I am curious...why should God "have to be provable"?
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Here's a parable:Akai Shizuku said:
As a kid, I got a chain letter. It was all like, "Send this letter to five other people and you'll win the lottery!" But it also told the story of a guy who broke the chain. The day after he threw away the chain letter, he got in a car accident and was paralyzed. Clearly you don't want bad karma, the chain letter warned.
I thought this claim was pretty dubious. I mean, it's just a piece of paper. I didn't believe in magic as a kid. But I was a little scared, too. What if I was wrong? Maybe my family would die. And wouldn't it be awesome to win the lottery? Maybe I should pass the letter along and hope for the best -- couldn't hurt, could it?
And then I realized that was fucking dumb of me to assign truth based on threats, and threw that letter away.
...
You should understand that that little box isn't really Pascal's Wager. It's Pascal's Wager Dumbed Down So You Can Scare Your Friends Into Believing in God.
Pascal's Wager is really about delving into existential uncertainty. It comes from a time when people were trying to reconcile the fallibility of human perception with a form of logic that was near-useless without absolute certainty and absolute truth. The box is there as an attempt to break the paralyzing deadlock of never being absolutely sure. Pascal starts by wanting to believe in God and introduces the box to reassure himself that his leap of faith was a safe decision.
Using the box to try to scare people into "faith" is a perversion of its original context and intent. It demeans Pascal, it demeans logic, and it demeans God.
-- Alex
I don't read the book of Revelations. That is generally considered (that is, by several higher authorities in churches) to be an allegory of some sort, not intended to be taken literally, though no one really knows WTF is up with it. To answer your question, no, I haven't read the Bible all the way through recently. Can you tell me the Bible verse that says that Christians are dumb and insane?Archaeology Hat said:
You just went in a circle.LimaBravo said:Because rational reasonable people do not play well with unproven evidence.
That sounds really deep & metaphysical but its not. What you perceive as reality is in fact your reality subjectively to you. Therefore anything you perceive is real to you unless proven otherwise. Things that are real existshroomie said:. This also means what madmen perceive as reality exists to them hence their reactions to that stimuli.
He says that anything that can be proven, is only subjective to that person. What makes a rock a rock, is someones view on that particular rock. The definition and properties of that rock are all based on his individual senses.
Purple is purple, but the color is not the exact same for anyobody. Even though you or I don't see the difference becuase we cannot see through each others eyes, there is no true same shade of purple, from our point of view.
This goes on to all "objects" and subjects. Some people just have to accept that a majority agrees it is fact. Even though it seems like quite the opposite to them.
Say when we all die we all do go the afterlife. Say there IS a god.
But say instead of it being deity #16132, Yahweh, God of the Israelites, Jews, Christians of all demnominations, Muslims of all denominations and all spinoffs thereof.
No, instead of #16132 it's #16131! Baal of Peor!
Now, Baal of Peor was not a very nice deity by modern standards. According to the bible and the Romans, both admittedly highly biased sources, Baal of Peor required regular child-sacrifices to keep him appeased. I think we can all agree that none of us have sacrificed a child to Baal recently?
Now, you'll all agree we're pretty much all screwed here, very few people have Worshiped Baal since the fall of Carthage, a statistically irrelevant number. All of us can expect terrble vengeance!
Except what's this? A significant number of us have not only not been properly worshipping Baal, no, this significant number have been Worshiping Baal's enemy, Yahweh and as part of that worship have condemned Baal as a demon, liar and spat on his name. Oh boy are THEY in for some terrible vengeance!
But say instead of it being deity #16132, Yahweh, God of the Israelites, Jews, Christians of all demnominations, Muslims of all denominations and all spinoffs thereof.
No, instead of #16132 it's #16131! Baal of Peor!
Now, Baal of Peor was not a very nice deity by modern standards. According to the bible and the Romans, both admittedly highly biased sources, Baal of Peor required regular child-sacrifices to keep him appeased. I think we can all agree that none of us have sacrificed a child to Baal recently?
Now, you'll all agree we're pretty much all screwed here, very few people have Worshiped Baal since the fall of Carthage, a statistically irrelevant number. All of us can expect terrble vengeance!
Except what's this? A significant number of us have not only not been properly worshipping Baal, no, this significant number have been Worshiping Baal's enemy, Yahweh and as part of that worship have condemned Baal as a demon, liar and spat on his name. Oh boy are THEY in for some terrible vengeance!
Parnomal things had happened at different times of day and night. A lot this happen during my highschool years. My family lived in a haughted house. My grandma saw a kitchen raised off the stove by itself. Most of my family saw a ghost of a 11 to 13 year old girl. At first my grandma saw it and thought my little brothers {13 and 14 at the time] snuck a girl in the house.[they honestly didn't.] We ripped the house apart looking for the girl but found nothing.plus the outside doors were still locked.{only the adults had a key to the house.] My family all but me saw ghosts in that house. To this day i never saw a ghost in person. I saw signs of a ghost.AndyFromMonday said:
I came back from 12 hour shift at work,got some food from sonic's. I turned on the tv while i eat like i always do. Then the cable started to mess up.{You remember on old tvs where you didnt have the cable plug in it turn to static. It was like someone was pulling the cable out. My cable wire was hard to unplug. You manully had to turn the turn the wire a special way then pull it out. I lost it and started to cuss." You motherfucking ghost ***** better leave my cable alone before i beat your ghost ass!"
The cable starts going crazy. static/no static for like a minute. I cussed again "Ghost ***** why don't go up in the attic? No one is up there." A few secs later i hear heavy stomping up in the attic.{everyone else was asleep at time.] I then said "You better stop before i beat your ghost ass!" The stomping stops. I am a see to believe it kind of guy when it comes to ghosts. Lastly we didn't handy at the time. what are suppose to put cammeras all over our house to prove. Plus we were a proud family and was not going to be chased out of our house. If a ghost came to us threatening us, we would be like."Shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my house!" We was not scared in the least.
Compare:thebobmaster said:
http://www.thebricktestament.com/revelation/index.html
AND
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/25390
I was picking on the scientology point.
It just irritates me when someone insults an entire community because one member said something stupid.thebobmaster said:
Also no-one deserves the insult of being compared to Scientologists.
You and me both, girl. You (not you personally, this is aimed at atheists in general who do this) shouldn't judge people because they believe in something you don't. As for Christians attacking atheists, those ones are hypocrites. Nice little verse in the Bible, Matthew 7:1 says "Judge not, lest ye be judged". Which means every Christian who attacks atheists just because they are atheists are claiming their faith is better...while violating said faith at the same time.SecretTacoNinja said:
Because, if you can't prove "god", you'll never be able to convert people like myself, unless maybe if you threaten to kill all non-believers, like in the good old days.
No, but I can find ones that says they should be put to death:thebobmaster said:
Deuteronomy 13:1 - 13:6
I'm saying bacteria are evolving at a rate which we can study,sramota said:
but, sure, go ahead and read in a WHOLE lot more into a post than that...
For someone who believe without questioning you... Wait, you just prove my point even more by assuming I'm stating things without questioning.
And for the sake of argument: No, I don't worship Anything. I hold a firm anti-material standpoint and shun any and all things that causes one to stagnate.
So, no, we don't all worship something, it's just you Dogpeople who need a pack and can't rise up to be an Alpha. Us cats.. We just shake our heads.
So you are saying that you have no hobbies at all and just stare at a wall all day. All people have hobbies that take a big chuck off their time. Sooner or later you have to do that hobby. It becomes like a itch. Unless you find a new hobby you have to do it. If people don't worship or obssess anything. How do explain people stand in lines{while in rain,snow,hail ,etc] for days to get tickets,books etc. They wouldn't do that just like it a little bit. They love it to the point of worship and/or obsession.
I have hobbies, thank you very much,tenlong said:
I study psychology at a university level,
I enjoy the company of good friends on a sunny summer day,
I'll gladly play a video game every now and then,
also am quite fond of the works of Terry Pratchett and from time to time Zero Punctuation,
why you can't wrap your mind around the act of enjoying life without being an, as YOU describe yourself, obseesive worshiper, but rather a free mind with expanding worlds, basking in the glory of nature's beauty and sharing a smile and all your love with those around..
I can't quite understand youre inability to comprehend texts and your rather disturbing *need* to assume far more than is stated.. It Does however explain a whole lot about you and your relation to this figment of your mind you label as God.
Fascinating and tragic.
Theoretically, my friend, theoretically. Yes, Mendel's work on inheritance was ignored, but information was much harder to spread back then. I'm afraid I don't know enough about Chardin to comment on what he did though.Cheeze_Pavilion said:
And so what if science can't define justice? Hell, define "meaningful" That's why we have disciplines like ethics and philosophy. What are you trying to imply?
But there is water there. 30-50% of its mass is ice.thebobmaster said:
Let's just pretend that you're right about that for the time being, though. If we didn't think there was water there, it's not because "we just do", it's because we have no reason to think there would be. (Of course, since water is made up of two of the most common elements in the universe it's ludicrous that it wouldn't be.) "We just do" is never an acceptable response in a scientific discussion. We don't assume positives and demand proof for negatives. We assume the negative until we have a reason to think a positive. Similarly, we assume God doesn't exist because we don't have the physical evidence to suggest he does.
Pics or it didn't happen.tenlong said:
No, seriously. I won't accept anecdotes of ghosts any more than I'll accept people declaring they "just know" God exists. The human mind is just too fallible for me to take any story at face value. Reproduce your experiences in lab conditions and then we'll start talking.
I notice you abandoned the evolution angle. Please don't stop just because at least two people called you on it.
EDIT: Pardon my Latin.
"Parnomal things had happened at different times of day and night. A lot this happen during my highschool years. My family lived in a haughted house. My grandma saw a kitchen raised off the stove by itself. Most of my family saw a ghost of a 11 to 13 year old girl. At first my grandma saw it and thought my little brothers {13 and 14 at the time] snuck a girl in the house.[they honestly didn't.] We ripped the house apart looking for the girl but found nothing.plus the outside doors were still locked.{only the adults had a key to the house.] My family all but me saw ghosts in that house. To this day i never saw a ghost in person. I saw signs of a ghost."tenlong said:
"Peduncular means pertaining to the peduncle, which is a neural tract running to and from the pons on the brain stem. These hallucinations usually occur in the evenings, but not during drowsiness, as in the case of hypnagogic hallucination. The subject is usually fully conscious and can interact with the hallucinatory characters for extended periods of time. As in the case of hypnagogic hallucinations, insight into the nature of the images remains intact. The false images can occur in any part of the visual field, and are rarely polymodal."
"I came back from 12 hour shift at work,got some food from sonic's. I turned on the tv while i eat like i always do. Then the cable started to mess up.{You remember on old tvs where you didnt have the cable plug in it turn to static. It was like someone was pulling the cable out. My cable wire was hard to unplug. You manully had to turn the turn the wire a special way then pull it out. I lost it and started to cuss." You motherfucking ghost ***** better leave my cable alone before i beat your ghost ass!"
You ever thinked for a second that there might have been a problem with the cable itself and not a ghost?
"The cable starts going crazy. static/no static for like a minute. I cussed again "Ghost ***** why don't go up in the attic? No one is up there." A few secs later i hear heavy stomping up in the attic.{everyone else was asleep at time.] I then said "You better stop before i beat your ghost ass!" The stomping stops. I am a see to believe it kind of guy when it comes to ghosts. Lastly we didn't handy at the time. what are suppose to put cammeras all over our house to prove. Plus we were a proud family and was not going to be chased out of our house. If a ghost came to us threatening us, we would be like."Shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my house!" We was not scared in the least"
Again, there might have been a problem with the cable and the attic disturbances might have been rats.
Shit that happened to me:
The closet's door above the kitchen ,where we keep forks and such, is not exactly "good". It always opens. Sometimes when it oppens forks fall out of it. Does that mean a ghost did it? I sure did taught so until I saw it happen right before my eyes. Changed the door and never had a problem since.
I woke up one night suddently seeing 2 pairs of red eyes staring at me. Was that a ghost? No. Was that a night terror? Yes.
When I was at school me and my friends would usually hear noises coming from the bathroom. It turned out to be a broken pipe.
When I used to go to my grandparents I used to hear noises in the attic. I taught it was a ghost too and started screaming one day at it to stop and it actually did stop. My grandfather came in the room and asked me what the fuck was I doing. I told him I was trying to scare the ghost away. 1 hour later me and him were comming down from the attic having just killed 3 rats.
I used to hear fainth voices and taught it was a ghost. When I went to the doctor about a bad cut I had at my hand and I told him about what me hearing shit. It turned out that it was a mild form of hallucination known as a disturbance.
Has a kid I used to see images form in the dark right before I fell asleep. Told the doctor about those too and apparently they are very common and are called hypnagogic hallucination.
All of these stopped by the time I was aged 17.
I do believe that in the times those "moral rules" have been written down, at least 90-95% of the people were religious. You've got to admit that people would rather respect some giant dude in the sky (remember, we're years and years before Christ) that won't protect you from Hell than an old geezer on a throne somewhere far, far away from your home.Skeleon said:
Ah, one of the dumbest arguments ever. And quite popular, too.Archaeology Hat said:
Free will, look it up.
If God prevented evil people from doing evil acts, he would be no better than an overlord or a slaver, whipping you and pushing you whenever you think of anything bad.