But say you are going to cross the road, how do you determine if it is wrong or right to cross the road? Are all ideas for when it is safe to cross the road equally correct? I'm interested in your criteria for right or wrong.

Or do you see such questions as too pedestrian (pun intended) compared to questions of God? If that is the case, why?

It's not just semantics. It's the difference between you thinking you're spiritual and you seeing through the veil of meaningless concepts. The words you choose to use shape your reality. If you're using words like "God" to describe every-day things like trees then the connotations that come with words like "God" are likely to make you think you're spiritual (whatever "spiritual" means).
The fact that everything is connected at the microscopic level of reality is no indication of "God" either (however you're defining God). It's an indication of the laws of physics acting in accordance with mathematical laws. By using such meaningless words you're just shaping your perception in that particular way - to match the perception of others who claim that - spirituality is the be all and end all of human pursuit.

I don't believe in god, nor can I be sure that there is no god.

To me there is no kind of evidence that can prove to me that there is or isn't a god.

However I personally feel pretty comfortable stating that religion is false, including their gods. I just does not make any sense to me at all.

Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that our brain are just not wired to comprehend the universe. We seek to do so, however we just can't, and then we end up with religion, god, etc. I think life is meaningless and a pure ''coincedence'', we are just animals seeking to find meaning in life, where there, in my opinion, is none to find in the first place. When we die, we die. We don't have a soul, we have a brain. This brain deceives us, makes us think we are in control. However we, in my opinion, aren't. Me writing this post is not a result of my soul wanting to post this, it is a result of infinite amount of factors leading me to write this, free-will is an illusion.

To me it would highly be interesting to meet aliens from other planets. Wondering what they would think, with having different brains and also a way different history, education, influences etc. Would they believe in god?

Wow, what a load of crap.

Typical rantings in this forum. But I've answered the question from the OP. I have clearly stated what it would take to convince me that god exists. But even the believers know it can never happen, despite his omnipotence.

Cure an amputee! I dare you god. Ha ha! Just as meaningful to challenge a unicorn to do it. Or Santa Claus.

How are you so sure that God has never performed such a miracle? All this proves is that you have never seen such a miracle, and if that is your criteria for believing, that's certainly within your reason.

I don't suppose you really care, but you should know that biblically, God does not reveal himself to people who demand signs in order to believe. Daring God to perform miracles is likely not the best approach here.

You answered your own question: stop looking for evidence for something that doesn't exist. That thing being god...he doesn't exist. All religion is man made and it is the enemy of reason.

There is no such thing as supernatural, I.e. God. Ghosts or miracles for that matter. The laws of the universe never get suspended.

There is no record of it ever happening, so do you want to claim that it has? I'm pretty goddam sure it's never happened. I think we'd have heard about it.

And, yes, I'm familiar with the old safety net he has that he won't give into demands for proof (how conveeeeenient!), but that is, after all, the question posed in the OP. (Go look at it. I'll give you a minute to try to comprehend it.)

You complained earlier about the forum, so do you think your tone here makes the forum a better environment for people to communicate things?

Take a cue from posters who share your views, but are able to discuss things without resorting to this.

This just shows how little evidence theists need to believe in god. An apocryphal book talks about miracles! God exists! Never mind that it's completely against the laws of the universe and that to any rational human being its laughable.

I think as a rational human you should not discount anything to the full 100% (even if it is 0.00000000000000000000001%).

You act like the laws of the universe are all known by mankind ZombiePro, but we barely know anything if you take a look at the bigger picture. In my humble opinion you should loose up a little bit, leave some doubt in, because now you are coming off as religious people were before the enlightment who believed they knew everything.

Decades ago people would call you crazy if you believed in quantum mechanichs, well maybe at the time it was rational not to ''believe'' in quantum mechanichs. Nowadays people would, almost, call you crazy if you do not believe in quantum mechanichs.

What is completely against the laws of the universe? What laws of the universe is it against?

I think as a rational human you have to discount stuff like Turning water into wine and giving life to dead people who have been buried under the ground for a significant portion of time. It seems to me that you claim you are rational but in fact you still hold some irrational beliefs. You sound like you're an agnostic yet you say a lot of things to suggest you are an atheist.

Also, how can you assign a probability to something that physically can't and never will happen. I could choose an analagous arbitrary miracle like turning a football into a frog by looking at it and your telling me that there is a chance that this could happen.

You seem to believe that the supernatural is quantifiable when in fact the chances of anything supernatural occurring are exactly zero, the number the Church is most scared of.

I can totally imagine science at some point being able to take some water, break it down into neutrons, protons, etc, and then combine those into wine . I dont see how that would break any laws. Perhaps not by looking at it, but thats beside the point.

Yes, please explain which laws of the universe this breaks

Cool. You've got a good imagination. "Science at some point", slightly different from some Jewish guy doing it with his mind. Also, please explain how science could do this. Any science you have in mind? Or just science in general. "Perhaps not by looking at it, but that's not the point"... That was the point.

"Yes, please explain which laws of the universe this breaks". I'm not going to honour this with a response.

Ok last one I've got better things to do and you are not interesting me. The law of ****ing once you're heart has stopped beating, you have no brain activity and you have been buried for months or years so that you have started to decompose you can not spring back to life. Physics, biology and chemistry.

Are you implying that God is incapable of providing proof of his own existence?

Not at all, I believe there is evidence of God's existence in nature alone. What I said was that there is no testable proof.

God can reveal himself to anyone, but those who reject the supernatural will reject this revelation as being from God, because it is not coherent with a scientific world-view. This is my biggest critique - since if God does exist, and does reveal himself through the supernatural, those who reject it (supernatural), will in turn reject truth, and more importantly, God.

I asked this of eman but it seems to be more appropriate here:

The angel Gabriel appears to you and tells you to proclaim that there is no god but Allah. He goes on to tell you that every vision prior to this one was a trick by Satan to deceive you. Do you snap convert, or do you reject the vision. If so, why?

Your point was that "miracles" breaks laws of the universe. you have still ( after repeated requests) failed to state which specific laws of the universe miracles break, and to show how possible miracles would break those laws.


Ye, these arent laws of the universe. Again, I can totally imagine that science somehow comes up with something ( nanobots perhaps) that can repair damaged or decomposing flesh. does this break the laws of the universe?

Im sure theres records of people who have been thought dead ( no pulse, no brain activity etc) who woke up in the morgue or whatever ( maybe this is just an urban myth, can anyone correct me). Does this break the laws of the universe?

Once you have studied biochemistry and cell biology you tend to see life as an interacting series of complex chemical reactions. Every cell in your body has multiple necessary events occurring that keep it functioning and alive. All those cells require energy and oxygen and when these are deprived the cells undergo an irreversible process of necrosis or apoptosis. They basically self destruct in a controlled or incontrolled manner and all their internal order and structure is gone.
To ‘resurrect’ a dead body would mean reversing these irreversable processes in each and every cell.

It is like unbaking a cake.

Laws of nature. Dead is dead.

You have one crazy lil imagination dude. I really don't see why you're arguing with me on this. I keep on saying miracles are impossible and you say "well, I can totally imagine science doing this or that blah blah blah".

It depends on many factors. For starters, a single revelation contradicting the hundreds of others wouldn't make me snap-convert, but I would definitely investigate further.

It would also depend on the revelation/vision itself, how strong and lucid it was, and what the circumstances were.

To me, the question isn't really that coherent, because you're not taking into account the established and existing relationship, communications, and revelations. It would be like a man knocking on your door and telling you that he is in fact your real father, only to walk away and never to show up again. Would make you think, but you likely wouldn't snap-reject your dad.

I know that it sounds like I'm making stuff up, I'm deluded, I'm deceiving myself, of a nice combination of the three, but the sold-out Christian, in my experience, has confirmation of God. It is not a blind faith anymore because God has already revealed himself, and there is a familiarity there. If we take this to mean that the Evil Genius was putting all his efforts into deceiving me, then he has succeeded, but he's far too convincing for me to fold my hand at this point.

It sounds like you're just seeing what you want to see and believing what you want to believe, which is your right. Your delusion about god revealing himself to you can easily be explained by scientific methods, most likely a misfiring in your brain or the innate dualism which you were born with and haven't learnt to overcome. It's very natural for humans to not assign negative correlations to things that they think they are experiencing. Your brain only represents a simulation of reality and you're probably convincing yourself that your reality (visual and auditory both internal and external) is "god is revealing himself to me". Hypothetically, If you had no prior knowledge of the bible, you most likely wouldn't have these thoughts of grandeur, or you would believe in whichever cultural superstition was prevalent in your society. Humans are superstitious by nature and you're giving in. You must be extremely egotistical to believe that "god"is revealing himself to you because you are special. There are an estimated 30 billion planets in our galaxy and 100 billion galaxies in the universe yet god reveals himself to you personally because you are the centre of the universe and important to him (going by your own logic). What information do you have available to you that I don't?

I don't think you're making it up, it just doesn't make sense to me that, if you lived by the power of spiritual vision, that you wouldn't do so completely. If I had visions that previously convinced me of Christianity and then had a vision like I described, it would terrify me to say "well, sure but I've had so many other visions" because what if this was my one shot at the truth? Why disregard what the Angel was telling me here, particularly if I never had a vision prior to this telling me all other visions are false? As you say, you couldn't be sure that the Angel wasn't telling you the truth, in fact, you would basically have no metric of telling which was true. You can say based on the frequency of the others but does that equate to truthfulness? It just seems like a guessing game.

I may not know for sure that the man showing up at the door is my father, but I get pretty close to 100% sure by tracking down my birth certificate, seeing if the state hospital I was born in would coincide with a place where he would have lived then, paternity test. etc etc.

I should point out that I'm not trying to tell you you shouldn't believe what you believe, this was in response to your critique of a scientific world view, as you say.