Naturally, no. There’s no way to determine if your mate loves you, or if that love will someday change, or if that love is conditional or not. Judging by the history of human relationships, however, it’s reasonable to assume that the love you experience is most likely wishful thinking, and it’s only a matter of time before your mate divorces you and demands half your money.
That’s the reason the concept of “God” was invented, by the way – the search for unconditional love. Since unconditional love does not exist in this universe (or, at least, it’s very very rare) people need to invent some illusory entity who promises eternal love and salvation. So deep is this need, that a person would rather suffer torture at the hands of his enemies than admit to himself that this “God” concept is nothing more than that – a concept.
Why stop at God? Why not worship the entity that created God? Or the creator of that creator? Why worship at all? If God exists and is truly merciful, He will understand my skepticism and reward me for sticking to my guns. If God’s a petulant bastard who demands self-sacrifice and delusional thinking, well, then God’s promise of Heaven is probably a lie; so the correct choice in that scenario would be to rebuke God, and/or summon God’s creator to destroy God.
By the way, I hope you’re not citing Pascal’s Wager – it’s an illogical argument that makes inaccurate presumptions and displays a tremendous amount of selfish hubris on the part of the person making the wager.
I disagree; the original conception of God in the Old Testament is anything but unconditional and anything but loving. He’s nasty and a control freak. Just because some people these days like to talk about God being about unconditional love these days doesn’t make it the original conception, or a universal one.
I must admit I don’t get the appeal; unconditional love doesn’t mean anything. It’s no reflection on you and doesn’t mean you are the slightest bit lovable.
The Pharisees were very much like the Conservatives and Religious Right of today, the letter of the law followers, the one’s who think they are the only right ones. Jesus was accused of being a wino,that he spent his time with sinners. He made exceptions to the law when common sense would prevail.
There is no such thing as the foolishness of logic. Logic and truth are one and the same. If something is truthful it is also logical. If it is illogical it is not true!
Despite them being intangible, we can all experience them and relate them to another person, but the only person who experiences of a god relate to, are other people who believe in that god, and on the odd occasion, groups who believe in a similar god.
But that contradicts the the Bible. God made a number of physical events happen: it rained for forty days and flooded the entire earth, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed and Lot’s wife was turned to a pillar of salt, he spoke though a burning bush which was not consumed, he parted the Red Sea and then causes it to join again drowning the Egyptians,he caused a virgin to give birth, and he turned water into wine and fed a large, hungry crowd with a few baskets of bread and fish. All of these are tangible events that could be observed, detected and analyzed by science.
So no, in the past God was not restricted to the non-physical world. What scriptural basis is there for saying that God is not observable by science?
So we have a conundrum: the Bible shows that God is detectable by science but he has not been detected.
I have never claimed that God is restricted in the non physical world. When I said God cannot be perceived by science (by definition) I simply meant that there is no experiment someone can conduct to conclude that God exists!
Even is someone filmed the events you mention (Splitting the red sea in two etc) still, scientifically speaking no one can claim God made that happened.
I do not see and conundrum here. Bible says God intervenes and manipulates physical laws to his will, but never claimed that God can be found through science, reason being Bible was NOT written for that purpose. Trying to find flaws in physical laws in the bible stories is like trying to find spelling mistakes in a science book.
I now realise certain sects are viewing the bible in literal context and trying to apply it everywhere, but I radically diasgree with that. Bible is a religious book and should be treated like one (As I mentioned a number of times in this thread…)
Everything in the bible was written for a specific purpose and should be interpreated within that context.
Implying that christians accept ONLY the bible is not truthfull, as there were christian churches before the gospels were written and presumably the members of these churches were called Christians. Christianity begun and was established BEFORE the new testament was written.
Religion , by definition, deals with the realtionship between man and God. Period. That’s it.
On the other hand, Religious Freaks have tried to introduce religion in explaining natural phenomena.
Religion is a phylosophical stance. Philosophy deals with ideas and not with the physical laws of the universe. As simple as that.
I do not think anyone can ‘experience’ love, although I agree we can relate them to another person/animal/object.
Love is subjective as there is no way to know iof what you feel as love is what everybody feels.
Also, there are all kind of different loves in our life. We might love our parents, and our spouse and our dog and our car but not with the same kind of love.
For some people love has a limit, for some people it is limitless. For some love comes with great effort for some effortless.
Nice thing about it, is that NOONE can be certain if his spouse/parents/dog actually loves him using science. We rely purely on the emotional world we perceive not through our senses but through our soul(and yes, having a soul cannot be detected by any instruyments either!)
That’s a pretty big claim. Can you back it up? Oh, and saying ‘That how we define god’ is just a cop out. You have to have a reason to define god that way. You’ve just said that you didn’t get that attribute from scripture. So how do you know this?
And there you go again…
Just repeating your ass-backward view of interpretation of the literacy of the bible doesn’t make it true.
For 2000 years the bible was taken literally. You make it sound as if only yesterday some ‘freaks’ appeared out of nowhere suddenly believing every word of it. And your view, it’s just a philosophical exercise, was always what it was about.
When will you stop saying that?
It’s simply not true.
Where did you get this idea that, as it is clearly a bunch of crap then, obviously it musn’t be what they inteded? It must be something else.
I’m afraid it is not something else, it is the collected writings of some jews that lived from approx. 600 BC untill around the end of the 1st century AD. On how they viewed the world and how they thought the world should be.
When the bible says God created the world in 6 days, we should read that how, according to you?
It’s a metaphore? What on earth is it supposed to teach other than that is was done in 6 days.
People wrote that down because that is what they did actually believe, that God had made the world in 6 days. The people who wrote the bible were, compared to what we know today, a bunch of ignorant cavemen!
Now cavemen too probably had some very fine poetry, nice music and wonderfuly deep stories, complete with lessons in them, for by the fireplace.
I would not for a second have their views, on how the world works and how you should interact with their gods, interfere with how I live my life.
I read the bible for ‘shits and giggles’ , like I read the Egyptian book of the dead or any other mythology. It’s not a secret code on how to connect to god, that needs to be cracked somehow in a ‘if I just squint like that and bend awkwardly I can just glimpse it out of the corner of my eye’ kind of way .
Besides, this is certainly not the way our subject, the creationists, think about the bible. To them it is all true literally, 6 days and all.
I realise that you don’t agree with them and you see some sort of hidden purer philosophical religion in that book. I don’t. I just see another mythological book.
Oh and by the way, philosophy is about the real world as well, you know.
When these threads go on and on, I can not help but feel very sorry for KANICBIRD. His single minded belief seems so distorted. In my experience, too much religion in peoples lives has been destructive. His mental Yoga is scary. I hope he breaks free.
There are numerous parts in the scriptures where God is said to be a Spirit, something intangible.
As far as I know we have not yet discovered and physical properties of Spirits, something that can be tested.
I think the idea that you can perform an experiment to establish whether God exists or not is missing the whole point of accepting God in the firts place.
I mean what is this obsession people have with applying science everywhere? Can you scientifically prove your mother cares about you?
You can measure your mother’s emotional response to a stimulus of yourself, by observing changes in neural activity and haemodynamics using fMRI, by measuring hormonal changes, and other physiological response mechanisms. You can scientifically prove your mother ‘cares’ about you. You can’t prove anything about God, besides your response to the human construct.
Science books make no claim of being the absolute truth. Indeed, the whole point of science is to change its own conclusions whenever new evidence comes to light.
Naturally, there is no empirical “proof” for love, but nonetheless, love can be measured by acts and deeds. I can cite instances of my mother nurturing me during my formative years, comforting me whenever I feel bad, bailing me out whenever I need help. Does that “prove” beyond shadow of a doubt that she loves me? No, but the preponderance of evidence allows me to conclude that yes, she does love me.
On the other hand, I’ve met plenty of toxic parents who claim to love their children, but in reality they are control freaks, who manipulate their children merely to aggrandize their own egos. More often than not, the victimized children still believe that their parents actually love them, and all the bad stuff that happens to them is only because they deserve it; and they cling to that delusional aspect of “love” with bitter ferocity, refusing to accept the truth that their parent’s “love” is an illusion, a promise that will never be delivered. Using that metaphor, I would state that “God’s love” is more like that toxic relationship, more abusive than genuine.
Let’s say I devote my life to Christ – I go to church, read the Bible, tithe, pray, do all the things Christ wants me to do. The next week, my house burns down, my car gets stolen, my girlfriend leaves me for another man, and I develop a strange-looking tumor on my left testicle. Why did God allow these things to happen? Now, the Christian mindset would react by saying, “God is testing my faith,” or “God works in mysterious ways.” And therein lies the problem – blind faith in God allows you to interpret events in any way you deem fit. Blind faith builds on the delusion that some amorphous entity out there actually loves and protects you, but at the same time demands total obsequience and threatens you with fiery damnation if you don’t toe the line. Ask yourself…is that love, or ego-driven control? By definition, I would conclude the latter.
Of course, no one has ever been able to demonstrate the existence of spirits in the first place…
If god interacts with the real world, he is testable. It really is that simple.
Which is?
It isn’t ‘everywhere’, it’s being applied where it’s always been applied: reality.
Actually, I don’t need scientific proof of my mother’s love. I have sufficient evidence of it, and do not require any further investigation. The problem with god is that we don’t even have that level of evidence to support it. Science simply offers an objective methodology to use when investigating, something that should taken advantage of when looking into such a highly subjective thing.
I never claimed that my beliefs are true. I simply present them here same as everyone.
You say that for 2000 years the bible was taken literaly. Interesting. Can you provide any documentation in favour of the above? All I have heard untill now is about certain sects and a few condemns during the dark ages.
Are you aware of any religious script in the first centuries of christianity that claims bible is a physics manual? Because none of the ones I read make that claim.
Do you have any evidence that the early church (let’s say before the first millenia) believed such notions?
All the works I have read belonging to that era describe how we should approach God and accept him. Bible is true only in its claims about God and how God interacts with us.
When the bible mentions the world was created in 6 days it emphasises the fact that the whole universe came to being because God chose to do that. Whether it was made in 6 days or 6 million years is completely irrelevant. Bible is telling as God created the world and man because he cared. If you don’t buy it that’s ok.
I do not know why it is so hard to accept the fact that NOT all believers EVERYWHERE from day one tried to use science in finding/explaining God.
I believe in Creation but I dont buy all that ‘bible should be taken literally’ stuff and not anyone else I relate to for that matter. Quite the contrary, and believe me we are not the exception.
Should I describe all atheists based on your point of view, or do you think you can relate to all atheists just because you have a certain belief in common?
Bible does not contain any secret messages or codes. Squinting isn’t helpful either. All Bible stories were written to demonstarte a point. NOT to be taken literally.
Religion does not interfere with science and science cannot explain religion.
Religion is something that has to do primarily with belief, something science has nothing to do with.
There is no guarantee that by devoting your life to God you will win the lotary, or that only great stuff will happen to you. You see, God promised heaven which we can experience only after we die, quite sneaky isn’t it?
But your example of love is a good one. How can you tell that you are not the one with the delusion of love? If both you and the ‘victimised’ children feel the love of your parents why shouldn’t you be the one who got short changed in the love department?
Also you agree with my point that we can only guess/believe people love us or not as love is intangible.
Same way we can only believe God exists. No real proof
In that case, what evidence do you have that God actually exists? What observations have you made to determine that God, if he exists, actually loves you and cares for your emotional & physical well-being, instead of merely deceiving you?
Now there’s the first smart thing you’ve said in this entire thread. Yes, it’s quite sneaky – this illusory “God” makes a promise of “heaven” which cannot be detected by direct scientific observation, and you won’t find out for certain if “heaven” actually exists until you die. Therein lies the reason why religion remains such a powerful delusion, even in today’s modern age – “heaven” cannot be proven, but it cannot be DISproven, either. “Heaven” is the carrot dangled before God’s believers as a promise for a better life…except you have to wait. Indeed, the promise won’t be delivered until the next life. Nice scam, eh? :rolleyes: