I believe you, Czarcasm.
I’ll get back to you with a list of things I want to hear.
No Czarcasm, of course not, and I’m sure your not implying that that is the case here. 
Ah, but, you see, I don’t know that you are wrong. I am reasonably certain that no supernatural beings exist, but I cannot demonstrate that conclusively. The most I can say is that the evidence presented does not warrant acceptance of the God hypothesis.
The trouble with debating religion is that so much of the believer’s stance depends on unfalsifiable [sup]*[/sup]evidence, like dreams, revelations, and “spiritual insights.”
While it is impossible to rule out the existence of supernatural, we should at least agree on the rules by which we may evaluate the evidence.
[sup]*[/sup]. By "falsifiable, " I mean that it is possible to present evidence that proves it false conclusively. For example, if I said MusicGuy were female, you could show that statement is false.
dreamer wrote:
“Hmmm … that’s a toughy, God. You sure do like to make things difficult, don’tcha? Well, tell you what … since you’re standing right here in front of me, sure, I can believe in you. In the sense that I believe you exist, at least. As for believing in your word, well, I’m really not sure what ‘your word’ is. There are a whole bunch of books I’ve read that are allegedly divinely inspired, and they all claim to be your word – or at least, the word of someone who fits your description – and they all claim that the other allegedly-divinely-inspired books are wrong, and they contradict each other in major places. Heck, some of them even contradict themselves. So, how can I believe in your word when I don’t know what your word is?”
Thank You kase. That is very kind of you to say 
OK, you’re right. I seem to forget you guys aern’t on the same page as me sometimes :).
Assuming that I still had my earthly faculties intact, I would pretty much except anything God said due to the fact that I was actually in Heaven.
That being said, and combined with the fact that I’m an inquisitive little monkey, I would still ask God who his creator was. He would probably counter with the ol’ “I am uncaused” bit, but I still wouldn’t let him off the hook. I’m sure, at some point, he would tire of me, zap my curiousity and throw me in with the rest of the heavenly collective.
[back on earth]
dreamer, I think God himself must speak to humankind if he is to be known at all, and therefore faith, as a response to divine Revelation, is your only path to your so-called knowledge of God.
Yes, we knew that. The fact you (and everybody else) has no physical evidence of God means that you have faith in God, not that you have knowledge.
Well this is where it gets interesting.
You see there is a lot of physical evidence that shows evolution happened (and is still happening).
So you have these choices:
- The evidence doesn’t exist.
- The evidence doesn’t support evolution.
- God planted the evidence to mislead us.
Which of these is your opinion?
I’d like to continue (if you can stand it :eek: ).
I’ve discussed these points with people before, and the combination of arguments that
a) I am certain that God exists,
and
b) I don’t believe in evolution
meant they were a fundamentalist Christian, who believed the Bible was literal, the world was about 4,000 years old and that evolution explained how life began. (They were usually from a Southern US state and without a college education too.)
So perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering some more questions.
Tracer already asked two:
Here are a couple of mine:
Is the Bible literally true throughout?
Do you think evolution explains how life began on Earth?
Dreamer -
On the know/faith thing that’s not being made terribly clear afaict:
I have had what I consider a direct interaction with the feminine Coyote (yes, She exists, though tales about Her are few and far between). I can tell you precisely what I perceived to have happened, and claim this as knowledge of Her existance.
The problem with calling this knowledge, rather than faith, is twofold.
First, and foremost, the word perception creates a problem. An atheist, for example, might argue that I saw what I expected or wanted to see, and this is a possibility. Or, if I had been in a different frame of mind, I might have perceived the whole experience as something totally not religion related - a daydream, or a hallucination. (I have other reasons to believe that it was what I believed it to be, but no solid knowledge other than my memory to back those reasons up.)
Second, I cannot share this experience with someone else. Polycarp could take me into his church and tell me what his experience is. Mine would be dramatically different, even though we were experiencing the same physical things. We would be hearing the same words, seeing the same symbolic objects and so forth, but experiencing them differently.
This is probably as clear as mud, but although I say that I know Coyote set Her paw on me, what I really mean is that I have faith that my perception of my experiences WRT Coyote has been properly interpreted by my brain.
Oh, and jayjay? I don’t know if you had me in mind when you mentioned Coyote, but 
anyway.
tracer, just one question for ya’. Where is the fossil evidence of the transitional forms?
Frankly, I’m just amazed that this hasn’t devolved into a “Does Cecil exist?” thread.
Forgive me for addressing the OP at this late stage, but here are my own answers to the questions posed:
**Why is it so hard to believe in God? **
Because I have no reason to.
** I’m just curious to know why, if there really is a loving God - why you wouldn’t want to believe in or know him? **
That’s a different question. I would really like there to be a loving and wise deity (or deities - I’ll accept the possibility of more than one) and an afterlife of eternal bliss and love. But what I want has little to no bearing on what is.
I hear people say all the time how they wish they had “inner peace.” And those are the very people who don’t understand when I say I have it. Some may laugh at that or just roll their eyes, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could really have it too?
Yes it would. But see above.
Plus, of course, I know lots of religious and non-religious types, and their various states of mental and spiritual equilibrium seem to have no connection to their professed religious beliefs.
**Or maybe you do have it already, can you explain where it comes from and what you do to keep it alive? **
I don’t have “inner peace”. But I have a good supply of “nonspecific optimism” that I keep for emergency use.
I know there’s tons of reasons why many people think they have to change their lives to become “believers.” Do any of you feel that way?
That there are tons of reasons to do so? No. Or at least not ones that I find even remotely compelling. I certainly understand why other people find reasons to become believers, though.
** And if you did decide one day to believe in God do you think he would love you any less for the things that you do? **
I don’t even understand this question, because (as others have already indicated) it requires me to assign attributes to an entity I don’t believe exists. But if it helps any, I try to live a good life regardless of whether or not there is a God to smite me for my various screwups at the end of it all.
**I have no idea how this thread is going to go and I did hesitate many times before posting it, but the truth is I’m really curious to know how you feel about this and why. **
I can respect that.
Unlike many agnostics and atheists, I didn’t grow up with any sort of religious upbringing. I didn’t go to church, my family didn’t discuss religion, my friends and I didn’t discuss religion – it was about as secular a childhood as you could get. And as I grew to that age where the inevitable questions arose in my mind, I talked to other people about what they believed, I read the Bible cover to cover (okay, I admit I skimmed through some of the endless rules on animal sacrifice in Numbers or Leviticus or whichever one it was, and through all those “begats” in Genesis), I visited some churches…and while it helped me to understand what people believe, I found nothing that even remotely suggested to me that there is one or more divine beings that may or may not have created the world and may or may not influence daily events.
At best, I’ve come to accept that there are many things about the universe that we do not yet understand, that what science presents is pretty much a working model and subject to change upon discovery of new information, and that, in the words of Rose Walker, “weird shit” happens. It would be nice if there was more to life than this brief and meager existence, but I see no reason to believe that there is.
Although I do believe, FWIW, that if there is an afterlife and/or one or more supernatural beings that we will meet there, it/he/she/they will be nothing like anything anyone can possibly conceive. Which is okay by me.
Whatever the case for you may be I believe you saw and experienced what you did. Now I could go on and say that I don’t believe in a real “Coyote” (I’m not sure if this is a spirit or physical being to you), and that you couldn’t possibly know or even have enough faith to get me to believe that what you saw was real. No reason for me to go there again, I just wanted to make that point.
Btw who is the “feminine Coyote”?
[hijack]
Coyote is a trickster figure usually seen in midwestern and Pacific West Native American tribes, most notably the Navajo (there have been several collections of Navajo Coyote tales).
As a Trickster, Coyote is usually portrayed as male, and, many tales of Him have to do with greed, gluttony and/or lust.
Tricksters made the world; Coyote made humans and is also known for both setting things in order (for example, the stars) and also violating taboos - often, Coyote tales are a way of pointing up the taboos and rules that make society function because He dances on both sides of the “line.”
However, Coyote also has a rarely-mentioned female aspect, who uses Her trickster nature to feed Her children, protect them and/or Her tribe, and sundry other “maternal” skills. She, too, can be associated with greed and gluttony, though rarely to the extent of Her male counterpart, but never with lust, presumably because of the difficulties present in being a pregnant trickster.
[/hijack]
OK, I’m hanging in here
Definately NO to #3. God would not do that, though I wouldn’t put it past his rival to do such things.
#1 and 2 - Science exists, sure. But is there anything that’s going to convince me that God didn’t have anything to do with Creation? Can you tell me why the Earth rotates a certain way that is in perfect alignment to the sun and moon, and how it came to be? Can you tell me where the energy/matter came from that created the Earth and the Atmosphere and the Universe? Did the “Big Bang” just create itself? We “evolve” as people, as a society, but it takes something to get the ball rolling. You can’t just evolve from nothing.
Is this a trick question? There are parables in the bible, analogies, symbolism, and teachings that were written to help us understand what Jesus was teaching. The bible was written in a totally different culture and time than we live in now.
***All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: (KJV, 2nd Timothy 3:16)
But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. (NAS, 2nd Peter 1:20-21)***
**Do you think evolution explains how life began on Earth? **
[/QUOTE]
No
anything else?
dreamer wrote:
Right here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
Warning: The above webpage is so long it’s split up into two parts. Because there is a lot of fossil evidence for transitional forms.
glee wrote:
Careful there. Mainstream biologists do not think that evolution explains how life began on Earth. The arising of the first living organisms is called abiogenesis (sometimes, confusingly, “biogenesis”), and has nothing at all to do with evolution. In fact, the mechanisms of evolution only kick in after life forms arise that can make copies of themselves.
(Similarly, to nip this in the bud if it hasn’t already been nipped, evolution has nothing to do with the origins of the universe [that’s “cosmology”] or with the formation of the Solar System and/or the Earth [that’s, um, “solar system formation ology”, or something].)
Dreamer,
You seem like a nice enough person and have been more than polite in almost every thread I’ve seen you in, but, if I did decide to start believing in a god, would I have to adopt the stance that declining morality is the fault of non-believers?
Maybe something along these lines:
I know very few atheists, but every single one of them lead exemplary lives, with strong values, good hearts and sharp minds. Not a single one of them was raised atheist (nor was I for that matter, I went to church every week), but became atheists after much soul searching and evidence (or lack thereof) pondering.
I know lots and lots of Christians, some of whom lead lives very similar to my atheist friends (with the exception that they can’t join us for Sunday brunch before the restaurants get busy), and others who wouldn’t know a scruple if it hit them upside the head. Of this group, approximately 95% were raised in the religion that they currently adhere to. While there are exceptions to every rule (hence the 95% figure above), it seems like a large number of religious believers simply follow in their parents footsteps, which certainly doesn’t seem like they sought out a religion that they could believe in.
With that said, it seems like it’s a much more difficult, soul-searching task to not believe in a higher power, than to simply follow in the parent’s footsteps.
Originally posted by Czarcasm
Technical quibble:
There is a general movement, identified as Messianic Jews, who believe that Jesus is the Messiah but that Judaism has not been abrogated by the coming of Jesus. I will defer to dreamer as to what she*, specifically, believes.
“Jews for Jesus” is a Baptist outreach program, started and run by a Baptist minister (who may have been an “ethnic” Jew–I am not sure whether he was raised in the Jewish or Christian faith) that is a specific organization to evangelize Jews to convert to Christianity.
Obviously, “Jews for Jesus” would generally be identified as a subset of Messianic Judaism, but they are not identical. There are Messianic Jews who have never had any association with the Baptist evangelization group.
I would assume that an acceptance of Jesus as Messiah and a host of other objections would place either group outside even the most liberal Reform Jewish synagogues, but I will defer to Jewish posters regarding the exact attitudes held.
*(I have been operating under a vague impression that dreamer is female, but I do not remember a specific instance where I would have learned that. I apologize if dreamer is male.)
Yes, I know that. I wanted to see if dreamer did.
Hey, how did my gender get dragged into this? Please tell me I don’t have to “present evidence” for the purpose of this debate. I’m a bit shy in that regard.
I know I am male 
And by the way tomndebb, dreamer is indeed female.