This is true. One reason may be that Jewish folk don’t come pounding on my door shoving their beliefs down my throat.
Anyone else watch the TV show Supernatural?
In the show, 2 brothers drive around slaying various demons. In last night’s ep events occurred such that a previous non-believer realized that demons really existed. Which caused one of the demon hunters to say something along the lines like:
“You know ghosts? They’re real too. And witches, werewolves, and changelings. But Bigfoot is just a hoax.”
Kinda cracked up me and my heathen spawn.
I would guess it’s because usually those making the arguments for are themselves Christian, and those making the arguments against are often brought up in a Christian environment. Were this board based in India, I imagine there’d be a wider range of beliefs discussed. But mainly it’s American/Canadian, so that’s what happens.
It’s sort of like saying when people mock religion, they’re more often than not doing it in English. Is that because the mocking atheists have no arguments in German of French? No, it’s because it’s a cultural similarity that most of us are familar with.
You know when something is so fucking obvious you don’t think you need to explain it in baby speak when you reply, and then you realize oh wow, people really are that stupid.
Dragons and unicorns are purported to be animals. God is supposed to be a spiritual entitiy. Its apples and oranges folks. Wake up.
I don’t believe dragons and unicorns existed. Again its people misinterpreting the data. Just like when Scientists misinterpreted dinosaurs as giant lizards. They are not.
God or god theories are based on spiritual realms. If you see someone arguing points that are not made by God theorists that shows they can’t argue the actual point being made.
God has never been manifest physically then turned invisible and hidden. That’s just a jabberwocky way of side stepping the point.
You can’t use science to disprove God theories because one has nothing to do with the other. I would imagine you could use evolution theories and psychology and memes to disprove God and explain God theory.
Yeah, but magical animals. So maybe we’re at oranges and tangerines, if not jonathans and granny smiths.
Silly me. I thought I read something along these lines in an obscure little book somewhere…
Whatta maroon!
According to Christian mythology, Jesus was the supposed physical manifestation of God.
After this Jesus died, he allegedly came back three days later as a ghost and told people that he would be back someday.
How does science and god theories not have anything to do with one another? You said that science can’t be used to disprove god theories but you fail to explain why? What is your definition of “science?”
They’re both myths. Who gives a crap whether they’re spiritual or not, they are both made up stories.
But scientists changed their minds when new evidence was found. In spite of an overwhelming lack of evidence, people still believe in god.
Gosh it’s good to know that whole ‘Jesus’ thing is all just garbage. And the whole transsubstantiation thing. And all those times god appeared as a column of flame or flaming bush or whatever. And I know I’m missing some.
You could?
There is a debate I know among the Christians regarding Jesus and God. But nonetheless he was not “turned invisible and hidden”
He supposedly rose again from the dead three days later. That’s quite possible. If Jesus didn’t really die on the cross and was taken down and put in a tomb he could have simply recovered in the three days. Or it could have been exaggerated etc etc.
Still nothing to do with GOD and what GOD supposedly is, although I did think of this point myself. I’m talking GOD not Jesus or Mohammed or Noah or anyone human that may or may not have been credited with having divine abilities.
Go back and read the last few posts before mine and you’ll see why it gets frustrating dealing with the bait and switch.
Lets start with the animals, dragons…people probably found dino bones and thought they represented dragons which is how they came up in myths. Unicorns, who knows there’s a real possibility that someone mistook a white horse that had been decorated or something odd like that. Dinosaurs also misinterpretation of the data… they thought they were lizards and then they found out they were not.
Those are physical things and can use science to examine them. Data, evidence will be tangible.
God theory, which has been around forever, is based on the spiritual realm. So you can’t use science to disprove it.
When I say that you can use psychology, memes and evolution to understand God theory its based on research I have done. I’ll have to join and post it.
Even Dawkins wanted to know what the evolutionary benefit would be to being a God believer?
That’s what my interest is in. Not really whether or not he’s true. He’s obviously not true. But he represents something that is spiritual and deep in humans.
While we certainly agree on the first sentence of your post, I am left wondering what the “point” might be in your second one? IOW, how the fuck can you believe in something immaterial and incorporeal for which you have exactly ZERO evidence? 'cause if you do, there are literally endless entities (or as many as humankind can make-up) that fit that definition…and none of them need be “gods” in any particular sense. Nonsense? Most certainly.
Discarding Jesus big Daddy appears and disappears at will in the Bible in fact there’s some degree of argument on if man is allowed to see God’s face or not (some people he seems to talk face to face to others he only shows his ‘hind parts’ to). I understand that’s not your point it’s just baffling though that you consider pre-existing magic powers (God’s invisibility at will) somehow valid but are contemptuous when it’s applied to other magical beings. I’m sure with a little paging through mythologies we can find plenty of beings that were considered to have similar powers that would make them difficult to impossible to detect or prove through any means mankind has at it’s disposal do you give them the same credit as god?
Quite possible? You have a strange definition of ‘quite’ I’d say. The Romans weren’t exactly amateurs at crucifying people and if you accept the fact he was stabbed you’d have to buy into he laid in a tomb for three days with no medical care recovering from a savage beating, being crucified for an extended time and a stab wound well enough to wander off and recover. I’d say the chances are more like one in a billion if that.
I’d say it’s more likely the story of his body’s disappearance was simply made up well after the fact.
So what in your view is God? What traits does it have? How does it interact with humanity? If it doesn’t have any definable traits and no predicable pattern to its interactions with humans why would we believe in it?
I agree with you but that’s not how the majority of people think. Most people have “faith” in what they feel even though they say they don’t.
The best way that I can think to explain it is love relationships. They say love is blind. How many people do you know that dated an idiot but couldn’t see it until it was too late?
Maybe that’s the best way to describe God relationships to people, Dating an idiot because love is blind.
Can you explain the total creep out factor that comes along with the idea of people accepting that its REAL when there’s no proof?
You can’t discount THIS aspect of God. The evidence is right in front of your face. People believe. The fact that this floors you just means you don’t see what they do. But people do believe that they have experienced God in their lives.
There’s no doubt about that.
According to my interpretation of the Bible, Jesus came back with a physical body. He ate and drank. Thomas poked a finger through the holes in his hand. So while things were not normal per-say, I don’t think ‘ghost’ is the correct term.
Seems to me that your posts are the bait and switch but I guess that’s just my frame of reference.
So…you honestly don’t believe people have ever just made something up without relating it to something they’ve seen? Or am I reading too much into that statement? Anyway it doesn’t matter Gods in their various forms have most of the time just been Super Men (or animals) just like Dragons are super lizards.
It has been around forever? There’s simply no way to tell when primitive man came up with the ideas of gods. I’d say raw superstition came well before any kind of belief in gods and even superstition had to start somewhere.
This is the kind of crap you hear from ‘believers’ who are trying to pretend they are atheists. If god isn’t true what is spiritual in humans? Do you believe in souls?
Only if you’re a nutter.
One thing (dying) is not like the other (wounded).
Duh!
Really? Your parents must be proud. :rolleyes:
So which “GOD” is this you speak of? Care to elaborate? In Coherent this time, por favor?
oh and actually I never debated the magical powers of dragons and unicorns. I forgot they were supposed to have them. I was just debating their existence at all. Its a tad silly to debate the magical powers if we know they they don’t exist.
People also believe that having sex with a five year old girl will cure them of aids. People believe all manner of stupid things.
Now Joseph, that was a gullible man!
Depends on how you define faith. Some people seem willing to stretch it to absurd lengths to equate any form of belief into an equivalent ‘faith’ in what they believe in.
Blind perhaps but how many people love someone who nobody else can see or hear or has any physical impact? There’s a line between love being blind and loving a phantom.
Creep out factor? People are wired up to see patterns. Helped us survive to mate and evolve. It misfires and people see patterns that aren’t there. Spill salt have bad luck, throw salt over shoulder good luck. Curse nature spirits (and later God) crops die, praise god crops thrive. When these beliefs seem to be proven right it deepens your faith when they are proven wrong well…you just didn’t pray hard enough, throw enough salt, knock on wood…try harder next time because now you KNOW why things go wrong.
An aspect of god is that people believe in him? There’s message boards out there where people honestly believe that the Matrix movies are real (or at least partly true, no I’m not making that up I used to visit one for laughs) so does the Matrix theory have some validity to it now? There’s people who believe in Scientology with all their hearts it has changed their lives (for what they think is for the better) does that make Xenu somehow more real?
Didn’t Moses report seeing God’s back?
Tris
Where do you think gods came from?
‘Hey whats that bright flash of light that comes down from the sky during storms?’
‘Oh thats thunder, from some kind of thunder god I guess. Lets call him Zeus.’
That’s all a god is, a supernatural explanation for something humans don’t understand. Does the answer ‘God did it’ actually answer anything? No, it’s just a cop out. As human thought became more complex, so did our gods. Funny that.
If god is completely spiritual, and can’t affect this world in any physical way at all, then for all intents it doesn’t exist. If god can affect this world in any physical way, then it falls under the jurisidction of science. This ‘god is spiritual and you cant test that’ is just another cop out and doesn’t explain anything.