Insert you feeling dominant. Collect trophy at the cage. Never saw that coming.

Sure, i've seen this before, you seem to run away from a conversation every time when you don't have an answer to an argument...

I have incomplete and imperfect answers. You have said that they are insufficient for you. I would agree to disagree, while still holding that I believe my position to be correct. You don't seem capable of doing that, and decide to swing your **** around picking an argument. My refusing aparently makes you feel like you've "won". I hope I'm not missing out on some sweet carnival prizes.

I don't think religions are as diverse as we'd like to think. All have the same basic principles... I honestly think that one person had an idea and it caught on. I mean, what better way than using an all-powerful "God" is there to control people???

Religion used to be the controlling factor in most people's lives, essentially. For example, a king needs control over his people; what better way than to say "God says ------" and "God says-----"? You can't argue with the divine. It's brainwashing, and some are happy to have it.

Don't you see something wrong with this position?

"I have incomplete and imperfect answers."

"I believe my position to be correct."

------

"You have said that they are insufficient for you."
Some of my arguments you won't even address, so obviously lack of your response is insufficient to persuade me that you do have an answer.

If i follow every one of your answers with "Why?" it doesn't make me right or you wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4KiG...utu.be&t=2m21s

Just wondering how much of this do you ascribe to?

I have watched many of those videos. Matt Dillahunty is great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Dillahunty

"Matt was raised as a fundamentalist Baptist Christian, and sought to become a Baptist minister.[4] His religious studies, instead of bolstering his faith as he intended, led to a complete rejection of Christianity. He now continues to study philosophy, religion, science, and history, while educating people about atheism and religion, and "to prevent others from wasting another day on irrational beliefs".[5]"

You should watch many of the episodes maybe they can turn your light bulb on..

well yes it isn't meant to be much more than a quaint expression.

Although, in the case you suggest of a deity who doesn't inspire the concept of god, we are just in the "man create god" case. Or, to qualify it in the obvious way, man creates the social conception of god which our religions describe. A deity which is entirely outside of all of this is irrelevant.

I think we can go one step further and even specify the ways we can expect religion to differ and be the same. We should expect it to be similar in ways that easily reflect human characteristics, and different in ways that don't. So for example, it is quite reasonable to think that given how the golden rule seems such a basic component of human conceptions of morality that this would get enshrined in religion after religion, and so it does. The same motivations to desire an afterlife, for instance, should be expected and most religions have an afterlife of some form. However, there is nothing human about specifying whether that afterlife continued in some other special place or recycled on earth over and over again....hence we get diversity in that kind of answer.

Okay...

I have some unusual questions that I've been bothered by since childhood (assuming the afterlife is real):

How old will I be in heaven? Will I be a child, and still have my parents? Or will I be a parent to one of my (future) children?

I still don't understand how that works.

Christian afterlife makes no sense to me... too many paradoxes to make it work... apparently God erases your memories of the loved ones who didn't make it, you no longer have hobbies and do anything, all that you do is worship Jesus.. I guess heaven is just one giant Church where Jesus and God sit on their thrones...

Haha, sounds like heaven to me!!!
Nothing about it makes any sense. I literally lose sleep over this sort of thing.

I think I just so badly want to believe in something great and good and bigger than myself that I lose perspective. I wonder if that is why people are so willing to accept the Bible and such? Maybe it's just because we (human-kind) inherently have to believe in something larger than ourselves?

idk just a guess

Afterlife sounds pretty but when you actually start questioning details of the afterlife it just doesn't add up, especially the one that is being told to exist by Christians.

I honestly think eternal life would be hell for someone like me...
I think part of the miracle of life is that begins AND that it ENDS. Death is an intergral part of life and I think that fear of it is just foolish... to me the concept of heaven comes from fear of death.
A circle has no beginning, but a chicken came from an egg and when that chicken dies, there has been another egg(S) to take its place. To me, eternal life is the living of our descendants... little bits of ourselves living on in them.

Gosh that sounds really stupid. Depth was never my thing, but I hope you get what I mean. In school, I so badly wanted to study Philosophy, but then I realised the lake of difinitive answers was enough to drive anyone (esp. me) insane!
I have great respect for those that can endlessly ponder life's many mysteries.

All of these - and far more beyond them - are only relevant or interesting questions if one makes the entirely unjustified assumption that there is a deity who grants people an afterlife.

Well as kid I just accepted it, I don't think it was until I was kind of on my own that it even occured to me that there was a different option.

So many people are the same way, which just speaks to how potent a cultural force it is.

I can only say - since you seem to be just starting along this road - that accepting the reality that there is absolutely zero evidence for any deity (and certainly not for any one in specific) and instead realizing that it is our reason, our intellect, our science, our art, music, and love which gives meaning and purpose to the universe can be an incredibly freeing and indeed empowering experience.

I wish you the best of luck on that journey.

Hi AnonyMouse,

I thought you might enjoy this video as I can see parts of my self in you..

http://wimp.com/carlsagan

Best regards,
#

I don't have a problem in thinking that perhaps a God created the Universe, and the Earth is merely a bi-product and he/she/it has very little interest in humanity. I think it's unlikely, however, not impossible.

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." [Carl Sagan]

Okay, thank you for the video. That was very insightful. It brought to mind a bit from an essay I recently read;

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.

-Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right