Imagine a world where there is a God. Where life forms, intelligence, self-awareness, and all other physical phenomena were planned and created by God. Where God gave humanity free will to choose to follow Him or not.
Now imagine some of the intelligent life forms wanted to deny God; to refuse to believe in a God which did, in fact, exist.
Their arguments that God didn’t exist would be exactly as they are here on planet Earth.
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As logical arguments, aren’t both of these versions just forms of Begging the Question?
The bottom line is that some propositions, such as God, are neither provable or unprovable.
But some propositions are more reasonable than others.
Arguments for his existence or non-existence are merely appeals to common sense or to hopeful emotions.
Here is “Ex Machina’s Wager”:
God doesn’t want a billion truckling bumpkins and huckleberry’s hanging around heaven. He created freethinking people who could reject the preposterous proposition of His existence. If He wanted sycophantic worship He would manifestly instill fear in His critters every day. But “fear of damnation (or oblivion)” does not equal “free will.”
His object was to create true individuals for eternal company.
Therefore, to gain immortality, you must conclude that God doesn’t exist.
If you believe in God you gain nothing, but if you disbelieve you will gain eternity.
Are you saying that arguing against the existence of something necessarily means you hate that something?
Well, I have to admit I do hate that sumbitch Bigfoot. Lopin’ around the woods with his bad posture, being all secretive and shit. Grrrrr! I’ll show him. I’ll call him a hoax!
-“Well I read all about him in the bible(or insert other religious text).”-
“So why do you believe it…it’s only a book. How do you know it’s true?”
-“Because it says it’s the word of god, you just have to have faith.”
“Give me a break, tis only words on a page”
I think most people believe in a god just because they are usually brainwashed from an early age, or they have some crisis in their life they might not be able to deal with, and so grab hold of a convenient way to not worry about the suffering of this life if they believe there is a soul and life after death. I think if most people just looked at the outside world and came out of their little box for a second they would realize the bullshit of religion. Evolution is an undeniable fact, the world is not 6,000 years old, and when you die thats it.
Are you dismissing religion because you presonally have done the research to make that conclusion, or are you simply parroting some semtiments you read somewhere, or heard someone say?
I’m not expressing something I heard someone else say, I’m just telling you how I personally feel. Some of these beliefs, ideas come from my personal experiences with religion. I am not about to claim that I or anyone else can absolutlely prove that god does or does not exist, but based on my own experience, and evidence available to me I don’t believe there is a god.
Well, pool told us why he thinks people believe in God, but that’s not the same as why people actually do believe in God. A little research could shed some light on the matter.
Brainwashing is perhaps too srong a term. But people are born into spritualism. It’s got be pretty rare where some guy whose never been exposed to it at all in his entire life just all of a sudden believes.
I mean, isn’t that the alternative?
I know people can decide for themselves what to truly believe in but you can’t deny where most peoples first exposure comes from.
Personal experiences. I can appreciate that.
I think a lot of people do accept certain teachings such as, many of the traditional chirstian myths, because they have been taught to by whatever group they belong to. I think their belief in God can come from their own personal experience. An experience they might describe as an encounter with a higher power. People can grow from there. I’d say their personal experiences are probably just as valid a reason for them as yours are for you.
Quite right Thudlow. Plenty of people develop beliefs based on their own life’s experiences. Lot’s of people have no real beliefs as children but some experience they have in their adult life converts them to believer. I don’t think the childhood brainwashing theory is all that credible when talking about “most believers”
Some people may be born into it but thats the exception to the rule. Certainly we are influenced by the people we are around. That goes for atheists as well as believers. We don’t learn in a vaccum. I don’t think that diminishes a genuine spiritual experience in any way.
Yeah, that’s what always got me too. You’d think if there was a gigantic being responsible for the creation of the world and who was omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, there’d be some irrefutable indubitable trace of it’s existence.
Why does God choose to communicate through human prophets and writers who contradict each other and often disparage each other? Why not write the holy text himself, in giant fiery letters hundreds of thousands of miles high, out beyond the orbit of Pluto. That way we’d know who God was, and how we should worship him and behave.
This may seem hopelessly naive, but I can’t get my head past it.
