There are lots of things throughout history that Humans take as existing that they have never seen. Have you ever seen Gravity? Have you ever seen an Atom. Probably not. But you take the word of others who have seen it and experienced it. That is what the Bible is. It is a historical document that talks about God. I personally have never seen an African slave, that doesn't mean that I think they do not exist.
See, the problem is that the Bible is NOT an Historical book as you claim.
No Historian consider the Bible as a reliable historical book.
Of course there are some historical facts which are truthful with the times the book has been written, but many subjects of the Bible, in particular from the Old Testament, have no match with other Historic books of the same time.
On the other hand atoms and gravity are well proven from the scientific comunity, it is not about believing, is about fact proven, well documented and entirely accepted by all scientists.
There is no scientific theory that support the existence of God, hence at the moment its esixtance is acceptable only based on human faith.
My point was that if we're saying that religion can be the direct or indirect cause of war due to ideological differences (the "I'm right, you're wrong" tribal mentality), then atheists cannot claim immunity from the same motivations.
My point of quoting your previous statements was not to accuse you of religion bashing, but to support my argument that a lack of belief in one thing, often means a belief in something else. So, "I don't believe in God" usually goes with such beliefs as "religion was invented by humans to explain the unexplainable" or "religion was invented by humans to be a tool of control" - in the same way as "I don't believe in Santa" goes with the belief, "my parents fill my stocking when I'm asleep", or "I don't believe there's a teapot orbiting Mars" goes with "I believe Bertrand Russell invented that concept to make a point in an argument".
All the nice things you are talking about are theories, not beliefs.
Theories don't have sure answers, when theories have proven answers, those become facts.
If I say "religion was invented by humans to explain the unexplainable", that's just my theory due to my own deductions, it is not the truth and we probably never gonna find the real truth.
It is my theory and It is highly debateable, it is NOT a belief.
So in my view if someone doesn't believe in something, it doesn't mean it believes in something else.
On the other hand if you ask a religious person if God exists they say that it does exist, even without any proof.
It is not debateable, God exists.
So it is not a theory, it is a "fact" (although not proven), and this "fact" can survive thanks to the faith.
So the difference here is that although Atheist cannot categorically dis-prove the existance of God, no one ever categorically proved the existance of it either.
And this lack of proof is what make a person Atheist, it is not a believe in something else.
If someone can scientifically prove that God exists, I will "accept" him (note the use of the word "accept" rather than "believe").
An Atheist is not someone who is in principle against God, an Atheist is someone who don't accept God because there is not proof of its existance.
There are lots of things throughout history that Humans take as existing that they have never seen. Have you ever seen Gravity? Have you ever seen an Atom. Probably not. But you take the word of others who have seen it and experienced it. That is what the Bible is. It is a historical document that talks about God. I personally have never seen an African slave, that doesn't mean that I think they do not exist.
See, the problem is that the Bible is NOT an Historical book as you claim.
No Historian consider the Bible as a reliable historical book.
Of course there are some historical facts which are truthful with the times the book has been written, but many subjects of the Bible, in particular from the Old Testament, have no match with other Historic books of the same time.
On the other hand atoms and gravity are well proven from the scientific comunity, it is not about believing, is about fact proven, well documented and entirely accepted by all scientists.
There is no scientific theory that support the existence of God, hence at the moment its esixtance is acceptable only based on human faith.
Well, you believe that atoms and gravity are well proven by the scientific community. Have you checked it out how well documented it is and that it is entirely accepted by all scientists, or are you prepared to take that on faith? Have you considered how many things you would be happy to state as proven, when you are just taking it on faith that they have been proven? Most of our knowledge is taken on faith, it's what our whole education system is based on and that's entirely reasonable. We'd not make any progress as society if that was not the case.
We can't empirically prove that yesterday existed, that other people think, that friendship exists, that parents love their children or that happiness is desirable. We can't even empirically prove that we can trust our senses which give us the empirical evidence or even that proving something empirically is the only way to prove something. And yet, most of us are happy to just accept such things, and don't consider anyone holding such beliefs as illogical or unreasonable.
So, why make different rules for the existance of God?
Don't give me teapots, unicorns and spagetti monsters, because we don't have around 90% of the world's population suggesting that such things exist, or hundreds of thousands claiming personal experiences of such things.
If the concept of God doesn't gel with you, doesn't make sense to your world view or doesn't give you some crucial missing pieces to life's jigsaw then say so. If you have tried to seek God and have received nothing, then say so.
Don't bring forward arguments to make yourself feel cleverer than theists and making out that you must be wiser, more logical and more enlightened in your thinking, because, frankly, if you've had personal experiences with God, such arguments sound as ridiculous as a blind man refusing to believe in sight, because it can't be proven to him.
Edit: (Apologies, to ste2000, as this isn't entirely directed at him and was probably as much inspired by Veraticus' comments)
All the nice things you are talking about are theories, not beliefs.
Theories don't have sure answers, when theories have proven answers, those become facts.
If I say "religion was invented by humans to explain the unexplainable", that's just my theory due to my own deductions, it is not the truth and we probably never gonna find the real truth.
It is my theory and It is highly debateable, it is NOT a belief.
So in my view if someone doesn't believe in something, it doesn't mean it believes in something else.
So, are you saying that you don't believe that? Or are you saying that you believe that it's a theory? Do you believe that that is highly likely or is it just theoretical that it is highly likely? Or are you saying that you don't believe anything at all about anything, and only "accept" things which have been proven? In which case, are you not believing that they have been proven? Could we not say that you have "faith" in the scientific process if you only accept something that is scientifically proven?
Originally posted by EggFtegg Well, you believe that atoms and gravity are well proven by the scientific community. Have you checked it out how well documented it is and that it is entirely accepted by all scientists, or are you prepared to take that on faith? Have you considered how many things you would be happy to state as proven, when you are just taking it on faith that they have been proven? Most of our knowledge is taken on faith, it's what our whole education system is based on and that's entirely reasonable. We'd not make any progress as society if that was not the case. We can't empirically prove that yesterday existed, that other people think, that friendship exists, that parents love their children or that happiness is desirable. We can't even empirically prove that we can trust our senses which give us the empirical evidence or even that proving something empirically is the only way to prove something. And yet, most of us are happy to just accept such things, and don't consider anyone holding such beliefs as illogical or unreasonable. So, why make different rules for the existance of God? Don't give me teapots, unicorns and spagetti monsters, because we don't have around 90% of the world's population suggesting that such things exist, or hundreds of thousands claiming personal experiences of such things. If the concept of God doesn't gel with you, doesn't make sense to your world view or doesn't give you some crucial missing pieces to life's jigsaw then say so. If you have tried to seek God and have received nothing, then say so. Don't bring forward arguments to make yourself feel cleverer than theists and making out that you must be wiser, more logical and more enlightened in your thinking, because, frankly, if you've had personal experiences with God, such arguments sound as ridiculous as a blind man refusing to believe in sight, because it can't be proven to him.
Edit: (Apologies, to ste2000, as this isn't entirely directed at him and was probably more inspired by Veraticus' comments)
I actually have read a fair amount on atoms and gravity and have seen the former myself, but leaving that aside, it's hardly a matter of faith to recognize the demonstrable power of scientific theories. You can actually do things with science; it allows you to make hypotheses, test them, and even use complicated mathematical equations to predict the behavior of the universe! That's pretty amazing. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and you don't need faith to believe in science. If faith is to believe without evidence, then science is the opposite, for it requires -- and provides -- evidence of its claims.
For example, I have to say that if the Bible allowed me to calculate the curvature of light from a distant body due to gravity, I would probably believe in the Bible a little bit more. It's Einstein that lets me do that, though.
Of course, I can't possibly read every scientific document ever written. I suppose, then, you could say I have faith in the scientific process, but that's definitely mangling the word "faith." When most people -- theists, especially - refer to "faith," they mean to believe in something without proof. When I say I have faith in the scientific process, I say that I trust it, and that I trust it generates the proofs we require to understand and analyze the natural world. If I ever felt a moment's doubt about the discoveries of, say, evolution, I could spend only a few moments searching well-known archives for volumes of material that clearly address my concerns.
I trust the scientific process, then. I do not need to have faith in it, because it provides ample proofs of its own, freely available for anyone to test if they can, refute if they dare, and study if they desire.
While it's true we can't empirically prove that yesterday, love, or even you and me exist, we have a reasonable amount of assurance that these things are actually there. For example, everyone reading this has memories of yesterday. If someone were to claim, "There was no yesterday!" It would require pretty exceptional proof that would lead all of us to doubt our collective memories of yesterday. If someone were to come up to me and say, "Veraticus, your mother never loved you," I would probably doubt their word unless they could provide overwhelming evidence.
We can't say the same thing about God. No one has memories of God, and no one has ever met him. There are books about him, true, but many of them are contradictory, and most claim that their God is the only God and all the others are so much hot air. People sometimes claim God speaks through them, but how can you prove an assertion like that? Others say that God wrote books, but books are written by men. So when someone says to me, "God exists!" I require exceptional proof of their claims, since essentially they are claiming an unknowable being exists that listens to every single human prayer and selectively answers some and not others while controlling fate and time itself, yet its existence is hidden from us beyond the pale of every test devised by humans. And as yet I have been disappointed in my quest for proof of God's existence. Lacking evidence for, why posit that such a complex being exists?
So the rules for the existence of God are not different from the rules of the existence of unicorns or Flying Spaghetti Monsters, or any other wildly outlandish claim like celestial teapots or what have you. It's really pretty simple: big claims require big evidence. When Einstein said that mass deforms space, people didn't believe him. But he gave a lot of big evidence to support his claims, and then people tested them and found that they fit observed phenomena perfectly. So now, scientists generally accept general and special relativity. If you tell me God exists, you better pony up some evidence, and I mean quality stuff I can duplicate myself, or I see no reason to believe you.
It's unfortunate that 90% of the world believes in God. They kill and hate in his name, and all but a select few remember to love in it. Hopefully things will change some day and people will become wiser and more compassionate. It doesn't change the fact that everyone believing in something doesn't make it true.
Personally speaking, I have never really seen any need for God in my own life. I have no particular desire to steal God from other people's lives, if they have grown to rely upon that particular delusion. It seems cruel in the extreme to deprive people of happiness, even if they have invented it themselves. I think that the concept of God and religions tends to hamper people more than it helps, though, so I hope that future generations of humans do not believe in him.
Maybe a blind man wouldn't believe in sight, especially if he was born with a congenital defect preventing him from ever seeing. But that blind mind could infer sight, sometimes; he could form an image in his mind of what an object might look like based on its feel. If I were born "blind to religion" -- and I was not -- then presumably, if God existed for all to find and see, I would have somehow happened upon proofs of his existence, or been able to ascertain the shape with my hands rather than with my faulty vision. That this has not happened yet leads me to believe, rather than me being blind, that the object is not actually there.
The thing is that most if not all outspoken Atheists and Atheist groups (Just like most if not all outspoken religious groups are extremist) don't stop at just that there is no proof that "God" exists. They always take it one step further and say that "God" doesn't exist. When you make a statement like God doesn't exist then you need to have proof to back it up. Other then I have never seen him so he doesn't exist. That is like me saying Siberia doesn't exist, because I have never seen it. I have no problem at all with people who say "well I don't know, I don't think there is a God because I have never seen any proof of one". See the difference, when someone even in their own opinion says that there is no way that God exists it makes them sound ridiculous. Because Science can not prove that God doesn't exist. People are free to believe what they want to, but when you act like your beliefs make you better then other people (and I am talking about both Atheists and Religious people) it does nothing but make you look like a complete idiot.
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
I can't beleive this topic has gone on this far. The answer is no. We would just find another reason to kill each other other then religion. End of Story.
"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." ~ Ronald Reagan
In the sense that there would be no more Jehova's witnesses and Mormon Missionaries knocking on my door in the wee hours O' the mornin' and at meal times.... yes.
In the sense that I wouldn't have to listen to the same damn Christmas carols year after year... yes.
In the sense that I could get on an airplane without being all but tackled by airport Moonies.. yes
In the sense that I wouldn't have to deal with all this God Bless America stupity... yes
Note: no one ever says "God Bless Uganda" or "God Bless Chechneya," why is that?
In the sense that old people would save the millions of dollars that they spend on religious paraphernalia and bogus TV preachers... yes
In the sense that kids wouldn't be exposed to sexually repressed pedophiles on a weekly basis.. yes
I'm going to stop now because my sarcasm reflex is getting the better of me. In short MY world would be much better without YOUR religion in it. But you probably already figured that out.
The thing is that most if not all outspoken Atheists and Atheist groups (Just like most if not all outspoken religious groups are extremist) don't stop at just that there is no proof that "God" exists. They always take it one step further and say that "God" doesn't exist. When you make a statement like God doesn't exist then you need to have proof to back it up. Other then I have never seen him so he doesn't exist. That is like me saying Siberia doesn't exist, because I have never seen it. I have no problem at all with people who say "well I don't know, I don't think there is a God because I have never seen any proof of one". See the difference, when someone even in their own opinion says that there is no way that God exists it makes them sound ridiculous. Because Science can not prove that God doesn't exist. People are free to believe what they want to, but when you act like your beliefs make you better then other people (and I am talking about both Atheists and Religious people) it does nothing but make you look like a complete idiot.
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
Of course they would say you were speaking nonsense GL. Just like the vast majority of people who have said God has spoken to them have been locked up as being insane. But every single culture in History has had a belief in a God or Gods. I am sorry but billions upon billions of people having this belief is a little more believable then your teapot theory. Plus whole civilizations that had never met had similar stories and ideas about there being a God.
Currently playing: LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too: Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
The thing is that most if not all outspoken Atheists and Atheist groups (Just like most if not all outspoken religious groups are extremist) don't stop at just that there is no proof that "God" exists. They always take it one step further and say that "God" doesn't exist. When you make a statement like God doesn't exist then you need to have proof to back it up. Other then I have never seen him so he doesn't exist. That is like me saying Siberia doesn't exist, because I have never seen it. I have no problem at all with people who say "well I don't know, I don't think there is a God because I have never seen any proof of one". See the difference, when someone even in their own opinion says that there is no way that God exists it makes them sound ridiculous. Because Science can not prove that God doesn't exist. People are free to believe what they want to, but when you act like your beliefs make you better then other people (and I am talking about both Atheists and Religious people) it does nothing but make you look like a complete idiot.
I'm sorry.
I'm not familliar with any extremist athiest groups.
I don't need to prove anything. Why do you feel the need for proof?
How can you even make the last statement. You've been the most vocal in this thread when it comes to what other believe.
No athiests here have told you to provide proof of god.
The thing is that most if not all outspoken Atheists and Atheist groups (Just like most if not all outspoken religious groups are extremist) don't stop at just that there is no proof that "God" exists. They always take it one step further and say that "God" doesn't exist. When you make a statement like God doesn't exist then you need to have proof to back it up. Other then I have never seen him so he doesn't exist. That is like me saying Siberia doesn't exist, because I have never seen it. I have no problem at all with people who say "well I don't know, I don't think there is a God because I have never seen any proof of one". See the difference, when someone even in their own opinion says that there is no way that God exists it makes them sound ridiculous. Because Science can not prove that God doesn't exist. People are free to believe what they want to, but when you act like your beliefs make you better then other people (and I am talking about both Atheists and Religious people) it does nothing but make you look like a complete idiot.
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
Of course they would say you were speaking nonsense GL. Just like the vast majority of people who have said God has spoken to them have been locked up as being insane. But every single culture in History has had a belief in a God or Gods. I am sorry but billions upon billions of people having this belief is a little more believable then your teapot theory. Plus whole civilizations that had never met had similar stories and ideas about there being a God.
Well if you're going to make ridiculous claims then I'm gonna ask for proof.
Care to prove that the "vast magority of people who have said god has spoken to them have been loked up".
Ever occur to you that maybe man has a need to understand thier place in the universe, and thus have created religions to explain it to them?
BTW, I sense that this is an anti-atheist thread and should be deleted. If I can't make a thread questioning Christianity or calling out it's fault, no one should be able do the same to atheism. fair is fair after all....
The thing is that most if not all outspoken Atheists and Atheist groups (Just like most if not all outspoken religious groups are extremist) don't stop at just that there is no proof that "God" exists. They always take it one step further and say that "God" doesn't exist. When you make a statement like God doesn't exist then you need to have proof to back it up. Other then I have never seen him so he doesn't exist. That is like me saying Siberia doesn't exist, because I have never seen it. I have no problem at all with people who say "well I don't know, I don't think there is a God because I have never seen any proof of one". See the difference, when someone even in their own opinion says that there is no way that God exists it makes them sound ridiculous. Because Science can not prove that God doesn't exist. People are free to believe what they want to, but when you act like your beliefs make you better then other people (and I am talking about both Atheists and Religious people) it does nothing but make you look like a complete idiot.
I'm sorry.
I'm not familliar with any extremist athiest groups.
I don't need to prove anything. Why do you feel the need for proof?
How can you even make the last statement. You've been the most vocal in this thread when it comes to what other believe.
No athiests here have told you to provide proof of god.
I have said that I don't care what people believe. It is when they act like it is a fact that i have a problem with it.
I read a lot of the stuff posted on the American Atheist site and quite a bit of it was extreme. Just like Right wing religious people post a lot of extreme stuff.
Currently playing: LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too: Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
I actually have read a fair amount on atoms and gravity and have seen the former myself, but leaving that aside, it's hardly a matter of faith to recognize the demonstrable power of scientific theories. You can actually do things with science; it allows you to make hypotheses, test them, and even use complicated mathematical equations to predict the behavior of the universe! That's pretty amazing. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and you don't need faith to believe in science. If faith is to believe without evidence, then science is the opposite, for it requires -- and provides -- evidence of its claims. For example, I have to say that if the Bible allowed me to calculate the curvature of light from a distant body due to gravity, I would probably believe in the Bible a little bit more. It's Einstein that lets me do that, though. Of course, I can't possibly read every scientific document ever written. I suppose, then, you could say I have faith in the scientific process, but that's definitely mangling the word "faith." When most people -- theists, especially - refer to "faith," they mean to believe in something without proof. When I say I have faith in the scientific process, I say that I trust it, and that I trust it generates the proofs we require to understand and analyze the natural world. If I ever felt a moment's doubt about the discoveries of, say, evolution, I could spend only a few moments searching well-known archives for volumes of material that clearly address my concerns. I trust the scientific process, then. I do not need to have faith in it, because it provides ample proofs of its own, freely available for anyone to test if they can, refute if they dare, and study if they desire. While it's true we can't empirically prove that yesterday, love, or even you and me exist, we have a reasonable amount of assurance that these things are actually there. For example, everyone reading this has memories of yesterday. If someone were to claim, "There was no yesterday!" It would require pretty exceptional proof that would lead all of us to doubt our collective memories of yesterday. If someone were to come up to me and say, "Veraticus, your mother never loved you," I would probably doubt their word unless they could provide overwhelming evidence. We can't say the same thing about God. No one has memories of God, and no one has ever met him. There are books about him, true, but many of them are contradictory, and most claim that their God is the only God and all the others are so much hot air. People sometimes claim God speaks through them, but how can you prove an assertion like that? Others say that God wrote books, but books are written by men. So when someone says to me, "God exists!" I require exceptional proof of their claims, since essentially they are claiming an unknowable being exists that listens to every single human prayer and selectively answers some and not others while controlling fate and time itself, yet its existence is hidden from us beyond the pale of every test devised by humans. And as yet I have been disappointed in my quest for proof of God's existence. Lacking evidence for, why posit that such a complex being exists? So the rules for the existence of God are not different from the rules of the existence of unicorns or Flying Spaghetti Monsters, or any other wildly outlandish claim like celestial teapots or what have you. It's really pretty simple: big claims require big evidence. When Einstein said that mass deforms space, people didn't believe him. But he gave a lot of big evidence to support his claims, and then people tested them and found that they fit observed phenomena perfectly. So now, scientists generally accept general and special relativity. If you tell me God exists, you better pony up some evidence, and I mean quality stuff I can duplicate myself, or I see no reason to believe you. It's unfortunate that 90% of the world believes in God. They kill and hate in his name, and all but a select few remember to love in it. Hopefully things will change some day and people will become wiser and more compassionate. It doesn't change the fact that everyone believing in something doesn't make it true. Personally speaking, I have never really seen any need for God in my own life. I have no particular desire to steal God from other people's lives, if they have grown to rely upon that particular delusion. It seems cruel in the extreme to deprive people of happiness, even if they have invented it themselves. I think that the concept of God and religions tends to hamper people more than it helps, though, so I hope that future generations of humans do not believe in him. Maybe a blind man wouldn't believe in sight, especially if he was born with a congenital defect preventing him from ever seeing. But that blind mind could infer sight, sometimes; he could form an image in his mind of what an object might look like based on its feel. If I were born "blind to religion" -- and I was not -- then presumably, if God existed for all to find and see, I would have somehow happened upon proofs of his existence, or been able to ascertain the shape with my hands rather than with my faulty vision. That this has not happened yet leads me to believe, rather than me being blind, that the object is not actually there.
"Faith", "trust", "belief", "accepting as the most likely possibility" - it's all pretty interchangable without any "mangling" going on. Theists very rarely just believe in God because of a few bedtime stories they heard as children. They weigh up the evidence (which may include all kinds of things), and apply reasoning. Sure, there's no scientific "proof" and not a lot that can be measured, but science can rarely prove anything 100%, and as I was trying to point out in my examples, we all have many beliefs which either we haven't tested scientifically ourselves, or that we could never come close to proving in a lab.
In answer to the examples you attempted to discredit, we're trusting (believing, having faith) that all the scientific journals which we could never get around to reading, would present untampered, genuine evidence to back up certain theories, based on perhaps testing out a tiny handful, and hearsay that other people have verified such evidence. That's an entirely reasonable and necessary stance to take on such things, should we wish to progress.
We are also trusting without empirical evidence, that the process itself of collecting and verifying evidence and the logic behind any deductive reasoning is valid. Again, this is something we need to trust to progress. It all makes sense and would rightly be considered unreasonable not to believe such things. Whether we call that trust, faith or belief, it's just a semantic difference. These are necessary assumptions we need to accept in order to have any chance of moving forward.
You show double standards when it comes to "yesterday" as to what is or isn't reasonable to believe. When refering to God, you use "I don't believe", but for yesterday, you use "there was no yesterday", thus shifting the burden of proof. You also use the idea that most people remember yesterday, but reject the same premise when it comes to most people believing in God and say that everyone believing in something doesn't make it true. If 10% of an island community slept through yesterday, would it be unreasonable that they believe that yesterday happened based on the testimonies of the rest of that community?
Again, for the love of parents, you attempt to shift the burden of proof. To be consistant, we'd have to suspend our trust of having loving parents until we wired them up and tested their brain responses, along with meticulously keeping records or their behaviour. The person who claimed "I don't believe your parents ever loved you" would have no burden of proof even though they'd never met your parents or experienced your upbringing.
You make the assumption that nobody has met God or have memories of Him, when actually thousands upon thousands claim just that. These may not be physical encounters, but are clearly real in other ways for those who claim them. On what basis are you dismissing these claims? Surely, all you can reasonably say here is that you haven't met God?
I'm not attempting to prove the existance of God here, and if you've not had any experience of God, I consider it entirely reasonable not to just accept someone else's word and go and join a religion, but I consider it arrogance to assume that those have had such experiences are merely deluded and are just believing, without evidence, things they have been brought up to believe. I also consider that demanding scientific proof of something you know cannot be proven scientifically, is just an excuse and a mechanism for feeling logically superior and is inconsistant with the many things that all of us are perfectly happy to believe without seeing scientific proof.
The thing is that most if not all outspoken Atheists and Atheist groups (Just like most if not all outspoken religious groups are extremist) don't stop at just that there is no proof that "God" exists. They always take it one step further and say that "God" doesn't exist. When you make a statement like God doesn't exist then you need to have proof to back it up. Other then I have never seen him so he doesn't exist. That is like me saying Siberia doesn't exist, because I have never seen it. I have no problem at all with people who say "well I don't know, I don't think there is a God because I have never seen any proof of one". See the difference, when someone even in their own opinion says that there is no way that God exists it makes them sound ridiculous. Because Science can not prove that God doesn't exist. People are free to believe what they want to, but when you act like your beliefs make you better then other people (and I am talking about both Atheists and Religious people) it does nothing but make you look like a complete idiot.
I'm sorry.
I'm not familliar with any extremist athiest groups.
I don't need to prove anything. Why do you feel the need for proof?
How can you even make the last statement. You've been the most vocal in this thread when it comes to what other believe.
No athiests here have told you to provide proof of god.
I have said that I don't care what people believe. It is when they act like it is a fact that i have a problem with it.
I read a lot of the stuff posted on the American Atheist site and quite a bit of it was extreme. Just like Right wing religious people post a lot of extreme stuff.
Being vocal doesn't make you an extremist.
Burning down abortion clinics is extreme, and the last I checked athiests were blowing up buildings. At least not anywere near the rate that religious people do. Athiest groups don't try to censor anyone, but a rather large christian one does everytime they here something on the radio they disagre with.
Hell, most churches are burnt down by other religious people, and that includes satanists. Religions can't even get along with each other, and you think that if someone speaks out that they don't believe in god that they're an extremist.
All the nice things you are talking about are theories, not beliefs.
Theories don't have sure answers, when theories have proven answers, those become facts.
If I say "religion was invented by humans to explain the unexplainable", that's just my theory due to my own deductions, it is not the truth and we probably never gonna find the real truth.
It is my theory and It is highly debateable, it is NOT a belief.
So in my view if someone doesn't believe in something, it doesn't mean it believes in something else.
So, are you saying that you don't believe that? Or are you saying that you believe that it's a theory? Do you believe that that is highly likely or is it just theoretical that it is highly likely? Or are you saying that you don't believe anything at all about anything, and only "accept" things which have been proven? In which case, are you not believing that they have been proven? Could we not say that you have "faith" in the scientific process if you only accept something that is scientifically proven?
Why are you making it so complicated.
It is quite clear.
If you cannot prove anything 100% is a theory, believe is not the right word to use.
You are misguided by the use of the word "believe".
Ok let's use the word "think" let's see if it is easier.
I THINK that "religion was invented by humans to explain the unexplainable".
Put it this way, do you still think that I believe in that?
To me it looks like an opinion rather than something I am sure about.
If someone comes tomorrow and tells me that Religion has been invented by Mr Frufru in 2000 BC because he was bored, and there are multiple unrelated documents that confirm that, I will change my mind.
Therefore is not a belief, because I will take note of the evidence, I won't keep trusting what I thought it was right before.
I THINK God exists.
Do you think a religious person can say that?
No, because religious people are sure that God exists, therefore they will say: "I believe God exists"
If they use the word "think" that means that they are not sure, therefore they don't really believe, they just HOPE God exists.
Hope is not what drive a religious person.
Even if there were hundreds of veryfied documents that confirm that God doesn't exists, religious people won't belive it.
They will still believe in God regardeless of the evidence.
Can't you see that the first and second example are 2 very different way of thinking.
Or do you still think that both Atheists and Religious people based their existance on faith?
Originally posted by EggFtegg "Faith", "trust", "belief", "accepting as the most likely possibility" - it's all pretty interchangable without any "mangling" going on. Theists very rarely just believe in God because of a few bedtime stories they heard as children. They weigh up the evidence (which may include all kinds of things), and apply reasoning. Sure, there's no scientific "proof" and not a lot that can be measured, but science can rarely prove anything 100%, and as I was trying to point out in my examples, we all have many beliefs which either we haven't tested scientifically ourselves, or that we could never come close to proving in a lab.
In answer to the examples you attempted to discredit, we're trusting (believing, having faith) that all the scientific journals which we could never get around to reading, would present untampered, genuine evidence to back up certain theories, based on perhaps testing out a tiny handful, and hearsay that other people have verified such evidence. That's an entirely reasonable and necessary stance to take on such things, should we wish to progress. We are also trusting without empirical evidence, that the process itself of collecting and verifying evidence and the logic behind any deductive reasoning is valid. Again, this is something we need to trust to progress. It all makes sense and would rightly be considered unreasonable not to believe such things. Whether we call that trust, faith or belief, it's just a semantic difference. These are necessary assumptions we need to accept in order to have any chance of moving forward. You show double standards when it comes to "yesterday" as to what is or isn't reasonable to believe. When refering to God, you use "I don't believe", but for yesterday, you use "there was no yesterday", thus shifting the burden of proof. You also use the idea that most people remember yesterday, but reject the same premise when it comes to most people believing in God and say that everyone believing in something doesn't make it true. If 10% of an island community slept through yesterday, would it be unreasonable that they believe that yesterday happened based on the testimonies of the rest of that community? Again, for the love of parents, you attempt to shift the burden of proof. To be consistant, we'd have to suspend our trust of having loving parents until we wired them up and tested their brain responses, along with meticulously keeping records or their behaviour. The person who claimed "I don't believe your parents ever loved you" would have no burden of proof even though they'd never met your parents or experienced your upbringing. You make the assumption that nobody has met God or have memories of Him, when actually thousands upon thousands claim just that. These may not be physical encounters, but are clearly real in other ways for those who claim them. On what basis are you dismissing these claims? Surely, all you can reasonably say here is that you haven't met God? I'm not attempting to prove the existance of God here, and if you've not had any experience of God, I consider it entirely reasonable not to just accept someone else's word and go and join a religion, but I consider it arrogance to assume that those have had such experiences are merely deluded and are just believing, without evidence, things they have been brought up to believe. I also consider that demanding scientific proof of something you know cannot be proven scientifically, is just an excuse and a mechanism for feeling logically superior and is inconsistant with the many things that all of us are perfectly happy to believe without seeing scientific proof.
I can't agree with your first point. Faith, trust, and belief are not interchangeable. Faith is the act of believing something without evidence or with inadequate evidence. Trust is confidence in something. A belief is an opinion or conviction. While belief and trust can be faiths, if they are ungrounded in evidence, they need not necessarily be faithful. Especially, faith has very little to do with "being the most likely possibility" -- faith assumes a conclusion from the outset and goes to find evidence supporting that conclusion, which is the exact opposite of the scientific method (finding evidence and generalizing from it a conclusion).
I do not have faith in science, because there is an incredible abundance of information proving its conclusions. Faith in science is unnecessary. I have confidence in its processes, but this is not analogous to the way someone believes in the Bible: because I have evidence at my beck and call.
When you say scientists do not frequently prove things 100%, I think you are misunderstanding the nature of science. Nothing can necessarily be proved to 100% because a better theory or explanation might be out there. If we discovered tomorrow that gravity and evolution do not act in the way we think, the theories of gravity and evolution would change to account for the new evidence. However, any scientist can "prove" evolution or gravity with only a bit of thought and reading. We have theories that can predict their behavior very accurately.
There are no proofs of God, no observable evidence of God, no experiments that we can conduct to find God. This is the key difference between God and any other natural phenomenon, and probably what you mean by "there's no scientific 'proof' and not a lot that can be measured." This is why God probably doesn't exist. There's no evidence for it, so why assume he does?
And actually a lot of people, especially in their related fields, spend a fair amount of time not only reading scientific journals, but duplicating their results -- as do the editors of those journals to ensure the findings that they release are accurate. This process usually removes findings that have been inadequately tested or study. While it's true I don't do this for every scientific journal in existence, because these journals employ the same rigorous academic standards, it's easy to trust that most of the articles out there are well vetted. This is not the ridiculous leap of faith you propose it to be, as anyone can study the process, read the journals, duplicate the experiments contained therein, and come to their own conclusions -- things that are patently impossible when we discuss a deity.
We trust empiric evidence and logical rationality because they are testable. We do not trust them out of some baseless belief that they yield good results invariably. Everyone knows that if you put bad data in, you will get bad data out. However, the processes work reliably, repeatably, and it's easy to understand why if you take time to study them.
I am not shifting the burden of proof here. If someone tells me, "There was no yesterday," they need to prove that assertion because I have no evidence their statement is correct. Of course, I am more than willing to admit that my experiences of yesterday are fabricated, and perhaps even everyone else's, provided evidence exists that all our memories were somehow tampered with. Similarly, if someone tells me, "There is a God," they need to prove that assertion because I have no evidence their statement is correct. The burden of proof is always on the person making the claim.
Similarly, if someone said, "There are no unicorns, anywhere," if they actually meant unicorns cannot possibly exist anywhere in the universe I would require evidence of that claim. Is the biological structure of a unicorn impossible? How did they arrive at such a conclusion? Of course, most people who say that actually mean, "There is no evidence unicorns exist anywhere," a statement almost everyone agrees with.
The burden of proof is always on the shoulders of the person making the claim. I am not making a claim here: you are, instead, claiming that God exists, a claim that demands evidence. And most people have not actually met God and most people do not have memories of him -- and by memories here, I am speaking of actually having met him or spoken with him in the past, such that he tendered a response. Even if many people believed that they had, what of it? If they can't provide some sort of evidence to back up their claim, why should we believe them?
And what evidence they do provide is disjointed and fragmentary. Many experience different kinds of Gods. Many receive conflicting instructions from him, that include him telling them that the other Gods are actually false. Some experience God telling them to do things that clearly defy his earlier commandments: some receive instructions to murder. In these cases, either we believe people are actually talking to a thousand different and contradictory deities... or that actually they're just schizophrenics, exhibiting symptoms that psychologists have been aware of for a hundred years.
And when examining a claim like this, what do you think is more likely: that someone says God speaks to them and no one else and tells them to do things, or that they're suffering some kind of brain illness? Cleave to the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation is not that an incredibly complicated being, networked to all our brains and listening to our thoughts, watching all our actions and comprehending them, and then altering time and space in concordance with our wishes, is manipulating this poor person's mind. More than likely the voices in their heads are being caused by illness.
In general, it seems like you're saying that, because we trust some things, we should also trust that there is a God. This is obviously false. I trust things that have evidence. Repeatable, observable, measurable evidence. Tests involving God are not repeatable, he is not observable, and there is no measurable evidence of his existence. You have to have faith of his existence, which is belief without evidence. If you think I'm wrong, then I defy you to present to me an experiment that can prove the existence of God. If there is no such experiment, why should we assume the conclusion?
And when you say things like "...demanding scientific proof of something you know cannot be proven scientifically..." it easily disproves most of what you said before. Scientific evidence -- observable, testable evidence -- cannot exist for God. He is not testable, no experiment can ascertain his existence, and no evidence of his existence is present that cannot be attributed to another cause.
Think of it like this: it would be trivial for God to utterly prove his existence. He is omnipotent, and so could create a miracle that has no other explanation than God's existence. Or he could address every human being on the planet every week and tell them, "Hello! I am still here!" Not only does he NOT do this, but also there is no direct evidence of his existence at all! Nothing external to humans points to the fact of the existence of God, and the only internal thing that tells us of him are our "hearts." But our hearts give us contradictory information: some people believe in one God, some in another, some in none at all. Is it not more likely that human hearts are fallible and easily misled, then that there is a being so complicated as a God?
Really, by saying that God cannot be proven scientifically, you have yourself just said that God does not exist. You believe something without evidence at all, and trust it without the critical analysis it so rightly deserves.
And, finally, even if we were to presume I did have faith in something -- that is, belief without evidence -- why does this suddenly make God true? Would God start to exist if I had faith in the process of capitalism, presuming I had never seen its workings before? You seem to go to endless lengths to try to prove that I have a kind of trust ungrounded in proof. Let's assume your conclusion for the sake of argument. I don't see how my having this theoretical faith in something suddenly means that having faith at all is okay, or even more that God actually exists.
The thing is that most if not all outspoken Atheists and Atheist groups (Just like most if not all outspoken religious groups are extremist) don't stop at just that there is no proof that "God" exists. They always take it one step further and say that "God" doesn't exist. When you make a statement like God doesn't exist then you need to have proof to back it up. Other then I have never seen him so he doesn't exist. That is like me saying Siberia doesn't exist, because I have never seen it. I have no problem at all with people who say "well I don't know, I don't think there is a God because I have never seen any proof of one". See the difference, when someone even in their own opinion says that there is no way that God exists it makes them sound ridiculous. Because Science can not prove that God doesn't exist. People are free to believe what they want to, but when you act like your beliefs make you better then other people (and I am talking about both Atheists and Religious people) it does nothing but make you look like a complete idiot.
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
Of course they would say you were speaking nonsense GL. Just like the vast majority of people who have said God has spoken to them have been locked up as being insane. But every single culture in History has had a belief in a God or Gods. I am sorry but billions upon billions of people having this belief is a little more believable then your teapot theory. Plus whole civilizations that had never met had similar stories and ideas about there being a God.
Well, I think it depends on how you look at things. The fact that every single culture believes in a complete different god or set of gods is for me a reason to doubt all of them. Obviously they can't all be right, and what makes one, say, christianity or islam, be any more believable then the other? Nothing. Whole civilations that had never met having similar stores about there being a god says nothing. A god creating everything is an easy explenation that doesn't require any sciencetific knowledge whatsoever. Many cultures thought that an earthquake was the work of god. Today we know that there is a perfectly scinetific explenation for earthquakes.
Comments
I most certainly agree with this.
Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.
See, the problem is that the Bible is NOT an Historical book as you claim.
No Historian consider the Bible as a reliable historical book.
Of course there are some historical facts which are truthful with the times the book has been written, but many subjects of the Bible, in particular from the Old Testament, have no match with other Historic books of the same time.
On the other hand atoms and gravity are well proven from the scientific comunity, it is not about believing, is about fact proven, well documented and entirely accepted by all scientists.
There is no scientific theory that support the existence of God, hence at the moment its esixtance is acceptable only based on human faith.
My point was that if we're saying that religion can be the direct or indirect cause of war due to ideological differences (the "I'm right, you're wrong" tribal mentality), then atheists cannot claim immunity from the same motivations.
My point of quoting your previous statements was not to accuse you of religion bashing, but to support my argument that a lack of belief in one thing, often means a belief in something else. So, "I don't believe in God" usually goes with such beliefs as "religion was invented by humans to explain the unexplainable" or "religion was invented by humans to be a tool of control" - in the same way as "I don't believe in Santa" goes with the belief, "my parents fill my stocking when I'm asleep", or "I don't believe there's a teapot orbiting Mars" goes with "I believe Bertrand Russell invented that concept to make a point in an argument".
All the nice things you are talking about are theories, not beliefs.
Theories don't have sure answers, when theories have proven answers, those become facts.
If I say "religion was invented by humans to explain the unexplainable", that's just my theory due to my own deductions, it is not the truth and we probably never gonna find the real truth.
It is my theory and It is highly debateable, it is NOT a belief.
So in my view if someone doesn't believe in something, it doesn't mean it believes in something else.
On the other hand if you ask a religious person if God exists they say that it does exist, even without any proof.
It is not debateable, God exists.
So it is not a theory, it is a "fact" (although not proven), and this "fact" can survive thanks to the faith.
So the difference here is that although Atheist cannot categorically dis-prove the existance of God, no one ever categorically proved the existance of it either.
And this lack of proof is what make a person Atheist, it is not a believe in something else.
If someone can scientifically prove that God exists, I will "accept" him (note the use of the word "accept" rather than "believe").
An Atheist is not someone who is in principle against God, an Atheist is someone who don't accept God because there is not proof of its existance.
Nothing to do with personal beliefs.
There are lots of things throughout history that Humans take as existing that they have never seen. Have you ever seen Gravity? Have you ever seen an Atom. Probably not. But you take the word of others who have seen it and experienced it. That is what the Bible is. It is a historical document that talks about God. I personally have never seen an African slave, that doesn't mean that I think they do not exist.See, the problem is that the Bible is NOT an Historical book as you claim.
No Historian consider the Bible as a reliable historical book.
Of course there are some historical facts which are truthful with the times the book has been written, but many subjects of the Bible, in particular from the Old Testament, have no match with other Historic books of the same time.
On the other hand atoms and gravity are well proven from the scientific comunity, it is not about believing, is about fact proven, well documented and entirely accepted by all scientists.
There is no scientific theory that support the existence of God, hence at the moment its esixtance is acceptable only based on human faith.
Well, you believe that atoms and gravity are well proven by the scientific community. Have you checked it out how well documented it is and that it is entirely accepted by all scientists, or are you prepared to take that on faith? Have you considered how many things you would be happy to state as proven, when you are just taking it on faith that they have been proven? Most of our knowledge is taken on faith, it's what our whole education system is based on and that's entirely reasonable. We'd not make any progress as society if that was not the case.
We can't empirically prove that yesterday existed, that other people think, that friendship exists, that parents love their children or that happiness is desirable. We can't even empirically prove that we can trust our senses which give us the empirical evidence or even that proving something empirically is the only way to prove something. And yet, most of us are happy to just accept such things, and don't consider anyone holding such beliefs as illogical or unreasonable.
So, why make different rules for the existance of God?
Don't give me teapots, unicorns and spagetti monsters, because we don't have around 90% of the world's population suggesting that such things exist, or hundreds of thousands claiming personal experiences of such things.
If the concept of God doesn't gel with you, doesn't make sense to your world view or doesn't give you some crucial missing pieces to life's jigsaw then say so. If you have tried to seek God and have received nothing, then say so.
Don't bring forward arguments to make yourself feel cleverer than theists and making out that you must be wiser, more logical and more enlightened in your thinking, because, frankly, if you've had personal experiences with God, such arguments sound as ridiculous as a blind man refusing to believe in sight, because it can't be proven to him.
Edit: (Apologies, to ste2000, as this isn't entirely directed at him and was probably as much inspired by Veraticus' comments)
So, are you saying that you don't believe that? Or are you saying that you believe that it's a theory? Do you believe that that is highly likely or is it just theoretical that it is highly likely? Or are you saying that you don't believe anything at all about anything, and only "accept" things which have been proven? In which case, are you not believing that they have been proven? Could we not say that you have "faith" in the scientific process if you only accept something that is scientifically proven?
I actually have read a fair amount on atoms and gravity and have seen the former myself, but leaving that aside, it's hardly a matter of faith to recognize the demonstrable power of scientific theories. You can actually do things with science; it allows you to make hypotheses, test them, and even use complicated mathematical equations to predict the behavior of the universe! That's pretty amazing. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and you don't need faith to believe in science. If faith is to believe without evidence, then science is the opposite, for it requires -- and provides -- evidence of its claims.
For example, I have to say that if the Bible allowed me to calculate the curvature of light from a distant body due to gravity, I would probably believe in the Bible a little bit more. It's Einstein that lets me do that, though.
Of course, I can't possibly read every scientific document ever written. I suppose, then, you could say I have faith in the scientific process, but that's definitely mangling the word "faith." When most people -- theists, especially - refer to "faith," they mean to believe in something without proof. When I say I have faith in the scientific process, I say that I trust it, and that I trust it generates the proofs we require to understand and analyze the natural world. If I ever felt a moment's doubt about the discoveries of, say, evolution, I could spend only a few moments searching well-known archives for volumes of material that clearly address my concerns.
I trust the scientific process, then. I do not need to have faith in it, because it provides ample proofs of its own, freely available for anyone to test if they can, refute if they dare, and study if they desire.
While it's true we can't empirically prove that yesterday, love, or even you and me exist, we have a reasonable amount of assurance that these things are actually there. For example, everyone reading this has memories of yesterday. If someone were to claim, "There was no yesterday!" It would require pretty exceptional proof that would lead all of us to doubt our collective memories of yesterday. If someone were to come up to me and say, "Veraticus, your mother never loved you," I would probably doubt their word unless they could provide overwhelming evidence.
We can't say the same thing about God. No one has memories of God, and no one has ever met him. There are books about him, true, but many of them are contradictory, and most claim that their God is the only God and all the others are so much hot air. People sometimes claim God speaks through them, but how can you prove an assertion like that? Others say that God wrote books, but books are written by men. So when someone says to me, "God exists!" I require exceptional proof of their claims, since essentially they are claiming an unknowable being exists that listens to every single human prayer and selectively answers some and not others while controlling fate and time itself, yet its existence is hidden from us beyond the pale of every test devised by humans. And as yet I have been disappointed in my quest for proof of God's existence. Lacking evidence for, why posit that such a complex being exists?
So the rules for the existence of God are not different from the rules of the existence of unicorns or Flying Spaghetti Monsters, or any other wildly outlandish claim like celestial teapots or what have you. It's really pretty simple: big claims require big evidence. When Einstein said that mass deforms space, people didn't believe him. But he gave a lot of big evidence to support his claims, and then people tested them and found that they fit observed phenomena perfectly. So now, scientists generally accept general and special relativity. If you tell me God exists, you better pony up some evidence, and I mean quality stuff I can duplicate myself, or I see no reason to believe you.
It's unfortunate that 90% of the world believes in God. They kill and hate in his name, and all but a select few remember to love in it. Hopefully things will change some day and people will become wiser and more compassionate. It doesn't change the fact that everyone believing in something doesn't make it true.
Personally speaking, I have never really seen any need for God in my own life. I have no particular desire to steal God from other people's lives, if they have grown to rely upon that particular delusion. It seems cruel in the extreme to deprive people of happiness, even if they have invented it themselves. I think that the concept of God and religions tends to hamper people more than it helps, though, so I hope that future generations of humans do not believe in him.
Maybe a blind man wouldn't believe in sight, especially if he was born with a congenital defect preventing him from ever seeing. But that blind mind could infer sight, sometimes; he could form an image in his mind of what an object might look like based on its feel. If I were born "blind to religion" -- and I was not -- then presumably, if God existed for all to find and see, I would have somehow happened upon proofs of his existence, or been able to ascertain the shape with my hands rather than with my faulty vision. That this has not happened yet leads me to believe, rather than me being blind, that the object is not actually there.
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
I can't beleive this topic has gone on this far. The answer is no. We would just find another reason to kill each other other then religion. End of Story.
"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." ~ Ronald Reagan
Would the world be better without religion?
In the sense that there would be no more Jehova's witnesses and Mormon Missionaries knocking on my door in the wee hours O' the mornin' and at meal times.... yes.
In the sense that I wouldn't have to listen to the same damn Christmas carols year after year... yes.
In the sense that I could get on an airplane without being all but tackled by airport Moonies.. yes
In the sense that I wouldn't have to deal with all this God Bless America stupity... yes
Note: no one ever says "God Bless Uganda" or "God Bless Chechneya," why is that?
In the sense that old people would save the millions of dollars that they spend on religious paraphernalia and bogus TV preachers... yes
In the sense that kids wouldn't be exposed to sexually repressed pedophiles on a weekly basis.. yes
I'm going to stop now because my sarcasm reflex is getting the better of me. In short MY world would be much better without YOUR religion in it. But you probably already figured that out.
BTW, I sense that this is an anti-atheist thread and should be deleted.
If I can't make a thread questioning Christianity or calling out it's fault, no one should be able do the same to atheism. fair is fair after all....
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
Of course they would say you were speaking nonsense GL. Just like the vast majority of people who have said God has spoken to them have been locked up as being insane. But every single culture in History has had a belief in a God or Gods. I am sorry but billions upon billions of people having this belief is a little more believable then your teapot theory. Plus whole civilizations that had never met had similar stories and ideas about there being a God.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
I'm not familliar with any extremist athiest groups.
I don't need to prove anything. Why do you feel the need for proof?
How can you even make the last statement. You've been the most vocal in this thread when it comes to what other believe.
No athiests here have told you to provide proof of god.
Wish Darkfall would release.
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
Of course they would say you were speaking nonsense GL. Just like the vast majority of people who have said God has spoken to them have been locked up as being insane. But every single culture in History has had a belief in a God or Gods. I am sorry but billions upon billions of people having this belief is a little more believable then your teapot theory. Plus whole civilizations that had never met had similar stories and ideas about there being a God.
Well if you're going to make ridiculous claims then I'm gonna ask for proof.Care to prove that the "vast magority of people who have said god has spoken to them have been loked up".
Ever occur to you that maybe man has a need to understand thier place in the universe, and thus have created religions to explain it to them?
Wish Darkfall would release.
Amen!
Wish Darkfall would release.
I'm not familliar with any extremist athiest groups.
I don't need to prove anything. Why do you feel the need for proof?
How can you even make the last statement. You've been the most vocal in this thread when it comes to what other believe.
No athiests here have told you to provide proof of god.
I have said that I don't care what people believe. It is when they act like it is a fact that i have a problem with it.I read a lot of the stuff posted on the American Atheist site and quite a bit of it was extreme. Just like Right wing religious people post a lot of extreme stuff.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
"Faith", "trust", "belief", "accepting as the most likely possibility" - it's all pretty interchangable without any "mangling" going on. Theists very rarely just believe in God because of a few bedtime stories they heard as children. They weigh up the evidence (which may include all kinds of things), and apply reasoning. Sure, there's no scientific "proof" and not a lot that can be measured, but science can rarely prove anything 100%, and as I was trying to point out in my examples, we all have many beliefs which either we haven't tested scientifically ourselves, or that we could never come close to proving in a lab.
In answer to the examples you attempted to discredit, we're trusting (believing, having faith) that all the scientific journals which we could never get around to reading, would present untampered, genuine evidence to back up certain theories, based on perhaps testing out a tiny handful, and hearsay that other people have verified such evidence. That's an entirely reasonable and necessary stance to take on such things, should we wish to progress.
We are also trusting without empirical evidence, that the process itself of collecting and verifying evidence and the logic behind any deductive reasoning is valid. Again, this is something we need to trust to progress. It all makes sense and would rightly be considered unreasonable not to believe such things. Whether we call that trust, faith or belief, it's just a semantic difference. These are necessary assumptions we need to accept in order to have any chance of moving forward.
You show double standards when it comes to "yesterday" as to what is or isn't reasonable to believe. When refering to God, you use "I don't believe", but for yesterday, you use "there was no yesterday", thus shifting the burden of proof. You also use the idea that most people remember yesterday, but reject the same premise when it comes to most people believing in God and say that everyone believing in something doesn't make it true. If 10% of an island community slept through yesterday, would it be unreasonable that they believe that yesterday happened based on the testimonies of the rest of that community?
Again, for the love of parents, you attempt to shift the burden of proof. To be consistant, we'd have to suspend our trust of having loving parents until we wired them up and tested their brain responses, along with meticulously keeping records or their behaviour. The person who claimed "I don't believe your parents ever loved you" would have no burden of proof even though they'd never met your parents or experienced your upbringing.
You make the assumption that nobody has met God or have memories of Him, when actually thousands upon thousands claim just that. These may not be physical encounters, but are clearly real in other ways for those who claim them. On what basis are you dismissing these claims? Surely, all you can reasonably say here is that you haven't met God?
I'm not attempting to prove the existance of God here, and if you've not had any experience of God, I consider it entirely reasonable not to just accept someone else's word and go and join a religion, but I consider it arrogance to assume that those have had such experiences are merely deluded and are just believing, without evidence, things they have been brought up to believe. I also consider that demanding scientific proof of something you know cannot be proven scientifically, is just an excuse and a mechanism for feeling logically superior and is inconsistant with the many things that all of us are perfectly happy to believe without seeing scientific proof.
I'm not familliar with any extremist athiest groups.
I don't need to prove anything. Why do you feel the need for proof?
How can you even make the last statement. You've been the most vocal in this thread when it comes to what other believe.
No athiests here have told you to provide proof of god.
I have said that I don't care what people believe. It is when they act like it is a fact that i have a problem with it.I read a lot of the stuff posted on the American Atheist site and quite a bit of it was extreme. Just like Right wing religious people post a lot of extreme stuff.
Being vocal doesn't make you an extremist.Burning down abortion clinics is extreme, and the last I checked athiests were blowing up buildings. At least not anywere near the rate that religious people do. Athiest groups don't try to censor anyone, but a rather large christian one does everytime they here something on the radio they disagre with.
Hell, most churches are burnt down by other religious people, and that includes satanists. Religions can't even get along with each other, and you think that if someone speaks out that they don't believe in god that they're an extremist.
Wish Darkfall would release.
So, are you saying that you don't believe that? Or are you saying that you believe that it's a theory? Do you believe that that is highly likely or is it just theoretical that it is highly likely? Or are you saying that you don't believe anything at all about anything, and only "accept" things which have been proven? In which case, are you not believing that they have been proven? Could we not say that you have "faith" in the scientific process if you only accept something that is scientifically proven?
Why are you making it so complicated.
It is quite clear.
If you cannot prove anything 100% is a theory, believe is not the right word to use.
You are misguided by the use of the word "believe".
Ok let's use the word "think" let's see if it is easier.
I THINK that "religion was invented by humans to explain the unexplainable".
Put it this way, do you still think that I believe in that?
To me it looks like an opinion rather than something I am sure about.
If someone comes tomorrow and tells me that Religion has been invented by Mr Frufru in 2000 BC because he was bored, and there are multiple unrelated documents that confirm that, I will change my mind.
Therefore is not a belief, because I will take note of the evidence, I won't keep trusting what I thought it was right before.
I THINK God exists.
Do you think a religious person can say that?
No, because religious people are sure that God exists, therefore they will say: "I believe God exists"
If they use the word "think" that means that they are not sure, therefore they don't really believe, they just HOPE God exists.
Hope is not what drive a religious person.
Even if there were hundreds of veryfied documents that confirm that God doesn't exists, religious people won't belive it.
They will still believe in God regardeless of the evidence.
Can't you see that the first and second example are 2 very different way of thinking.
Or do you still think that both Atheists and Religious people based their existance on faith?
I can't agree with your first point. Faith, trust, and belief are not interchangeable. Faith is the act of believing something without evidence or with inadequate evidence. Trust is confidence in something. A belief is an opinion or conviction. While belief and trust can be faiths, if they are ungrounded in evidence, they need not necessarily be faithful. Especially, faith has very little to do with "being the most likely possibility" -- faith assumes a conclusion from the outset and goes to find evidence supporting that conclusion, which is the exact opposite of the scientific method (finding evidence and generalizing from it a conclusion).
I do not have faith in science, because there is an incredible abundance of information proving its conclusions. Faith in science is unnecessary. I have confidence in its processes, but this is not analogous to the way someone believes in the Bible: because I have evidence at my beck and call.
When you say scientists do not frequently prove things 100%, I think you are misunderstanding the nature of science. Nothing can necessarily be proved to 100% because a better theory or explanation might be out there. If we discovered tomorrow that gravity and evolution do not act in the way we think, the theories of gravity and evolution would change to account for the new evidence. However, any scientist can "prove" evolution or gravity with only a bit of thought and reading. We have theories that can predict their behavior very accurately.
There are no proofs of God, no observable evidence of God, no experiments that we can conduct to find God. This is the key difference between God and any other natural phenomenon, and probably what you mean by "there's no scientific 'proof' and not a lot that can be measured." This is why God probably doesn't exist. There's no evidence for it, so why assume he does?
And actually a lot of people, especially in their related fields, spend a fair amount of time not only reading scientific journals, but duplicating their results -- as do the editors of those journals to ensure the findings that they release are accurate. This process usually removes findings that have been inadequately tested or study. While it's true I don't do this for every scientific journal in existence, because these journals employ the same rigorous academic standards, it's easy to trust that most of the articles out there are well vetted. This is not the ridiculous leap of faith you propose it to be, as anyone can study the process, read the journals, duplicate the experiments contained therein, and come to their own conclusions -- things that are patently impossible when we discuss a deity.
We trust empiric evidence and logical rationality because they are testable. We do not trust them out of some baseless belief that they yield good results invariably. Everyone knows that if you put bad data in, you will get bad data out. However, the processes work reliably, repeatably, and it's easy to understand why if you take time to study them.
I am not shifting the burden of proof here. If someone tells me, "There was no yesterday," they need to prove that assertion because I have no evidence their statement is correct. Of course, I am more than willing to admit that my experiences of yesterday are fabricated, and perhaps even everyone else's, provided evidence exists that all our memories were somehow tampered with. Similarly, if someone tells me, "There is a God," they need to prove that assertion because I have no evidence their statement is correct. The burden of proof is always on the person making the claim.
Similarly, if someone said, "There are no unicorns, anywhere," if they actually meant unicorns cannot possibly exist anywhere in the universe I would require evidence of that claim. Is the biological structure of a unicorn impossible? How did they arrive at such a conclusion? Of course, most people who say that actually mean, "There is no evidence unicorns exist anywhere," a statement almost everyone agrees with.
The burden of proof is always on the shoulders of the person making the claim. I am not making a claim here: you are, instead, claiming that God exists, a claim that demands evidence. And most people have not actually met God and most people do not have memories of him -- and by memories here, I am speaking of actually having met him or spoken with him in the past, such that he tendered a response. Even if many people believed that they had, what of it? If they can't provide some sort of evidence to back up their claim, why should we believe them?
And what evidence they do provide is disjointed and fragmentary. Many experience different kinds of Gods. Many receive conflicting instructions from him, that include him telling them that the other Gods are actually false. Some experience God telling them to do things that clearly defy his earlier commandments: some receive instructions to murder. In these cases, either we believe people are actually talking to a thousand different and contradictory deities... or that actually they're just schizophrenics, exhibiting symptoms that psychologists have been aware of for a hundred years.
And when examining a claim like this, what do you think is more likely: that someone says God speaks to them and no one else and tells them to do things, or that they're suffering some kind of brain illness? Cleave to the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation is not that an incredibly complicated being, networked to all our brains and listening to our thoughts, watching all our actions and comprehending them, and then altering time and space in concordance with our wishes, is manipulating this poor person's mind. More than likely the voices in their heads are being caused by illness.
In general, it seems like you're saying that, because we trust some things, we should also trust that there is a God. This is obviously false. I trust things that have evidence. Repeatable, observable, measurable evidence. Tests involving God are not repeatable, he is not observable, and there is no measurable evidence of his existence. You have to have faith of his existence, which is belief without evidence. If you think I'm wrong, then I defy you to present to me an experiment that can prove the existence of God. If there is no such experiment, why should we assume the conclusion?
And when you say things like "...demanding scientific proof of something you know cannot be proven scientifically..." it easily disproves most of what you said before. Scientific evidence -- observable, testable evidence -- cannot exist for God. He is not testable, no experiment can ascertain his existence, and no evidence of his existence is present that cannot be attributed to another cause.
Think of it like this: it would be trivial for God to utterly prove his existence. He is omnipotent, and so could create a miracle that has no other explanation than God's existence. Or he could address every human being on the planet every week and tell them, "Hello! I am still here!" Not only does he NOT do this, but also there is no direct evidence of his existence at all! Nothing external to humans points to the fact of the existence of God, and the only internal thing that tells us of him are our "hearts." But our hearts give us contradictory information: some people believe in one God, some in another, some in none at all. Is it not more likely that human hearts are fallible and easily misled, then that there is a being so complicated as a God?
Really, by saying that God cannot be proven scientifically, you have yourself just said that God does not exist. You believe something without evidence at all, and trust it without the critical analysis it so rightly deserves.
And, finally, even if we were to presume I did have faith in something -- that is, belief without evidence -- why does this suddenly make God true? Would God start to exist if I had faith in the process of capitalism, presuming I had never seen its workings before? You seem to go to endless lengths to try to prove that I have a kind of trust ungrounded in proof. Let's assume your conclusion for the sake of argument. I don't see how my having this theoretical faith in something suddenly means that having faith at all is okay, or even more that God actually exists.
To the original question :
Without religion a definate yes...without belief and faith a definate no.
If we had nothing to believe in we would never have any reason to do anything.
when we believe in ourselves,something religion dissaproves of,we'll be fine
that and letting the generals lead the charge..
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
Of course they would say you were speaking nonsense GL. Just like the vast majority of people who have said God has spoken to them have been locked up as being insane. But every single culture in History has had a belief in a God or Gods. I am sorry but billions upon billions of people having this belief is a little more believable then your teapot theory. Plus whole civilizations that had never met had similar stories and ideas about there being a God.
Well, I think it depends on how you look at things. The fact that every single culture believes in a complete different god or set of gods is for me a reason to doubt all of them. Obviously they can't all be right, and what makes one, say, christianity or islam, be any more believable then the other? Nothing. Whole civilations that had never met having similar stores about there being a god says nothing. A god creating everything is an easy explenation that doesn't require any sciencetific knowledge whatsoever. Many cultures thought that an earthquake was the work of god. Today we know that there is a perfectly scinetific explenation for earthquakes.
If we had nothing to believe in we would never have any reason to do anything.
There doesn't have to be a reason for life. Sure, you would LIKE to have a reason for life, but that doesn't mean there has to be.