re pretty positive that we know the mechanism by which life evolved.
Could you give me a cite for that?
Oh, sorry, the judgement left for God who doesn’t judge part, not the whole thing…
Nobody is saying that “theory is fact”, but “theory and fact are mutually exclusive” is nonsense. You take facts–for example, all living species now on Earth have evolved from other species of life. Then you make theories to explain how those facts came to be–living things are subject to random mutations, with the resulting differences in reproductive fitness being subject to natural selection, thus leading to the fact noted above, that species evolve into new species. You test your theories against the facts, and refine them where necessary when new facts are learned (the facts about the rules of genetics and heredity, for example).
No, no one was present when life began. No one claims that we currently have a very good understanding of how life began, either. But that’s largely irrelevant to the question of the factuality of evolution. Wherever life first came from, even if the first bacteria on this planet were put here by God or aliens or paradoxically bootstrapping time travellers from the 35th Century, it’s beyond doubt that the current forms of life on Earth–including humans–evolved from different forms of life. Humans evolved from non-humans. The same goes for any supposed objections to the Big Bang as invalidating evolution–wherever the Universe came from, wherever Earth came from, even wherever life came from, you and I and everyone else on this planet is descended from non-human ape-like ancestors.
Not all facts are established through the naked human ear (or ear, or nose). No one has ever seen an atom. No one has ever seen a germ for that matter, or any microbe, including the trillions of cells which make up a human body, except through microscopes, and who is to say that what we see through microscopes is real? Maybe microscopes (and telescopes, and X-ray machines, and MRI scanners, and all the rest) are just fancy devices for creating optical illusions. Maybe humans aren’t anthropoid primates, whose closest living relatives are chimpanzees, because the rest of you are all robots, or demons, or the Great Trickster God whipped us all into existence last Thursday complete with artifacts and reference books and implanted memories to make us think we live in a Universe billions of years old, or maybe I just dreamed you all into existence–but that’s about the level of solipsism you would have to resort to to convincingly deny the facts of human evolution.