ITT you force me to become a deist!!!
You do realize that modding is not my day job, right?
Would that not go without saying when I described it as free time?
I am open to discussion and to listen to arguments and others rational, but saying "you're obviously dumb and don't look at things rational and if you did you would agree with me" is not a very good argument, and no will never convince me as the dogmatism of people like bluebassman is not appealing to me.
If the existence of the biblical Christian God could be objectively established by evidence, we could reasonably expect it would inexorably become a routine part of our scientific/historical body of knowledge. If so, a consensus of acceptance would emerge that's largely independent of geography and culture. Examples of this include the heliocentric model of the solar system, the germ theory of disease, and plate tectonics.
Instead, we observe the exact opposite; religious belief is almost entirely still correlated to upbringing. Not to mention there is a negative correlation between those who are most adept at objectively assessing evidence and those who hold religious beliefs. Why do you think that is?
Originally Posted by Neue regel
this issue was brought up in different words. jib claims the bible is distinguished by corroborative historical evidence.
How is Christianity different? Do you know nothing of history? You are attempting to compare "books". Book1 claims X, Book2 claims X, as does Book3 claim X. And then you pretend as if these "books" are comparable. This is merely a strawman argument based on ignorance.
Stop looking at "books" and start looking at history.
Stop looking at "books" and start looking at history.
In terms of history, islam is clearly far more impressive than christianity. We actually have a pretty good picture of the guy and what he did, and we know he actually without doubt overcame some pretty harsh conditions to create an enormous empire and second most popular religion of all time.
To contrast, historians from christian culture itself know far more about Mohammad than they know about Jesus. LMAO. LMFAO. Your reasoning is even more ridiculous than I thought. Historical evidence. Hahahahahaha.
Sure, none of this is surprising coming from you. You obviously evaluate evidence in such a way that you cannot be proved wrong. Maybe one day you will look at the evidence objectively. Until then I am sure you will remain an atheist, self-fulfilling prophecies are funny that way.
If the existence of the biblical Christian God could be objectively established by evidence, we could reasonably expect it would inexorably become a routine part of our scientific/historical body of knowledge. If so, a consensus of acceptance would emerge that's largely independent of geography and culture. Examples of this include the heliocentric model of the solar system, the germ theory of disease, and plate tectonics.
Instead, we observe the exact opposite; religious belief is almost entirely still correlated to upbringing. Not to mention there is a negative correlation between those who are most adept at objectively assessing evidence and those who hold religious beliefs. Why do you think that is?
Instead, we observe the exact opposite; religious belief is almost entirely still correlated to upbringing. Not to mention there is a negative correlation between those who are most adept at objectively assessing evidence and those who hold religious beliefs. Why do you think that is?
+ this:
There's probably 1+ other arguments I'm missing that are also good.
Take a wild ****ing guess Jib
I don't believe that people are punished for eternity in Hell.
I think it is an eternity if they make it an eternity. And some like Satan choose to because they will be considered last in Heaven so he would rather be first in hell. This is a subject i have not put much effort into studying mainly because i don't think it is as important as everything else.
884 million people, lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people.
Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use.
Only 62% of the world’s population has access to improved sanitation – defined as a sanitation facility that ensures hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact.
The majority of the illness in the world is caused by fecal matter.
Lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection.
Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.
Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.
Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.
Earth is actually water-poor when compared to some other planets/moons in our solar system.
So, the christian god cares about everyone and has the power to give everyone clean water, but just doesn't? A deist god makes far more sense to explain things like this. No god makes even more sense.
And "no god" makes no sense at all. It makes so little sense that no one on this forum is willing to take the position that God does not exist.
really? I think there's a ton of evidence against the Christian god specifically (any god that knows everything, loves everyone, has the power to do anything). We don't really need any, but we certainly have some IMO.
For example my post about water above is pretty strong evidence IMO that if a god exists he can't be both all loving and all powerful. There are of course many other things that I can use to support myself here.
A god that knows everything, loves everyone, and can do anything doesn't design humans to need massive amounts of water throughout their life and then not provide enough of it. He also doesn't provide water that's undrinkable, or contaminated...which of course we know there is undrinkable and severely contaminated water that has killed many people. This god also would not stand back and allow his faltering design to continue to kill innocent people for hundreds of years on end. I think we can say that pretty confidently.
Free will leads to the death of innocent people. Is it your contention that there is no benefit to free will? Or that the benefit out weighs the negative? If so please elaborate.
Another strawman. Nobody expects it to be an "episode of gummie bears." I'm only asking for god to hold up his end of the bargain. If you design a race of sentient beings to require massive amounts of clean water, you better damn well be the one to provide that to them, instead of trying to blame it on the imperfections that you created them with.
What would you think of me if I bred dogs for a living, but when any of them barked or misbehaved, I wouldn't give them food or water for a month. And then once they survived long enough to give birth to the next generation and died from hunger and starvation, I did the same to the newborn puppies. Because after all, those puppies aren't innocent, they were born with the same inherent sinful nature as it's parents.
Then tell me where in your analogy this is accounted for.
As I've said in the past, I have to give my kids tough love because the world is in the state it is. God doesn't have to live with those limitations. God could have have built heaven on earth from the start. It could have been the Garden of eden with a bit of discipline thrown in, but in an active way, like a parent - if he wanted to teach good lessons. Or we could have been imbued with those lessons already in us. We could have such a natural distaste for harming each other that only a precious few would do so. I mean, there are so many other ways this planet could have gone that would have resulted in so much less suffering, that to suggest that our world is the result of an all-loving god is extremely hard to justify.
Rather, our world is much more consistent with a deist God: one that doesn't intervene, and may not even care. That let's not just bad things happen, but atrocities, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Despite it being trivially easy for such a being to prevent such things.
A God who would allow such cruelty and misery to continue unabated (and let it get so bad at one time that his only option was to kill everyone!) is inexcusable for a loving being. I think you know this and I think you (and many other theists) find the presence of such misery in the world to be extremely uncomfortable to your theistic views. And if there is a God who allows this: you should be quite angry with him. If he's testing us, its pure capriciousness.
I have no idea why you think God allows this but I assume it has something to do with valuing free will and God wanted to teach humans lessons or some such.
As I've said in the past, I have to give my kids tough love because the world is in the state it is. God doesn't have to live with those limitations. God could have have built heaven on earth from the start. It could have been the Garden of eden with a bit of discipline thrown in, but in an active way, like a parent - if he wanted to teach good lessons. Or we could have been imbued with those lessons already in us. We could have such a natural distaste for harming each other that only a precious few would do so. I mean, there are so many other ways this planet could have gone that would have resulted in so much less suffering, that to suggest that our world is the result of an all-loving god is extremely hard to justify.
Rather, our world is much more consistent with a deist God: one that doesn't intervene, and may not even care. That let's not just bad things happen, but atrocities, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Despite it being trivially easy for such a being to prevent such things.
A God who would allow such cruelty and misery to continue unabated (and let it get so bad at one time that his only option was to kill everyone!) is inexcusable for a loving being. I think you know this and I think you (and many other theists) find the presence of such misery in the world to be extremely uncomfortable to your theistic views. And if there is a God who allows this: you should be quite angry with him. If he's testing us, its pure capriciousness.
As I've said in the past, I have to give my kids tough love because the world is in the state it is. God doesn't have to live with those limitations. God could have have built heaven on earth from the start. It could have been the Garden of eden with a bit of discipline thrown in, but in an active way, like a parent - if he wanted to teach good lessons. Or we could have been imbued with those lessons already in us. We could have such a natural distaste for harming each other that only a precious few would do so. I mean, there are so many other ways this planet could have gone that would have resulted in so much less suffering, that to suggest that our world is the result of an all-loving god is extremely hard to justify.
Rather, our world is much more consistent with a deist God: one that doesn't intervene, and may not even care. That let's not just bad things happen, but atrocities, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Despite it being trivially easy for such a being to prevent such things.
A God who would allow such cruelty and misery to continue unabated (and let it get so bad at one time that his only option was to kill everyone!) is inexcusable for a loving being. I think you know this and I think you (and many other theists) find the presence of such misery in the world to be extremely uncomfortable to your theistic views. And if there is a God who allows this: you should be quite angry with him. If he's testing us, its pure capriciousness.
Jib, please respond to the last two paragraphs of post #154.
Why can we take the accounts of miracles and the resurrection to be historically accurate?
Just about everything going on in this world has already been predicted, but you could care less about that also.
Obviously these things aren't as interesting to you as trolling RGT and watching GSP do push ups.
If the existence of the biblical Christian God could be objectively established by evidence, we could reasonably expect it would inexorably become a routine part of our scientific/historical body of knowledge. If so, a consensus of acceptance would emerge that's largely independent of geography and culture. Examples of this include the heliocentric model of the solar system, the germ theory of disease, and plate tectonics.
Instead, we observe the exact opposite; religious belief is almost entirely still correlated to upbringing. Not to mention there is a negative correlation between those who are most adept at objectively assessing evidence and those who hold religious beliefs. Why do you think that is?
If yes,
Then you would have to agree that peoples belief being culturally "formed" (or any of the other things you mentioned) has no bearing on whether or not the belief in the Christian God is rational, because people are not being rational to begin with.
I really have not had the time to devote to the thread that I thought I was going to have when I made it.
give me some time and I will have a better chance to address some of the arguments.
Curiosity though, what strong arguments do you believe have been presented ITT thread that I have not yet responded to? If you point out the post # I will respond to them first.
give me some time and I will have a better chance to address some of the arguments.
Curiosity though, what strong arguments do you believe have been presented ITT thread that I have not yet responded to? If you point out the post # I will respond to them first.
As to the strongest arguments that you haven't addressed, I naturally believe my own argument is the best in this thread.
There are strong emotional reasons not to believe that God exists, more specifically the biblical God. This can be shown to be true by the resistance to things like the age of the earth. I am sure that you agree that the age of the earth has been established by the evidence, right? So why doesn't everyone just fall in line?
This can show that people don't rationally think about what they believe. In other words they don't hold their belief for rational reasons. Would you agree?
If yes,
Then you would have to agree that peoples belief being culturally "formed" (or any of the other things you mentioned) has no bearing on whether or not the belief in the Christian God is rational, because people are not being rational to begin with.
This can show that people don't rationally think about what they believe. In other words they don't hold their belief for rational reasons. Would you agree?
If yes,
Then you would have to agree that peoples belief being culturally "formed" (or any of the other things you mentioned) has no bearing on whether or not the belief in the Christian God is rational, because people are not being rational to begin with.
Non-Christians have emotional reasons for non-belief?
I feel like I'm in the freakin' twilight zone.
As to the strongest arguments that you haven't addressed, I naturally believe my own argument is the best in this thread.
Let me ask you though, if I am correct about my belief about the historicity of the NT( and by this I do not mean that the claims are necessarily true, but that they are in fact the claims of the supposed writers, etc), would you then belief that belief in the biblical God was the most rational? I suspect you will answer no.
If no, then there does not seem to be too much of a point focusing on this as it clearly is not the center point to your argument.
There are strong emotional reasons not to believe that God exists, more specifically the biblical God. This can be shown to be true by the resistance to things like the age of the earth. I am sure that you agree that the age of the earth has been established by the evidence, right? So why doesn't everyone just fall in line?
it must take some serious talent to twist logic into a pretzel like that. impressive.
Many of the atheists on this forum say things like "I don't know if God exists, but I know that the biblical God does not exist" or "Well, I wouldn't compare belief in a deistic God to belief in Santa, but I would compare belief in a specific God (like the biblical God) to belief in Santa".
Now you all know who you are. You are the people that I expect to post in this thread.
Now if the belief in the biblical God (which I do hold a belief in) is so ridiculous and there is so much evidence against said God, this should be a slam dunk for you.
And if your evidence includes a supposed contradiction in the bible you must also convince me that your interpretation is more plausible then mine as well as that this contradiction is such that in light of it belief in the biblical God must collapse by logical necessity.
Ok, so make me a deist, gogogogogogogo!
Now you all know who you are. You are the people that I expect to post in this thread.
Now if the belief in the biblical God (which I do hold a belief in) is so ridiculous and there is so much evidence against said God, this should be a slam dunk for you.
And if your evidence includes a supposed contradiction in the bible you must also convince me that your interpretation is more plausible then mine as well as that this contradiction is such that in light of it belief in the biblical God must collapse by logical necessity.
Ok, so make me a deist, gogogogogogogo!
This post is so ridiculously childish and simplistic I'm not even going to bother reading through the thread and so may be repeating the points of some rational posters. The burden of proof is solely yours.
- as much as I hate the use of labels I will trot a few out to help describe myself. I am a rationalist, a materialist, a humanist and very strong atheist.
When I say that I am an atheist I mean that I am atheistic in regards to ALL of the thousands of ancient and modern claims regarding gods not just the current most popular three, those being the christian pantheon of one, wait there are three, wait , no it's only one again, or two and something else, no wait it's all one and three..., also the god of mohammed, oh revered raider of caravans and rapist of nine year olds, and of course all the hundreds of contradictory, repetitive, fun and whacky avatars of the hindus one true multitude of god gods....
How silly would it be for me to claim that the universe and all life was created mere seconds ago by an all powerful salamander that resides in my sock drawer and that any evidence to the contrary was made to seem so by him as a test of faith? Can you disprove this? You of course cannot. This is the equivalent of claiming the abrahamic gods are real that the claiming the bible is true and accurate because the bible is true and accurate and then asking to be disproved.
As to wether there is a deistic god that created everything and left it to run on its own from the point of the big bang on and skipped off to wherever gods go when not creating universes.... who cares? it is a question that cannot be answered which makes it irrelevant.
If you claim to have a supernatural buddy who loves you and cares about your daily life you are a child or a fool.
BTW are you a believer in all of the gods of past and present or just the one? towards what gods are you atheistic? do you believe that Zeus once ruled the universe and yahweh beat him out in a cage match and that is why he says "thou shalt have no other gods before me" or maybe he was just kidding?
I'm going to go against my instincts and pretend for a second that you want an honest conversation and investigation here.
I don't have the exact amount of naturally fresh water on earth and the exact amount of fresh water needed to sustain the current planets population. Although, I'm quite sure without modern purifying and cleaning apparatuses, which man - not god - made, we would basically be ****ed.
I also don't see why you seem to think that this is a critical part of my argument. Let's assume for a second that there is in fact enough naturally clean water on earth to sustain the population. Why did god feel the need to bless some areas with it greatly, and offer virtually none to other areas? That doesn't seem fair at all. Also, since your god is omniscient, shouldn't he have known in advance that it was possible that free will could have allowed humans to hoard a lot of it for themselves and keep it away from others? If he knew this, which by the christian definition of god he did, then why didn't he plan in advance and put extra rations evenly spread out throughout the planet in order to undercut so much intense illness, suffering, and death of people who were utterly innocent?
http://environment.nationalgeographi...shwater-crisis
This means that every year competition for a clean, copious supply of water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and sustaining life intensifies.Water scarcity is an abstract concept to many and a stark reality for others. It is the result of myriad environmental, political, economic, and social forces.
Freshwater makes up a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. The rest is saline and ocean-based. Even then, just 1 percent of our freshwater is easily accessible, with much of it trapped in glaciers and snowfields. In essence, only 0.007 percent of the planet's water is available to fuel and feed its 6.8 billion people.
Due to geography, climate, engineering, regulation, and competition for resources, some regions seem relatively flush with freshwater, while others face drought and debilitating pollution. In much of the developing world, clean water is either hard to come by or a commodity that requires laborious work or significant currency to obtain.
Water Is Life
Wherever they are, people need water to survive. Not only is the human body 60 percent water, the resource is also essential for producing food, clothing, and computers, moving our waste stream, and keeping us and the environment healthy.
Unfortunately, humans have proved to be inefficient water users. (The average hamburger takes 2,400 liters, or 630 gallons, of water to produce, and many water-intensive crops, such as cotton, are grown in arid regions.)
According to the United Nations, water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century. By 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world's population living in water-stressed regions as a result of use, growth, and climate change.
The challenge we face now is how to effectively conserve, manage, and distribute the water we have. National Geographic's Freshwater Web site encourages you to explore the local stories and global trends defining the world's water crisis. Learn where freshwater resources exist; how they are used; and how climate, technology, policy, and people play a role in both creating obstacles and finding solutions. Peruse the site to learn how you can make a difference by reducing your water footprint and getting involved with local and global water conservation and advocacy efforts.
Freshwater makes up a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. The rest is saline and ocean-based. Even then, just 1 percent of our freshwater is easily accessible, with much of it trapped in glaciers and snowfields. In essence, only 0.007 percent of the planet's water is available to fuel and feed its 6.8 billion people.
Due to geography, climate, engineering, regulation, and competition for resources, some regions seem relatively flush with freshwater, while others face drought and debilitating pollution. In much of the developing world, clean water is either hard to come by or a commodity that requires laborious work or significant currency to obtain.
Water Is Life
Wherever they are, people need water to survive. Not only is the human body 60 percent water, the resource is also essential for producing food, clothing, and computers, moving our waste stream, and keeping us and the environment healthy.
Unfortunately, humans have proved to be inefficient water users. (The average hamburger takes 2,400 liters, or 630 gallons, of water to produce, and many water-intensive crops, such as cotton, are grown in arid regions.)
According to the United Nations, water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century. By 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world's population living in water-stressed regions as a result of use, growth, and climate change.
The challenge we face now is how to effectively conserve, manage, and distribute the water we have. National Geographic's Freshwater Web site encourages you to explore the local stories and global trends defining the world's water crisis. Learn where freshwater resources exist; how they are used; and how climate, technology, policy, and people play a role in both creating obstacles and finding solutions. Peruse the site to learn how you can make a difference by reducing your water footprint and getting involved with local and global water conservation and advocacy efforts.
Lastly, let's say that you're suppositions are right and that the freewill of some greedy human beings hoarding all the water for themselves were the only reason people dying of thirst. This does not in any way preclude god for making an exception for the innocent people who are getting scammed out of nourishment. A loving god that can do anything would provide such people who were being scammed by others' free will, and in turn dying from it, the clean water they need in order to survive. God hasn't done this. I can only conclude that if a god exists, he either doesn't know about such a situation, or he doesn't care about the situation, or both. This means such a god couldn't be both omniscient and omnibenevolent. If the christian god exists I would expect to have seen many interventions in my life time where he was helping the innocents from enduring massive suffering. We don't see that though. The best your god can muster is having scribe's write in some ancient manuscripts thousands of years ago about some dude who maybe, possibly, walked on a sheet of water, and turned water into wine. If god wanted to show his infinite love, allowing jesus to turn water into wine and walk across a lake wasn't exactly a great idea. Helping innocent people dying of thirst every day would have been much smarter and loving, I think even you wouldn't dispute this, but I could be wrong.
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