Do you believe in some sort of God(s)?

[IronUnkind]

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I think you are being very biased here

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You almost hooked me, you cheeky bastard! I'm going to take a cue from private joker and head for the high road.

[CallMeIshmael]

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I think you are being very biased here

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You almost hooked me, you cheeky bastard! I'm going to take a cue from private joker and head for the high road.

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Im not really sure what this means, but if you wouldnt mind explaining why a spaceship landing on earth millions of years ago is so much harder to believe than a guy being born to a woman who never had sex, I think its relevant to the thread.


EDIT: just to note, I made the quoted comment under the assumption you are Christian. I feel that (if this is true) you might not be the best judge of the objective plausability of your religion and another religion.

[demon102]

I believe in god but also believe religion is total shyt, why people believe that the word of god is in a 2000+ year old book(s) that are written by men makes me want to laugh and feel really bad that those people are of the same species as me. (LOl those feeble minded littly monkeys)

If Im wrong then when I go to hell IM gonna kill the devil and raise an army to raid God's palace and brutally torture him until he screams for me to end his supposedly eternal existance, THEN U WILL ALL CALL ME THE


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[demon102]

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I don't believe in God.

You know what I find to be a more interesting question tho? If no one ever educated a person about Gods/Religions how many people would still have spiritual feelings and how many would have none? I really don't feel it the way I think others do if you know what I mean.

I like other people and I feel a sense of goodwill towards my fellow man but I really don't feel spiritual about it. I just treat people the way I want to be treated. So I have trouble buying into most religions. Is it just instinctual and we are just born with or without out it? I explained my thoughts on this poorly but I'm too lazy to try again.

The devil tho he lives next door to me he is real. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

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I know what you're saying (I think). People are good to each other just because, and religion swooped in and took credit for it.

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That is part of what I was saying but the main part was more about how I feel. Like when I was really young actually as long as I can remember I did not believe there was a God. My parents told me there was but I just didn't feel it. I think I believed in Santa longer than I believed in God. This Santa dude was giving me stuff after all. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

God was making me miss playing in my Sunday hockey games!

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LOL this is funny I stopped believing in god for quite a while when I was like 8 yrs old cuz of some stupid shyt that a preacher was talking about (basically he said prematial sex was evil and I was like F that!!) but I belived in santa for a couple more years.

[Dr. Strangelove]

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There is no direct evidence for god but there is also no direct evidence against his existence. Which is why everyone keeps bringing up silly counterexamples against silly examples in the first place. So without any evidence, I don't really understand how anyone can be firmly religious or firmly atheist - the two seem very similar to me.

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While it is irrational to dogmatically believe there is no god (at any moment evidence might present itself), it is perfectly reasonable to assign an extremely low probability to the existence of such a higher power. We cannot apprehend it with any of our senses. This fact is sufficient to make us athiestic towards any of an infinite set of things that we cannot see, touch, taste, hear or smell. Yet a vast number of people make an exception for the idea of some vague higher power.

I don't make this exception. I do not believe in an invisible universal author just as I do not believe in invisible pink unicorns. Is it irrational to disbelieve in the existence of invisible pink unicorns? They certainly can't be proven not to exist--they're invisible.

I will continue to disbelieve, perfectly rationally, until evidence to the contrary presents itself. This is what atheism is. It isn't just the opposite of dogmatic belief in something.


And as a side note, any being with the power to create our universe must be a tremendously complex thing. What created it? If it just came into being spontaneously, or has always existed, why not just cut out the middleman and assume the universe erupted spontaneously or has always existed?

[maddog2030]

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There's either a God or not.

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But there either is or there isn't and it's either something like what I might conceptualize it to be or not, but whatever the answer is, it is what it is. I'm fine with that.

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Basically what I was trying to get to in my last post was... What are the characteristics of a non-God universe versus a God universe in your mind?

[iversonian]

This is for all those who answered no and said you're a pussy if you think no but are playing it safe. Would you sign a contract with the devil trading your soul for $10 (the $10 being offered by a person claiming to represent the devil)? The contract specifies that there is no obligation whatsoever on your part in this life.

[Earl Sleek]

I don't want to get involved in the debate at hand, but I want to address some of the ways you guys are arguing your sides...

Atheism - Some of you think atheism is the distinct belief that there are not any gods. Whilst there are some self professed atheists who fall into this description and would agree with it, there is also another group who define atheism as the lack of belief in god/s, which is very different. This second group you would probably call agnostic. But because some of you (mostly those defending belief in God) define atheism differently to some of the rest of us, you make bad arguments such as, "Saying there isn't a god requires the same leap of faith as saying there is one", which whilst true of many people, is not applicable to most of the people you are saying it to in this thread.

Personally I use the latter description for atheism, defining agnosticism more narrowly as not knowing why one doesn't believe in gods, being open to the idea of gods but not knowing which one to choose, having faulty reasoning for disbelief in god/s, etc. The two terms are used very ambiguously and it helps enourmously to find out how the person/s you are debating with use it before making assumptions. (EDIT TO ADD: Clearly my definition of agnosticism is far more complex but it's not important.)

Bad Arguments Against God/s - When you ask someone why they don't believe in God, 9 times out of 10 the answer they give will not be a good one. Most commonly it will be "if God exists then why is there war, poverty, disease, etc". The reason this line of thinking sucks is that all I have to do is say "Fine. God creates tsunamis and all this other crap because sometimes he gets in a bad mood" and all of a sudden you don't have a reason not to believe. To make an argument like that is to accept the possibility of some kind of god, just not the exact one Christianity/whoever proclaims. This thread is full of arguments like this. If you think you understand why you are an atheist then your arguments should apply to any and all religion, real or not.

[rwesty]

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I've been struggling with this question for the past couple years. What it's come to thus far is me asking myself "Why do I believe in God," and as far as I can figure the answer is "because that's how I was raised," which I'm not willing to accept as an acceptable answer. My dad recently asked me if I still believe in God, and I had to tell me no.

The only reasons I can come up with that make myself still cling to the possibility are the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing," and the fact that I believe my Christian upbringing made me a better person than I would have been otherwise (obviously the latter is not the most logical of statements, but the thought still lingers for me).

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I agree with this entire post and was raised in situation that was probably quite similar. About 5 years ago I was struggling with this and I am now fine with saying I don't know and there is no way that I could be certain either way.

I have never seen a very good reason why it is "obvious" there is no god and every time I've heard this from someone they are generally very unintelligent. On the other hand I do know several very intelligent people who end up having the reason for them believing in god is that they either have had personal experiences which have left them without a doubt or this belief consistently makes them feel better about life and the world. They also almost always understand that I have not experienced anything like that and don't use arguments like "look at the sky, how can there not be a god?" or "there's stuff on earth, so it's obvious there's a god".

I think it's highly likely the people who believe in god (or adamently deny god's existence) are just happier with being able to think that they have an answer and are willing to dismiss other arguments to maximize their happiness. Personally, I became the happiest when I finally was able to realize that I am okay with not knowing all the answers, including whether or not there was a god.

[nath]

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This is for all those who answered no and said you're a pussy if you think no but are playing it safe. Would you sign a contract with the devil trading your soul for $10 (the $10 being offered by a person claiming to represent the devil)? The contract specifies that there is no obligation whatsoever on your part in this life.

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The Blasphemy Challenge