Are you saying that when someone swears at you and calls you a "muppet, ****, bitchboy" or any other comment they actually also believe you are that???? You can replace "believing" with muppet or another swear word. Do I now believe he is a muppet too???

I think it is pretty sad. Certain posters avoid my questions, come here looking for an argument. Nit pick some of my posts, dodge the OP and then go complain to the mod when I stand up for myself. You need to get of your high horse ,accept that I share different views, stop looking to dissect my posts (which you have all failed to do anyways) and either stay out of my thread or answer the questions.

The fact you are not even answering my questions and just making silly personal attacks should be evidence enough that you are just a bunch of children! Grow up Santa does not exist!

In Soviet Russia, belligerent troll lectures you.

No. I mean any sort of beliefs. Not just religious.

Explain what you mean, so I can answer your trolling comments better!

How is not my thread? I am the one who created it! Go back to school and learn to think rationally.

you know what beliefs are , right? Do you have some beliefs, not necessarily religious?

Good to see my thread preface was accurate.

Now to answer your question using a reason I would consider 'rational' (albeit I'm not religious):

People are religious because (to some) empiricism and knowledge through evidence-based methodology is based on no less assumptions than God's existence.

I like the fact that you are trying to answer even though you are not religious.
I am not sure what you mean by that.

I do not know what you mean by beliefs, why do you not want to explain what you mean?

I am going to stop posting in this part of the forum. I want to apologise to theists who might of took offence to some of my posts here. I am not trying to hurt anybody's feelings but this is how I make conversation. Some posts I made here were purely rants and/or just silly things but I still just wanted to debate whether God exists or not. Unfortunately I am non the wiser and I stand by my initial stance and think God does not exist! I came here not looking for an argument but rather to debate and challenge people about religion.

As we all can see some people took offence and have started to make personal attacks FIRST. I feel I have let myself down and have sunk to their level and insulted them back.

I have nothing to say to these hypocritical atheists, they obviously are not very tolerant, who think they are above anybody else, that they sink to such low levels and make personal insults. Kudos for showing everyone your true colours.

I have already gone ahead and made a new account.

Religion has caused more misery in every stage of human history than any other single idea.

Well, you make an assumption in your belief that there is an objective world existing independently to your subjective experience.

Under this assumption, you look at evidence (in the objective world) and based on this evidence (or lack thereof) decide that it is not sufficient to conclude that God exists.

However, without assuming that an objective world exists independently to your subjective experience - you may through principles of reason alone, conclude that God exists.

Both, concluding that God does exist (through principles of reason) and concluding that God does not exist (through evidence/lack thereof) are based on assumptions about the world.

For these reasons, one may justifiably believe in the existence of God, as one may justifiably lack belief in God.

Let me tell you a story (from Stephen Hawking's show)...

Back in the days when Vikings were sailing the seven seas. They witness a ghastly event when they saw their sun being swallowed by a wolf god. They were scared of what they were seeing but like all Vikings, they did what any Vikings would do. They all screamed and yelled at the wolf god in hope of scaring the wolf god away. To their surprise, it work. The sun slowly return and the Vikings were triumphant. Stories of the wolf god swallowing the sun soon spread and pass down for generations.

Now, we know thru science that wolf god swallowing the sun is purely nonsense. As we learn more thru science, we remove the need for god.

Just to be clear i have not reported any of your post which break the rules, which are many. Feel free to report mine though.


You are just afraid to challenge his massive knowledge of your religion. Wb

It is a thread you started it is not a thread you own.

For the record I did not report any of your responses to me, I reported the post in which you told someone to go kill themselves. This is not acceptable, nor is the homophobic element to your posting.

Feel free to report any of my posts to the moderators, you can do this by hitting the report post button underneath my name adjacent to any of my posts.

I dont understand how you can know what I mean by beliefs when talking about religion, but have no clue as to what I mean otherwise.

Beliefs are statements, or assumptions, that you hold. Eg "all religious people are stupid" is a belief. "the earth goes round the sun" is a belief. " that guy is really mean" is a belief."It is important to be able to define moral rules and morality" is a belief. And so on. Beliefs may have evidence to support them, or they may not.

The point I am trying to make is that everyone , probably every single person, has false beliefs. Its the way the brain works. While these false beliefs may not be as destructive as religious beliefs, its the same mechanisms . Religious belief isnt a special category of belief ( other than being put there by us) .

Just wanted to see what was going on here, since it's been so long, but I see it's been relatively dead here. Just our dear OP taking out his frustrations on the forum.

You and MB were the only ones driving discussion on this forum, which is why I thought it a shame that you were often talking passed each other.

I hope you're well and the break has been good for you.

This entire line of thought is far too underrated. Although, I don't think it's why "people are religious", even if they may feel more justified in their views as a result.

I agree with you, unfortunately I still don't know how to remedy this. We just don't agree on some key things.

Yeah its been a ghost town you haven't missed to much.

Tsar, have you already gone? I wanted to pry about your nickname.

Well there you have it. We actually differ on the meaning of belief and that is why asked you in the first place. Beliefs are statements you make that have little to no evidence, hence belief. When you say the earth goes around the sun, that becomes fact in my mind as it has been proven! Not a belief anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/de...english/belief

An acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof:

I still do not get the point your trying to make. I guess you are trying to say that everyone has false beliefs! Kudos for pointing that out.

I hate to bring this up, but this viewpoint could benefit from a little humbling.

The earth does go around the sun, according to 'proof' in the form of evidence.

Can you prove to me that you are not a Brain in a Vat?

"Since, in principle, it is impossible to rule out oneself being a brain in a vat, there cannot be good grounds for believing any of the things one believes".

As such, aren't you assuming that evidence (about the world) can be used as proof? If the whole world is projected to you from an outside reality (as in Brain in a Vat) then any evidence you may have about the earth going around the sun is not in fact evidence of anything but that which is projected.