Does God Exist?

[Scaredgirl]

The point was to establish this as a non-flame forum, and to lead it to its own disscusion.

What I'm saying is that this is a thread called "Religion" under a forum called "Religion". You really don't see what I'm saying?

There is no point in trying to fit all religious discussion in this thread, that's all.

[Scaredgirl]

The Harry Potter books are completely fictional, but the events in the Bible actually occurred.

Actually Bible is a collection of real life events mixed with made up stories and myths. Nothing more. No person with common sense would ever consider the Bible as a credible source of information.

Did you know that historians who lived during the time of Jesus, NONE of them wrote anything about him? You would think that maybe.. just maybe they would mention a guy who walked on water, cured the sick and resurrected?! But no, they didn't mention him once. First time Jesus was ever mentioned in written text was hundreds of years after his supposed death.

There is actually a theory that a character called Jesus didn't even exist. I suggest you watch a documentary called "Zeitgeist" for more information. It's the best documentary ever created by man. It will blow your mind.

I stopped reading after seeing that.

That's not a big deal. You didn't miss anything because you were at the end anyway.

FREE TIP: That "I stopped reading after seeing that." works better when the guy says something in the beginning of his post.

[Scaredgirl]

I have nothing against evolution, I just think that someone is out there. I believe most scientific theories, just some seen very far-fetched.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

The idea of a "Sky Daddy", virgin births, walking on water, miracle cures, parting of the sea, Noah's Ark, resurrection, Angels.. all those make perfect sense.

But the idea of us mammals evolving during a very long period of time is too far-fetched.

[Scaredgirl]

So let's see. Some say science doesn't support that there can be a god and that this means there isn't a god.

You got this one backwards. Science doesn't have to prove that God doesn't exist. Religion has to prove that it does exist.

If I say there is an invisible pink unicorn living in my house, do you have to prove it? And if you can't prove it, does that make it true?

The burden of proof is always with the person who is making the claim. Otherwise everyone could just make up stuff that doesn't make any sense but what nobody can dispute. Actually that's what religion is all about.

(sort of, there are things science can't explain that occurred in the Bible).

Bible was written my man. It is a collection of stories. No sane scientist would ever use the Bible as a proof of anything.

Science couldn't explain everything that happened in the latest Harry Potter book either, but that doesn't mean it really happened.

[Scaredgirl]

The Harry Potter books are completely fictional, but the events in the Bible actually occurred.

Actually Bible is a collection of real life events mixed with made up stories and myths. Nothing more. No person with common sense would ever consider the Bible as a credible source of information.

Did you know that historians who lived during the time of Jesus, NONE of them wrote anything about him? You would think that maybe.. just maybe they would mention a guy who walked on water, cured the sick and resurrected?! But no, they didn't mention him once. First time Jesus was ever mentioned in written text was hundreds of years after his supposed death.

There is actually a theory that a character called Jesus didn't even exist. I suggest you watch a documentary called "Zeitgeist" for more information. It's the best documentary ever created by man. It will blow your mind.

[Scaredgirl]

You're right, SG. I should have named it differently, but I was pressed for time so I just made a general title. I probably should have named it "Does God Exist?"

You can edit your post and change the title.

[Sigh]

So what constitutes your definition of "crying" then?

Edit:

Btw I can call any supernatural being "Sky Daddy" if I want. If it offends you then you have a problem not me.

It's not that it offends me, it's just that you seem to get a kick out of blatantly refusing to have any form of compromise on anything, while effectively bashing people's beliefs just because they have them. And that's not even mentioning the steriotyping. See the link below for further reference.

Whoops. I guess then I'll take you to this new link (http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,562.0.html).

Honestly to me that picture says the same thing in both layers.

[Sigh]

That "Sky Daddy" comment was a low blow even for you SG. (And no I'm not "crying" about it either, since that's usually your comeback to this sort of thing. Now WHO (http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php?action=search2) does that remind me of?)

And the idea of a perfectly working piece of DNA randomly coming together from a bath of protein goo is any better a theory/belief?

[Sigh]

Whoops, sorry, didn't knowyou were wanting te other guy to answer, sorry.

Wish I could use FF, but I can't seem to find a reliable source for it, and I don't want to buy anything right now.

[Sigh]

As far as I can tell this is a variant on the ontological argument. It falls down because it commits the fallacy of bare assertion. The reasoning behind point 5 relies entirely on the assertions inherent in points 1, 2, 3, and 4, which are entirely unsupported postulates. Given this, I'd ask you to answer the following questions:

1. Why can't something proceed from nothing?Wouldn't that be one of the laws of physics? You know, the one that specified the law of conservation of mass and energy and stuff?
2. Does something necessarily have to proceed from anything?If anything is to happen, then yes.
3. Why must "The cause of an idea [...] have at least as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality."? Please do us a favour and don't just copy/paste Descartes, explain in your own words.Heh, I'm kinda tired so my brain can't process that right now...
4. Are you defining God as being that concept which has unlimited objective reality? If so, how does that match up with a concept that actually contains qualia such as "benevolence" which by necessity are limiting?Why does it have to be limited? Haven't you ever heard of "an endless capacity for love" before?
5. Why cannot we hypothesise ideas that have greater formal or objective reality than we have ourselves? Feel free to roll this one into Question 3, since I think your answer is likely to be the same thing.I never was good at objective reasoning...

Evolution describes ONE process of life. It is not the complete answer- there are a lot of traits evolution does not answer. That doesn't mean it's wrong- just not the complete answer to how life originated.

The theory of evolution says nothing about the origins of life.Actually it does, evolution refers to if not including another theory which explicitly states that the first evolution fodder came around from a "protein bath," which has it's own great debate as well.

What I'm trying to say is that sometimes people see what they want to see. Like that one American woman who saw Jesus in her toast, and traveled around the US showing it to people. Or that one woman who saw "the eye of God" in her bathroom door, and people visited her "holy" apartment.

A few loonies does not disprove a concept. Al Gore travels around the world claiming science proves global warming- does that mean all science is invalid?

That's not the argument being made. The argument made is that anecdotal evidence does not actually prove anything. Your "seeing angels" could quite easily be explained by you having mental health problems, and does not prove anything other than that you claim to have seen angels. Conversely, large amounts of scientific evidence and scientific consensus supporting climate change and evolution by natural selection make a much better case because they demonstrate a model fitting available evidence - that is part of the scientific method.

1000 years from now people will laugh at us and our primitive beliefs.

Probably. The same way we laugh at all the scientists of old who proved the earth is flat.

Actually that was a belief primarily perpetuated by the Catholic church in the face of rational experts who knew that the earth was not flat. No scientist "proved" the Earth was flat, since any reasonable application of the scientific method would tell you otherwise. In fact, reasonable applications of the scientific method were made thousands of years before Galileo by Arabic and Egyptian thinkers who calculated the radius of the Earth with surprising accuracy.

In fact, your misconception is a perfect illustration of religion and science disagreeing and scientific viewpoints prevailing. See The Myth of the Flat Earth (wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth).Hehe, I like to see people bashing on the Catholic church, 'specially since they deserved it. No argument here.

I REALLY wish this forum had spell-check on it... >.<''

Also, see the Edit I made further up the page.

[SnDance]

If you've seen a diagram of an atom, with the electrons floating around and stuff, you see that its mostly just space. And the electrons, nutrons, and protons aren't actually blue, red, and yellow balls. Their just energy, just more space really.

So basically everything that exists is space. We experience it and so, to us, it exists. But if we didn't experience it, it wouldn't.

I suppose I'm saying everything exists if you see it that way. Otherwise you just see empty space. Something like that.

I am so going to be burned for this XD

[SnDance]

It kind of depends on how you view the world at all. If you are like the christians, then no, there was first god. If you go with science and the theory of the big bang, then there already was something and there never was nothing. If you go from a Buddhist standpoint, the world is just an illusion and so what we are right now is technically nothing.

Of course, going back to the scientific viewpoint, everything actually is nothing since atom are 99% empty spac e and the 1% that isn't empty space is made up of more empty space, so that that everything is empty space already, we just perceive it to not be empty space. And so nothingness begets nothingness.

*But as for what I believe, I follow the flying spaghetti monster so it doesn't matter anyway.

ALL GLORY TO HIS NOODLY APPENDAGE!

*translation: I'm not telling.