<p>Okay, I’m leaving this thread…it’s a shame I’ve been on it this long (anything to get out of doing stupid eigenvectors).</p>
<p>dude… i’m over it. read my monster in the closet ish again, and tell me how that’s not the same recipe with different ingredients… </p>
<p>also: “What I have experienced is true and real to me.”</p>
<p>that doesn’t make something actually true.</p>
<p>if you look down the length of a straight set of train tracks, they seem to converge. seeing this, you’re experience tells you, through your sense of sight, that the tracks converge. however, they do not in FACT converge. ie, you were misled by your experience… dooped… tricked… and though your experience revealed what you considered to be a truth about the tracks… the ACTUAL TRUTH of the matter is that you were wrong… the tracks are straight… it’s only the combination of your senses and your intellect that deceived you.</p>
<p>@ Radio read my posts from the start and you’ll see that I was nevere trying to “argue” anything haha. In fact you should see that my very first post pointed out that both arguments of faith and athiesm are illogical by their very nature. Check them out.</p>
<p>@physicfem I will come back and talk about that man but now im headed to class. Dont just take my word though check it out yourself. I learned about the historical arguments in my world religions class.</p>
<p>@pinkerfloyd I feel you man but to me it seems you are taking very simplistic observations of our natural world and trying to expand it to the supernatural which can not be logical by definition. I know I’m not going to convert anyone today haha im not trying to but just trying to open some minds as you guys have of course expanded mine.Good talk guys Peace Out im headed to class.</p>
<p>pinker: how do you know it isn’t your intellect being misled? i don’t understand how that more negatively affects one side of the argument over the other. just because you’re on the one side it must mean the other side is the misled one?</p>
<p>cr_book, pinker’s argument isn’t based solely on “personal experience”, thats why.</p>
<p>i’m done with this.
have fun, children.</p>
<p>lol okay. that’s not belittling. </p>
<p>and grey, they doesn’t avoid my question. even though he may being using more intellect, if he is being misled by his intellect he’ll never know.</p>
<p>@pinker</p>
<p>seconded…</p>
<p>I am phil major and i am atheist. One of the reasons that i learned a couple years ago so forgive me if im a little off on this theory. This is the problem of evil:</p>
<p>God is considered to be Omnibenevolent (all good), Omnipotent ( all powerful), and Omniscient (all knowing). </p>
<p>So since there is evil on earth, does that mean God does not know how to eliminate evil? or does he not have the power to? Maybe he just does not have the good intentions for earth to take away the evil.</p>
<ol>
<li>If a perfectly good god exists, then there is no evil in the world.</li>
<li>There is evil in the world.</li>
<li>Therefore, a perfectly good god does not exist.</li>
</ol>
<p>The existence of God is irrelevant to me, an atheist. I choose not to believe in God, even if he exists there’s no reason for me to follow his command. Just because he made me? Who cares? As long as his aspirations differ from mine, I refuse to acknowledge his ruling unless he offers sufficient reason for me to change my aspirations. </p>
<p>In other words, I reject God as I would reject the iron fist of a dictator up my ass.</p>
<p>No amount of philosophical reasoning regarding the existence of God matters in this case, it’s all mental masturbation as far as I’m concerned. </p>
<p>The same could be said for a faithful theist, even in the absence of reason for his beliefs he still needs structured guidance from a higher power, thus he believes.</p>
<p>(I’m a philosophy/biology dual major.)</p>
<p>seee god is the universe… and we are all peices of the universe sooo we are all peices of god…</p>
<p>the big bang…
that was god deciding to explore him self similarly the way parents have children…
thoughts are the true power of the universe and you create your own world with them…
read some emmet fox…</p>
<p>imagine a world with only two dimesions…left and right…front and back…no up down they couldnt see up and down to them it wouldnt exist… soo simce string theory predicts multiple more dimesions then 4 5 6…i think its 11…imagine what we cant even see…hmmm
interesting
peace love and chicken</p>
<p>More mental masturbation. The concept of God is simply meant for existential fulfillment, and it does the job just fine. Similarly, my rejection of God is for existential fulfillment as well, and to me it does a much better job. </p>
<p>Whether God can be proven to exist or not is irrelevant to whether you believe in him or not on the bottom line. Haven’t any of you noticed that the agnostics in this thread have already made up their mind emotionally, but just won’t admit it rationally? That’s because the evidence for or against God is irrelevant to whether we want to believe him or not emotionally. I’m always on Hume’s side regarding his claim that our rationality is enslaved by our emotional urges, religious beliefs(or lack of) is a perfect example of this. </p>
<p>Surely personal experience is not the best form of critical argumentation, but we can not ignore the power of phenomenological investigation. If 20th century epistemology has taught us anything, this is it.</p>
<p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>I’m going to make the ignorant Western assumption that we are talking about Christianity here (because duh, that’s the one true faith!)</p>
<p>Milton’s Paradise Lost explains it like this… Satan and his followers used to be angels in Heaven, but Satan got tired of serving God and planned a rebellion. Satan and his followers all got their asses kicked, and were banished down into hell. </p>
<p>God could have destroyed Satan completely right then, but decided to let them exist in hell. God was fully aware they would continue their attempts to overthrow Heaven, but God let them survive because he intended to use their evil machinations towards a greater good. So yea, there you have the whole “divine plan” excuse for how God could possibly allow a world as ****ed up as this one to exist.</p>
<p>how about energy can’t be stopped or started, only changed. if there is no beginning, there is no creation.</p>
<p>uc!hopefully, wow, your explanation is very similar to my own thoughts (as close to god as i’ve ever been able to rationalize). the big bang mirrors the non-physical universe of thought, emotion and experience. as matter can contract and expand, so does thought, consciousness, etc…</p>
<p>very interesting. which uc are you interested in?</p>
<p>Here’s a good reason to be not worship God, are you really ready to admit that you want some omnipotent being who gets to run your life and test your like a lab rat to exist? That you NEED the guidance of some being to live your life? That without his love and command you are ****ed? How weak is that?</p>
<p>Note that the ontology of God should be a separate topic from the worship of God, yet most people do not separate the two different topics. As if that if God is proven to exist, they’ll convert to a religion. That’s simply absurd. </p>
<p>The strong would choose to reject God as long as God projects himself as a higher authority. Thus in the absence of evidence for or against God, the strong reject God both emotionally and rationally.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree, it’s no mystery why people choose to believe in God. The idea of a nihilistic and pointless existence… the idea that once you die it’s all over, and there is no sense of the soul, your just an empty vessel, a biological organism that has run its course… it’s depressing to think about.</p>
<p>People would much rather envision themselves playing Badminton up in the clouds with Abe Lincoln or something.</p>
<p>So why do people still pretend like it matters whether God can be logically proven or not? Is it all for show? Are people just confused? Do we feel such a strong need to justify our fundamentally emotional beliefs with logic that we do not care for?</p>
<p>Do we just contemplate these arguments for fun? (They are quite fun, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t affect my religious affiliation one bit.)</p>
<p>The thing is, a lot of intellectuals (Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens) are starting to get more vocal about how absurd religious belief is because they feel that it is not only a handicap to the human race, but a detriment to society… and I think they can make a VERY strong case for that.</p>
<p>Gay rights? religious people say “**** fags”. Religion in this case breeds prejudice.</p>
<p>Sex education? Thanks to the religious conservative Bush administration millions of dollars went into abstinence only education which didn’t work and now teen pregnancies have sky rocketed.</p>
<p>These are just two examples of why people feel the need to get religion out of society, but we could create a thread 100 pages long trying to list all the reasons religion is corrosive</p>
<p>Hyde: An unnatural state must return to its natural
state…</p>
<p>-that 70s show</p>
<p>Kiiji, overall, my logic has lead me to come to similar conclusions as yours. God is our greatest and worst invention, but indeed an invention and nothing more.</p>